In Defense of Kindness (Or: This Time I Only WISH I Were in Hawai'i!)

 Way back in the Before Times (we're talking the tail end of 2019 here!) My wife, our son, and I took a long overdue vacation in Maui. While there I penned the blog post below, accompanied by vacation pics that had nothing whatever to do with my subject: the notion that it is absolutely fair that customer service get to rate their interactions with customers in much the same manner that customers have been empowered by the internet to do. Bear in mind this is pre-Covid and I'm pretty sure right around the time of the Dawn of the "Karen."

This post seems timely in light of so many goings-on in this country-and by extension, the world-right now. Where phrases such as "the cruelty is the point" get bandied about non-stop. Me, I'm for kindness. And this year I'm MISSING Maui, instead of visiting it-a pre-fire Maui, no less, with an intact Lahaina, and an unscorched Banyan tree. I say if you're gonna go nostalgic, why not go all in?

So please enjoy the repost below. I've got a longer, craft-related piece in the works for my next turn in the rotation! - Brian

Aloha from Maui!

Every time I've driven past the signs for Kihei in the past week, I've thought of old pal and fellow Sleuthsayer R.T. Lawton, and his better half, Kiti. (And they know why!).

As I sail toward the end of the first real vacation my family has taken in years, my thoughts have been on an amazing and amusing thing that happened to me during the final week of the school year a couple of weeks back.

One of my students (hard-working, charismatic, a real leader, just a fine young lady) informed me that her mother works for the credit union where I and my family do most of our banking. "Oh," I think to myself, "Small world."

Turns out there was more.

"My mom finally remembered where she recognized your name from," this amazing kid went on.

"From the credit union?" I said, still not quite getting it.

"Yep. She sees your name quite a bit there."

These are vacation pics and have zero to do with this post: that's the island of Kaho'olawe across the bay.

Casting back in my memory to try to recall whether I had any recent NSF fees (Hey–no judgement. Most of us have been there at one time or another, after all.), I asked, "What does your mom do at XXXX Credit Union (Not its real name)?"

"She's Quality Control for Customer Service."

This information sends my thoughts in a new direction. Have I complained about the service I've received lately? Nope. Does that mean someone's complained about me? Is that even a thing customer service folks even do?

I asked myself this last question because a few decades back, I was one of those people working in a variety of entry-level customer service jobs. It was some of the hardest and least rewarding work I've ever done. I worked in food, in hospitality, in transportation, all while working my way through college so that I could embark on a different–yet–not–all–that–different type of customer service: teaching.

Back in those days (and we're talking the early '90s here) one customer complaint could mean the end of your employment (I didn't have a union job until I started teaching, everywhere I worked was a one-counseling session and you're fired kind of place.). I know this because at least once I got fired because of a customer complaint.

Well, that and the fact that the guy who fired me (someone who really put the "ass" in "assistant manager.") was a real piece of work.

But that's another story.

These and other memories were washing over me during my conversation with that awesome student of mine. So I said: "Quality Control, huh? She fields complaints, things like that?"

"Yep," Awesome Kid (not her real name, but it might as well be) said.

"Does she like her job?"

"She does. And she likes you."

I cudgel my brain trying to recall whether I've ever met Awesome Kid's mom. Nope. I'm pretty sure I'd remember. She didn't come to conferences, and I didn't see her at Open House. So that surprises me.

"She likes me?" I ask, all intelligence and awareness, now.

"Yes. You're one of the highest-rated customers they have."

I blink at her, not comprehending. "They rate customers?"

She nods. "And the customer service reps all really love you. You get high marks all the time and you're near the top of their list."

And just like that, with this small kindness, Awesome Kid made my year.

The island of Lana'i (left) and the West Maui Mountains (right) framing a spectacular sunset

My early experiences with the downside of customer service (being the one to catch the irate call, or get someone's order wrong, or commit one of thousand small errors) have informed my interactions with the people who work in those positions ever since my own days in customer service, lo those many moons ago.

In the years since I've striven to be patient, to be polite. To be courteous and respectful, even when I'm pretty pissed off about something.

Because, nine times out of ten, it's not the fault of the person I'm talking to. They're there because they picked up the phone, took the chat request, what-have- you.

I've never forgotten what it's like to be on the other end of that call, and I hope I never do.

So it did my heart good to know that customer service reps are getting a chance to rate their interactions with clients: getting a voice in how that back-and-forth went. Because, hey, it's a hard job. And it usually doesn't pay all that well.

Plus, I gotta admit, I like that someone on the other end of that phone call notices how I try to treat them well.

After all, Couldn't we, each and every one of us, use a little more humanity in our daily interactions?

This is why I've been tipping people left, right and center (something I do religiously anyway) over the last week, and will until we head for home.

Like I said before, it's a tough job, and people don't get paid a whole lot to do it.

And that's all I've got for this go-round. I hope you're all having a wonderful and productive July.

Mahalo, and see you in two weeks!

Write Fast! Write Slow! Write Daily! Write When You Can!

 I currently exist in two distinct hells: Rewrite Hell, and End-of-Term-Grading Hell. So I thought I would repost something I wrote back in 2013 under the title: Writing Efficiency in its Myriad Forms. As a rumination on efficient writing it has aged surprisingly well. As a snapshot of life at Casa Thornton it is definitely a fly flash-frozen in amber. (occasional parenthetical updates in italics are additions/emendations intended for this repost, btw.) I hope you get something out of it either way. See you in two weeks! - B.T.

**************************************

In his excellent piece This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Moseley gives the following advice: “The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day–every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work.”

In his defense, Walter apparently has the luxury to plan out his schedule to quite a specific degree.

Along with “Write every day,” “Write fast” seems to be the mantra of this generation. “Writing fast and producing copious amounts of word product is the key to success,” so many “how to” books seem to say.

Bosh.

I’ll tell ya, I have had my share of 2,000 word-count days. Not a one of them came independent of either a hell of a lot of time spent thinking about what I wanted to write that day, or by dint of a whole lot of later tweaking, editing, or outright re-writing.

Put simply, I can write fast, or I can write well. I cannot do both.

This is not to say that such a thing isn’t possible. It is! Just not for me.

I once wrote a pair of 40,000 word books (80,000 words total) in eight weeks. Tight deadline. Unreasonable (and unprofessional, and unhelpful) development editor didn’t make it any easier.

I was an unmarried, kidless apartment dweller at the time. I had (and still have) a day gig that required a fair amount of headspace. So it was work, home to write, bed, rinse and repeat.

Talk about a miserable couple of months!

Astonishingly these two books are still in print.

We spent longer on reworking what I’d written into something passable than it took to write the initial drafts, or, for that matter, for me to have written them well in the first place. But that was a different time in my career, and in my life.

If I were to find myself in that sort of situation today, I’d have to give back the advance. Seriously. I’ve got a marriage and a house and a wonderful one (now twelve!) year-old son, all of whom require my time and attention.

More to the point, they command my time and attention. I enjoy the hell out of being married, being a father, and owning a home. I suspect the fact that I was in my mid-forties by the time I experienced any of these pleasures does nothing to lessen them.

Couple these aspects of my daily life with the fact that my day gig still requires a lot of my energy and attention, and I find myself left with the question, “How do I get anything written at all, let alone sold?”

The answer is that for I published my most recent book in 2011. That was also the year in which I collected and edited an anthology of crime fiction called West Coast Crime Wave. I got married and bought my house in 2010. My son was born in 2012.

(I've published a lot of stuff since then, glad to say!)

So there was some adjustment involved in taking on these new responsibilities, adjustment time during which my publishing slowed to a stand-still.

This is not to say that I stopped writing during this time. Far from it. I figure that during the second half of 2011 and all of 2012, I easily wrote 50,000 words on my work-in-progress historical mystery.

I just won’t be publishing any of those words. They were intended to keep my hand in it, if you will, not to be part of the final equation.

And it worked.

You heard it here first: I’m just wrapping the sale of my first short story in years. I’m also nearly 2/3 of the way through the final draft of my current WIP, a historical thriller set in antebellum Washington, D.C. By this time next year, I’ll have this and another novel wrapped, in addition to writing three more new short stories, and publishing them along with some of my previously published canon in a collection.

And I won’t do it by “writing every day” or “writing fast.” With my schedule that’s just not feasible. So I do the next best thing.

I write when I can where I can as much as I can and as often as I can. Sometimes it’s 2,000 words a day. Sometimes it’s 2,000 words a week.

(And some days it's a few hundred words on my phone!)

It takes a while longer to get my head back into the story once I’ve been away from it for a while, but I think that’s a small price to pay for making time to play with my son every day, spend quality time with my wife, and keep the house from falling down around our ears.

For example, I wrote the ending to “Paper Son,” my short story featured in Akashic Books’ Seattle Noir anthology, while sitting in Seattle Mystery Bookshop, waiting for my friend Simon Wood to finish up a signing there. What’s more, I wrote it on my Blackberry smartphone and emailed it to myself.

I’ve also been known to record story ideas while driving. My commute contributes to some terrific “alone and pondering” time.

Plus, I don’t tend to let story ideas fall by the wayside. This is especially true of short stories. I will get an idea, do some research (remember, I write historical mystery/crime fiction, after all), then begin working on it.

This has so far stood me in good stead. So far I’ve published five short stories (soon to be six), all with paying venues, out of a total of seven shorts actually completed.

In fact, the second story I sold to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, “Suicide Blonde,” was initially rejected. I reworked it, submitted it to the annual MWA anthology contest. They also rejected it.

But I believed in the story enough to resubmit it to Linda Landrigan AHMM, and this time she bought it. What a great feeling!

By the way, I almost never finish a short by working on it straight through. Usually the ones I’ve published have come from months or years of on and off development. Take the story I am about to sell. I first began work on it in 2007.

I guess in the end I don’t really disagree with Mr. Mosley’s excellent advice, at least in spirit. After all, while I can’t really generate new fiction every single day, I definitely do write every day (in various forms), and I believe I’m in complete agreement with the spirit of his advice, which seems to emphasize the importance of establishing a routine in order to help make you more efficient as a writer.

In that regard, I’m doing the best I can. And life is good!

(And it's even better now!)

Vegas: Well-Spring of Story Ideas

 

A room with a view-photo by the author.

So as it turns out the Most Wonderful Woman in the World is both lucky at love and at cards. And the Luckiest Man in the World– that’s me by the way– got to do a ride-along when the aforementioned Most Wonderful Woman in the World went to Vegas for a couple of days last week.

We had one heck of a time. My lady love has mad skills in the casino, and I wrote a bunch. Plus the Bellagio’s atrium is currently decorated for Christmas. If you happen to find yourself in Vegas, it would be a shame to miss it.

Longtime readers of this blog (Both of you!) will no doubt remember that l lived and worked in Vegas for a couple of years back when the world was young. It was the beginning of my public school teaching career, and I could not have asked for a better baptism of fire than teaching in one of the Clark County School District’s schools.

Because I worked with some of the best teachers in the world. Because they were generous with their time and their advice, and they were overwhelmingly effective in their example. I learned tricks of the trade that I use every day to this day.

Stuff like learning a kid‘s name. Using it. Making sure to pronounce it correctly. Letting them see you do that. It’s a great way to show you care enough to say their name right, and that means that you care about them. You build a relationship with these kids– and this is true anywhere in the world– and your work gets monumentally easier. My heroes, the Vegas teachers, taught me that.

So anyway, it’s always nice to visit Vegas, and when I go, I try to get out to places that tend to be far away from the strip (like Red Rock Canyon. Not to be missed!), and the best thing about it, is I always return home with ideas for stories. Because Vegas is full of characters. Let me give you just one example.

The Calico Hills, Red Rock Canyon-author’s photo

More shots of Red Rock- all author’s photos.

Robyn and I were headed to the airport to catch our flight home. We had eaten at an Italian place I knew of away from the Strip, so rather than cab it, we called for a Lyft. And that was how we met Mark.

Mark’s SUV make & model

Nice guy. Early 60s, so a few years older than me. Drove a sweet Mercedes SUV. Spotlessly clean. Told us all about how he was working on getting his CDL, because the money was so much better than driving for either Lyft or Uber.

Not Mark-but definitely his fleece.

Now, this was a guy whose entire appearance practically screamed “MONEY.” Manicure. $200 haircut. Expensive base layer fleece that retails starting at firm $150. So I was somewhat surprised to hear him complaining (however mildly) about money.

Then came the segue. While talking about money, Mark made an oblique reference to the recent election (full disclosure: I think Mark would have been surprised to learn that in this election I backed the accomplished brown-skinned lady with the foreign-sounding first name.). He said, “Yeah, I was tired of seeing all of the money leave the country, instead of coming into it, and felt like we needed a change.”

Bear in mind that my origin story includes being born in, raised in, and taking frequent sojourns in what the chattering class have lazily begun to refer to as “Trump Country.” I call this “lazy,” because I am well aware that aside from campaign stops and photo ops, Donnie Dollhands wouldn’t be caught dead in places that bear such a moniker.

But I’m from there. I still have friends and family there, and I have learned how to either talk with the people I care about whose opinions differ from mine, or even more importantly, how NOT to talk to them about things like politics. It is definitely a skill.

I used that skill to evade being drawn into just such a discussion with Mark. But as it turns out, he wasn’t done trying.

When I mentioned I used to work in Vegas, he asked what line of work I was in. I told him I was a history teacher and a writer. 

He immediately seized on the “teacher” part. Asked about whether I had any exposure to students categorized as “ESL” (“English as a Second Language”- an outdated term outside of Vegas. Several years back the state changed the acronym to “ELL” - “English Language Learners”, and more recently to “MLE” - “Multilingual Education,” but I wasn’t about to tell him this.).

I replied that I did. In fact I worked very closely with kids in that program. 

And then he said it.

“I bet they’re a real drag on your resources, huh.?”

Well.

No.

Far from it.

And I made a decision that I wasn’t going to avoid this conversation after all. I mean why not? I kinda liked the guy. And all he was really doing was the all-too human move of seeking confirmation/support for his biases. We’ve all been there.

So I told him no. I told him my hardest working group of students tended to contain high numbers of “ESL” kids. I further explained that I teach in one of the most diverse districts in the nation (we are situated cheek by jowl with a huge refugee resettlement center.) and something like 240 different languages are spoken in my district.

And that’s the thing: I explained. I didn’t lecture. I didn’t proselytize. I kept my tone light, breezy, conversational. My very first response to his question about “those kids“ being a “drag“ was to say: “On no, far from it. Some of the hardest-working kids I have are ‘newcomers.’ I teach in a very diverse district with a ton of different languages being spoken there. And I invite anybody to come on into my school. Come on into my classroom. Mark, if you ever find yourself anywhere near my patch, get in touch with me. Come visit. It will blow your mind.” 

To his credit, Mark listened. Or he at least seemed to. Our conversation stayed pleasant. And then we moved on to him telling Robyn and I a cool story about him watching a semi truck practically blow up during a training exercise gone horribly wrong (no one was hurt) on a part of the freeway one of his CDL classes was using for training. 

I told him I was going to use his description in this other story I’ve been thinking about. This is one I’ve told before about a former student of mine who teamed up with a friend to steal cinderblocks from a construction site and spend a lot of time trying to drop them on cars from the loca I-15 overpass back when I  still taught down there. 

I think I’m gonna put those two together and I think I just might have something. I’ll keep you guys posted.

And I already promised Mark I would use his name.

So yeah, Vegas well-spring of stories! And as it turns out, civilized political discourse.

Who knew?

(Same view as above, only at night, and a panorama shot. Video by the author’s better half.)

And on that note, my time here draws to a close with this, my final blog entry of the year. I wish you all the finest of holidays, and a blessed new year. See you in January 2025!

“You Wanted to See Me?”: A Lazy Writing Drinking Game

Fifteen years since our first date, and my beautiful, intelligent, talented wife continues to amaze and 

The aforementioned much-loved wife

delight me. Most recently when she came up with "The Lazy Writing Drinking Game."

Robyn (the aforementioned beautiful, intelligent, talented wife) first hatched the idea while we were bingeing the USA Network stalwart Suits this summer. A touchstone of the tail end of a different era in televised entertainment, Suits has morphed into an unlikely money-making giant in the waning days of the Age of Streaming.

This in spite of the fact that Suits is not built for streaming. It's weekly episodic television, as evidenced by the recaps at the beginning of every episode. Which is a big part of what makes weekly episodic television fundamentally different from streaming television: time between episodes.

As such "Time" can be both a blessing and a curse. To the good: it affords the viewer an opportunity to ruminate on the plot as it unfolds, building it up in their imagination, filling in holes, and enriching their viewing experience. To the bad: it opens up the narrative to the temptation of relying on lazy writing. "Time" allows writers to paper over cracks in the foundation, and to use linguistic crutches and shortcuts over and over and over again.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in a show like Suits.

Back in the day this show was a staple of the USA Network lineup, alongside such other USA originals as White Collar, and Royal Pains. As such it had a lot to recommend it: solid production values, great soundtrack music, terrific dialogue and dynamite acting.

Plus, conflict, conflict, conflict, the thing on which plot thrives the most.

But watch episodes of a show like Suits in succession one after another, and the cracks start to appear. For one thing a telenovela feel often pervades the succession of emotional conflicts, blow ups, confrontations and nearly dizzying reversals of allegiances, alliances, feuds and vendettas that litter the show's season arcs. And since Suits, against all odds, leveraged a thin premise (a guy with a photographic memory who never graduated college, let alone law school, fakes his way into getting an entry-level associate attorney position at a big time New York corporate law firm) into NINE successful seasons, that's a lot of litter.

And for another, there's the lazy writing. See below for a few examples. And then watch Suits armed with this foreknowledge, and make sure to take a drink at the appropriate time!

The Fantastic Gina Torres as the Indomitable Jessica Pearson

FIRST: "You Wanted to See Me?"

For most of its nine-season run Suits would begin at least one scene per episode by having one character stroll into the office of another (whether a superior or subordinate, no matter), and intone exactly the same opening line: "You wanted to see me?"

Make sure you have your beverage of choice ready and waiting. This line will cause you to drink deep should you play the Lazy Writing Drinking Game here. In fact, your liver may never forgive you.

Rick Hoffman stealing every scene he's in as the one-of-a-kind Louis Litt

Second: "We Have a Problem."

Second only to the oft-repeated trope of "You wanted to see me?" comes "We have a problem." And it occurs in exactly the same manner: as the opening of a scene wherein one character walks into another's office.

Another perfect opportunity to get your Lazy Writing drink on!

Gabriel Macht as the trickster hero Harvey Specter

Third: "Whatever It Is, It's Gonna Have to Wait."

Third but no means last, comes this little gem, also dropped as the beginning of any given scene, wherein one character has just learned something that needs telling to another character, usually in the scene immediately previous to this this phrase opens. Only to have a second character, invariably the person who needs to be given the above-mentioned information, cut off the first character with the words: "Whatever it is, it's gonna have to wait, because...." followed up by a shocking revelation about their currently dilemma coming out of left field to smack them all down.

And there you have it: the foundations of a potentially hilarious drinking game.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that none of these flaws stopped Suits, which wrapped production in 2019, from KILLING it when it dropped on both Netflix and Peacock's streaming services in mid-2023. It topped the Neilsen ratings for twelve straight weeks, thereby allowing series creator Aaron Korsch to shop a spin-off series, entitled Suits LA. NBC bit, and the series is currently in production.

Can't wait to see whether any of Mike Ross, Harvey Specter, Donna Paulson or Louis Litt pop up as guest stars.

But hey, in the meantime, one can hope.

And drink!

See you in two weeks!

When Writing Historical Fiction: It's Better to Travel

(A repost from a while back. Still useful. Hope you enjoy! - B.T.)

[Elmore] Leonard was originally no more a man of the West than was the Ohio-born dentist Zane Grey. While a kid in Detroit, Westerns enthralled him as they did most people in the 1930s and 40s. When he grew interested in writing during college Western fiction seemed a promising genre he could work in part-time. Unlike many writers then selling Western tales to pulps, though, Leonard insisted on accuracy, and kept a ledger of his research over the years, later crediting his longtime subscription to Arizona Highways magazine for many of his authentic descriptions. All had to be genuine: the guns, Apache terms and clothing; the frontier knives, card games, liquor, and especially the horses.

 — Nathan Ward, from "Elmore Leonard's Gritty Westerns," in Crime Reads

It's certainly never a bad idea to follow the writing advice of the great Elmore Leonard. His Ten Rules For Writing are rightly famous as terrific advice for any writer of fiction.

 

The Great Elmore Leonard

In those instances where Leonard's advice isn't readily available, it never hurts to follow his example, if at all possible. Take the one in the quote above from Nathan Ward's Crime Reads article on Leonard. For years Leonard apparently leaned heavily on the content of Arizona Highways magazine.

It's a fine notion. Now, don't get me wrong: it's always better to travel. There is no substitute for actually going to and spending time in the place you're writing about. But, if you're writing about someplace and you can't afford to go, read travel writers. For that matter, even if you can afford the investment in both time and treasure to visit the region where your work is set, read travel writers. No one can help you get a feel for a certain place like people who make their livings helping their readers get a feel for a certain place.

 

Take William Dalrymple. The British-born-and-raised son of a Scottish baronet, Dalrymple these days is best known for his recent run of riveting books on the history of the subcontinent: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dalrymple is a terrific writer and a first-rate historian who splits his time between a farm just outside Delhi, in India and a summer home in London.

William Dalrymple

But before he began to make a name for himself with books such as White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, The Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-1842, and The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence and the Pillage of An Empire, Dalrymple began his writing career as a travel writer, taking readers on a tour through the Eastern Mediterranean and the Holy Land (From the Holy Mountain: a Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East), and of course, chronicling the early days of his life-long love affair with India. With his first book In Xanadu: a Quest, published in 1989, Dalrymple chronicles his modern retracing of the journey of Marco Polo from Jerusalem in the summer palace of Kublai Khan in China. But it was with his second book, 1994's City of Djinns: a Year in Delhi, a memoir of his first visit to the city which has had such a tremendous impact on his adult life, that Dalrymple really began to make his mark.

And there is so much to this memoir which can be of use to the writer reading about the city. Here's an early excerpt laying out his introduction to Delhi and to India:

I was only seventeen. After ten years at school in a remote valley in the moors of North Yorkshire, I had quite suddenly found myself in India, in Delhi. From the very beginning I was mesmerized by the great capital, so totally unlike anything I had ever seen before. Delhi, it seemed at first, was full of riches and horrors: it was a labyrinth, a city of palaces, an open gutter, filtered light through a filigree lattice, a landscape of domes, an anarchy, a press of people, a choke of fumes, a whiff of spices. Moreover the city—so I soon discovered—possessed a bottomless seam of stories: tales receding far beyond history, deep into the cavernous chambers of myth and legend. Friends would moan about the touts on Janpath and head off to the beaches in Goa, but for me Delhi always exerted a stronger spell. I lingered on, and soon found a job in a home for destitutes in the far north of the city. The nuns gave me a room overlooking a municipal rubbish dump. In the morning I would look out to see the sad regiment of rag-pickers trawling the stinking berms of refuse; overhead, under a copper sky, vultures circled the thermals forming patterns like fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope. In the afternoons, after I had swept the compound and the inmates were safely asleep, I used to slip out and explore. I would take a rickshaw into the innards of the Old City and pass through the narrowing funnel of gullies and lanes, alleys and cul de sacs, feeling the houses close in around me.

Now, I ask you. Can this guy set a scene, or what? Really helpful for drinking in the flavors, colors, scents and sounds of what on the face of it comes across as a truly unforgettable place. Really not a bad guide if you're interested in writing about modern-day India.

But what if, like me, you're a writer of historical fiction?

In Leonard's case, as stated above, he exploited a modern magazine to help give him local flavor not just for another region of the country, but for that region in another era. No mean feat. It's a testament to Leonard's talent, coupled with his singular vision that he was able to "world build" (to borrow a phrase from our friends who write speculative fiction) using these building blocks for his foundation.

So sure, you can (and should) definitely use your imagination to fill in the cracks. There is certainly no substitute for imagination in the fiction writer's tool kit. That said, you need more than one tool in order to get the job of writing fiction done. I've often felt like our "tool kit" as fiction writers should be more aptly called a "tool warehouse." And of course, another way to use travel writing as one of those tools, to help get the feel for a city or street, or region or state or county or what-have-you during a bygone time is to go and find travel writing from the time in which your work-in-progress is set.

I have a writer friend whose current work-in-progress is set during World War II. One of his major characters has a back-story in which he lived in Germany during the 1930s, in the run-up to the war. I referred him to A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube, the first volume in a superb three-volume memoir of a trip on foot across Europe, from Holland all the way to Turkey by travel writer, war-time British commando (the account of his part in a successful kidnapping of a German general in Crete is not to be missed), bon vivant, and (some say) one of Ian Fleming's models for his literary creation James Bond, Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Leigh Fermor set out for Constantinople (Istanbul) in December of 1933, less than a year after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had come to power. His narrative is replete with rich details about German life during that period, laying out how the Nazis had both a heavy and in some ways, a negligible impact on the country they would eventually drive to absolute ruin. Here is Leigh Fermor's initial impression of Cologne, the first major German city he visited:

After a first faraway glimpse, the two famous steeples grew taller and taller as the miles that separated us fell away. At last they commanded the cloudy plain as the spires of a cathedral should, vanishing when the outskirts of the city interposed themselves, and then, as I gazed at the crowding saints of the three Gothic doorways, sailing up into the evening again at close range. Beyond them indoors, although it was already too dark to see the colours of the glass, I knew I was inside the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. Except for the little constellation of tapers in the shadows of a side-chapel, everything was dim. Women knelt interspersed with nuns and the murmured second half of the Gegrüsset seist Du, Maria rose in answering chorus to the priest’s initial solo; a discreet clatter of beads kept tally of the accumulating prayers. In churches with open spires like Cologne, one could understand how congregations thought their orisons had a better start than prayers under a dome where the syllables might flutter round for hours. With steeples they follow the uprush of lancets and make an immediate break for it. Tinsel and stars flashed in all the shops and banners saying Fröhliche Weihnacht! were suspended across the streets. Clogged villagers and women in fleece-lined rubber boots slipped about the icy pavements with exclamatory greetings and small screams, spilling their armfuls of parcels. The snow heaped up wherever it could and the sharp air and the lights gave the town an authentic Christmas card feeling. It was the real thing at last! Christmas was only five days away. Renaissance doors pierced walls of ancient brick, upper storeys jutted in salients of carved timber and glass, triangles of crow-steps outlined the steep gables, and eagles and lions and swans swung from convoluted iron brackets along a maze of lanes. As each quarter struck, the saint-encrusted towers challenged each other through the snow and the rivalry of those heavy bells left the air shaking. Beyond the Cathedral and directly beneath the flying-buttresses of the apse, a street dropped sharply to the quays. Tramp steamers and tugs and barges and fair-sized ships lay at anchor under the spans of the bridges, and cafés and bars were raucous with music. I had been toying with the idea, if I could make the right friends, of cadging a lift on a barge and sailing upstream in style for a bit.

Again, this is quite a scene the writer is setting! So much good material, such a solid feel for the place. Leigh Fermor wrote the memoir some forty years after the trip, based on large part on the deep and thorough entries he made in his journal as an eighteen year-old looking for adventure in a rapidly changing world. And then he goes on to talk about his attempt to "make friends" in that timeless way young people have from time immemorial: he went to a bar:

I made friends all right. It was impossible not to. The first place was a haunt of seamen and bargees shod in tall sea-boots rolled down to the knee, with felt linings and thick wooden soles. They were throwing schnapps down their throats at a brisk rate. Each swig was followed by a chaser of beer, and I started doing the same. The girls who drifted in and out were pretty but a rough lot and there was one bulky terror, bursting out of a sailor’s jersey and wearing a bargeman’s cap askew on a nest of candy-floss hair, called Maggi—which was short for Magda—who greeted every newcomer with a cry of “Hallo, Bubi!” and a sharp, cunningly twisted and very painful pinch on the cheek. I liked the place, especially after several schnapps, and I was soon firm friends with two beaming bargemen whose Low German speech, even sober, would have been blurred beyond the most expert linguist’s grasp. They were called Uli and Peter. “Don’t keep on saying Sie,” Uli insisted, with a troubled brow and an unsteadily admonishing forefinger: “Say Du.” This advance from the plural to the greater intimacy of the singular was then celebrated by drinking Brüderschaft. Glasses in hand, with our right arms crooked through the other two with the complexity of the three Graces on a Parisian public fountain, we drank in unison. Then we reversed the process with our left arms, preparatory to ending with a triune embrace on both cheeks, a manoeuvre as elaborate as being knighted or invested with the Golden Fleece. The first half of the ceremony went without a hitch, but a loss of balance in the second, while our forearms were still interlocked, landed the three of us in the sawdust in a sottish heap. Later, in the fickle fashion of the very drunk, they lurched away into the night, leaving their newly-created brother dancing with a girl who had joined our unsteady group: my hobnail boots could do no more damage to her shiny dancing shoes, I thought, than the seaboots that were clumping all round us. She was very pretty except for two missing front teeth. They had been knocked out in a brawl the week before, she told me.

And that's just a taste. Leigh Fermor's three volumes here truly form a treasure trove: a window into a long-vanished world, and a feel for both the time itself and the timeless humanity of its cast of thousands. Well worth a read whether you're writing something set in Middle Europe during the 1930s, are a student of human nature, history, great writing, or (most likely) some combination of all of the above. 

Patrick Leigh Fermor (Right) in Crete, 1943

And that's all for now. Tune in next time when I break out the work of a Flemish diplomat and show how his long letters home from his posting in the court of the Turkish sultan helped inform the writing of a couple of my published works.

See you in two weeks!

Biden Cincinnatus: the Egalitarian Virtue of Restraint

"You have often heard [Washington] compared to Cincinnatus. The comparison is doubtless just. The celebrated General is nothing more at present than a good farmer, constantly occupied in the care of his farm and the improvement of cultivation."

                – French traveller Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville after visiting Mount Vernon in 1788

Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon, circa 1784

“Tis a Conduct so novel, so inconceivable to People, who, far from giving up powers they possess, are willing to convulse the Empire to acquire more.”

– American painter and former Washington military aide-de-camp John Trumbull, on Washington's resignation of his command, 1784

General Washington resigning his commission before Congress in December, 1783, by John Trumbull

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." 

                                                                                                                     –Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (attr.)

Good Morning Fellow Sleuthsayers, and Happy August!

And I say this with a July for the Ages just barely in the record books. You hear this sort of thing all the time: "One for the record books." "This is unprecedented," etc., especially in this era of big media covering something as consequential as the election of the most powerful person on the planet as if were the fifth race at the dog track. Usually it's hyperbole.

Not this time, my friends.

Now, no matter your political persuasion, this ought to interest you, especially if you're any of the following:

1. A human being.
2. A lover of history.
3. Concerned about the world you might be leaving for your kids/grandkids, etc.
4. Just love a good story.

So with the assistance of Axios and NBC News, let's timeline this past month and a bit:

June 27, 2024

Debate between President Biden and former president Trump. Biden does poorly.

July 2, 2024

Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas becomes the first Democratic congressman to publicly call for President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.

July 3, 2024

Big Democratic donors including Reed Hastings call on Biden to step aside.

July 5, 2024

George Stephanopoulos interviews President Biden.

July 10, 2024

Senator Peter Welch of Vermont becomes the first Democratic senator to publicly call for President Biden's withdrawl from the presidential race.

July 11, 2024

President Biden accidentally calls Ukrainian President Zelensky "President Putin" and Vice President Harris "Vice President Trump" ahead of a NATO presser.

July 13, 2024

Assassination attempt on former president Trump's life at Pennsylvania rally.

July 15, 2024

Former president Trump announces Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential running mate.

July 17, 2024

President Biden tests positive for COVID. Rep. Adam Schiff of California publicly calls for President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.

July 18, 2024

Rambling, and at times barely coherent, former president Trump formally accepts the Republican nomination for president, with a record length 90-plus minute speech. 

July 19, 2024

President Biden reiterates that he will stay in the race as at least 25 additional lawmakers call for him to step aside. NBC News breaks the story that members of President Biden's family have discussed what an exit from his campaign might look like.

July 20, 2024

Former speaker of the House of Representative Nancy Pelosi meets privately with President Biden, and informs him that in her opinion and based on available polling data, he cannot defeat former president Trump in the coming election, and and risks killing the Democrats' chances of holding the Senate and re-taking the House. Biden is defiant in response.

July 21, 2024

President Biden announces he will leave the presidential race and immediately endorses Vice President Harris to be the party's nominee. All but a few of his closest aides have no idea he will leave the race until mere minutes before he posts a press release on Twitter announcing his withdrawal.

*    *    *

Twenty-four days? Feels like twenty-four years! Which is why I included the Lenin quote (something he may or may not have actually said. Historians differ on this point.). And I'll skip the following ten days, with the rise of Kamala Harris as the party's nominee, the excitement it has generated, the party and many previously disaffected supporters energized and heartened by the quick coalescing of support around Vice President Harris, and the concomitant floundering of former president Trump's candidacy.

That story has yet to play out, and nothing is certain. So I'll write about that at some point after a certain Tuesday in the coming November.

After all, it's really beside the point of this post.

That point? The "Cincinnatus" factor.

Yes, that's right, not "Cincinnati." "Cincinnatus." Don't get me wrong. Cincinnati's a great city. It's the home of so many terrific things: the Reds, its own namesake variant on traditional chili, goetta, Graeter's Ice Cream, Play-Doh, Preparation-H, Aspercreme, the first truly German-descended beers brewed in America, and of course, long-time friend and fellow Sleuthsayer, Jim Winter (Hi Jim!).

But for the purposes of this conversation, "Cincinnati" will refer to a fellowship aligning itself with tradition of a "Cincinnatus," rather than to the city named in honor of one such worthy.

So what is this "factor" I have dubbed the "Cincinnatus" factor?

Simple: it's the notion that one of the highest of all civic virtues is such respect for great power as to be willing to surrender it, thereby placing the best interests of one's country above one's own selfish desires.

The word comes from the name of an ancient Roman politician and soldier named Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (fl. 5th century B.C.). As the story comes down to us from the Roman historian Livy, Cincinnatus earned the respect of his colleagues as both a politician and as a general. Eventually, after a long career serving Rome, he retired from public life to farm a few acres (Livy says it was four acres) he owned outside the city.

Not too far into Cincinnatus' retirement, Rome found itself threatened by a powerful invasion force, with its army surrounded and all but beaten. The current consuls (officials charged with running the city and executing the laws passed by the Roman Senate) were apparently not up the task of saving either the city or its army, and so they followed Roman law which dictated (no pun intended, see next) that in time of emergency the Senate could vote to suspend the Roman constitution and place all power in the hands of a "dictator" for a term of six months.

The Senate voted and the official they chose to serve as dictator was none other than the now-retired Cincinnatus. When the members of that worthy body caught up with the man they had voted absolute power to, he was in the middle of plowing his field. Once the situation had been explained to him, Cincinnatus left his plow standing in the midst of said field, said goodbye to his wife and set off to save Rome and its army.

He was successful in both endeavors.

And it took him just over two weeks (sixteen days) to do it.

And what did he do next? Did he serve out his term and enjoy the perks of absolute power for the next five and a half months?

Nope. Once the danger had passed, Cincinnatus resigned his position and returned to his plow. 

A rare move, rare among Roman dictators (see Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix and Gaius Julius Caesar, just to name a couple who, for their own reasons, did not follow Cincinnatus' shining example), rarer still among rulers throughout the ages since the fall of Rome. 

You KNOW that rod is not just for show

One need look no further than 17th century English history and the "Protectorate" government of Oliver Cromwell, which while officially a "commonwealth," was in fact nothing short of a military dictatorship. Having fought on the side of the Parliamentary forces against the king's supporters in England's recent civil war, placed at the head of Parliament's military forces, Cromwell took to being an unaccountable autocrat just as quickly as Charles I, the "divine right" king Cromwell helped defeat, depose and eventually see executed. If anything Cromwell was worse than Charles. He was a competent administrator and a shrewd judge of people, where the foppish dullard Charles Stuart was neither of these things.

And that is just one example. History is replete with stories of princes, pashas, caliphs, kings and all other sorts of rulers who, once attaining power, clung to it like grim death.

And our own modern history has its own Pinochets, its Stalins, its Hitlers (I know, too easy, but hey, if the swastika armband fits...), its Castros, its Chavezes, Its Perons, its Duvaliers, its Somozas, its Putins, its Ceaușescus, and so many more.

Which makes the example of America's own "Father of his Country" all the more remarkable.

Yes, none other than George Washington is known in many quarters as the "American Cincinnatus," and the Society of the Cincinnati is named in his honor. Why? Simple. When given the opportunity to seize and hold absolute power at the end of the American Revolution, Washington resigned his commission mere months after the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

And then he went home to his farm.

Of course the story doesn't end there. Of course Washington was so highly regarded that he was summoned back into his country's service, first to preside over the constitutional convention intended to codify itself existence as a democratic republic, and then as the first president of that same democratic republic.

And then he did it again. 

After two terms served as president, Washington willingly gave up power again, retiring from public life and refusing to serve a third term.

Instead he went home to Virginia to farm.

Is it any wonder that some of the more poetic among us refer to Washington as "the American Cincinnatus"?

It is just this example that our own current chief executive, haltingly, some would say tardily,  certainly imperfectly, has so recently followed.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., easily already the most consequential president of my lifetime (I was born in 1965), when faced with a race he was sure he could win, combined with the failing faith of his erstwhile supporters, did a surprising thing. When his own people told him they thought it best for the nation that he serve out his single term, but step down as his party's nominee for the presidential election this year, he caviled, he argued, I'm sure he stewed and fumed and perhaps even privately raged.

And then he listened to them. And once again, Joe Biden answered his country's call.

I'm not here today to talk about the existential threat this country faces, or how President Biden's action may well have helped rescue it from said threat. I'm not here to talk politics. I'll leave it for others to do that.

I'm just here to point out that without the occasional selfless action of a Cincinnatus, any republic, any democracy, is doomed.

The Cincinnati. May our country continue to produce them.

See you in two weeks!

Dog Days of Summer

Happy Mid-July! Hot enough for ya?

Funny story- I grew up in a literal suburban cul-de-sac. But Instead of a couple of split-level ranch houses at the endpoint where our little slice of suburbia eventually expanded into the inevitable dead-end circle, there was a large corral that served as a home for several llamas.

The cloven-hooved, Inca-pack-animal-kind. Not the robe-sporting, enlightenment-spewing kind.

This kind.

So of course the residents of our court (it wasn't a "street," or a "place,' or a "drive," but a "court.") had to accustom themselves to a seemingly never-ending, slow rolling procession of people out for their daily walks, who liked to come down and look at the llamas. It could make our quiet side street pretty busy, especially in the summertime.

Now, this was the late-‘70s/early ‘80s. The time of the After School Special, Kool-Aid commercials, and Bert Convey hosting Match Game. To say, “It was a different time,” would be a massive understatement. 

And not least because we never ever locked our front door.

Ever.

Well, okay. Maybe when we were going out of town.

Because it was the ‘70s?

Nah.

Because three of our neighbors on our cul-de-sac were cops.

Yep. The guy to our right, and the guy to our left, and the guy across the street.

One patrol officer. One detective. One long-time undercover operative.

Lived next to all three of them for a couple of decades. I guess that this experience has helped hone both my tastes as a reader and my writing style when it comes to crime fiction.

I’ve said it before elsewhere and it certainly bears repeating: Ubervillains BORE me. Unrealistic. Usually a crutch fir laaaaaaaazzzzzzyyyyyy writing, and just not at all my thing.

Turns out the same holds true for me when it comes to cops. Or for all law enforcement types, for that matter. Superheroes BORE me!

Is this because the neighbor who worked undercover as a fake biker, sitting in biker bars and eavesdropping on biker gang members doing drug buys looked an awful lot like a young Wilford Brimley unless he had a week’s worth of beard going? Or that the beat cop on the other side was a lousy gardener who took inordinate pride in the hedges he mutilated? And that his son was a stiff-necked jock who barely tolerated his dad, his wife detested him and his elder daughter was kinda messed up? Or that the detective across the way never touched either coffee or cigarettes? Or that all three o them were certainly scofflaws when it came to the 4th of July, and the county-wide ban on fireworks such as M-80s?

Maybe. Or maybe, like my Vietnam War hero helicopter pilot father, I just have a hard time suspending disbelief when seeing something in a story, fiction or otherwise, that directly contradicts my own lived experiences? (For my dad it was stuff like seeing Jan-Michael Vincent turn on “whisper mode” in his stealth helicopter in the 80s TV action-adventure show Airwolf. Boy did that crack him up!).

I like to think that my lived experience has helped make me a more discerning reader and a better writer. For me, the character has to be believable. The guys who lived around me were hardly Dirty Harry. But they also weren’t cops from the “Files of Police Squad,” either.

And I guess that’s how I like my characters. Realistic.

Anyway, that’s it or me this go-round. Happy Dog Days to you!