Of Word Counts and Crickets

     My doorbell rang yesterday. Looking up, I saw a man's silhouette through the drawn shade. He was walking away. Assuming he was another delivery driver, I opened the door. A young man in a white shirt and tie turned back to face me. He launched into a long-winded spiel about the job skills he learned by going door-to-door peddling magazines. I interrupted, declined, and backed away, wishing him 'good luck.' 

    "I don't believe in luck," he told me. 

    I knew then that he had never submitted a story for publication in one of his magazines. 

    Publishing isn't just about luck--we know that. Follow the submission rules, adhere to the deadlines and word count, send a manuscript as error-free as possible, and stay true to the call's theme--all good and necessary rules for success. But don't discount luck. 

    Suppose you present a solid Super Bowl story to a sports-themed anthology. The editor, however, reads it moments after accepting a different Super Bowl tale. Your piece likely won't get published. The anthology has room for only big football game yarn. Good story--bad luck. 

    Since this is the holiday season and my last Sleuth blog of 2024, I've scoured the holiday legends for the best ways to maximize your luck in the new year. 

    Stick a loaf of bread on a broomstick. Jam the stick in the ground on Christmas Eve and leave it in front of your house overnight. Bad luck won't come your way all year. At a minimum, an impaled loaf of bread might make the magazine salesmen think twice. 

    On Christmas Day, rise before the sun and feed your pets by candlelight. They will be well-behaved throughout the upcoming year. How many stories have been waylaid by barking dogs? This sounds like the surefire cure. 

    It's bad luck to go fishing on Christmas. A writer should be home writing. 

    It is, however, good luck to find a fish scale under your plate. This is easier when your household serves the traditional Czech yuletide meal of fried carp. A fish scale signals luck and prosperity. Traditionalists carry the scale in their wallets throughout the year. If word count is the issue, leave it on your keyboard. (To maximize their holiday luck, Czechs allow the fish to swim in their bathtubs for a few days before preparing it. This may test your mettle or your hygiene.)

    Food matters. Eat an apple at midnight on Christmas Eve for good luck. Or toss down twelve grapes on New Year's Eve. Black-eyed peas, of course, are the down-home good luck standard for the New Year. Wrinkled collard greens are supposed to represent folded money; eating them will improve your chances of success in the upcoming year. Oplatki, thin Polish wafers, are to be passed around and shared with family as a good luck stimulus. The pink one in the package is intended to be eaten by the family pet. Giving them a biscuit is easier than feeding them at midnight. 

    Don't eat lobster on New Year's Eve. Many believe that because lobsters swim backward, consuming them will cause you to regress rather than move forward. 

    But do eat a herring to usher in the new year. The Swedes believe it promotes good luck. The legends don't say whether eating red ones helps a crime writer. 

    Should you eat a raw egg on Christmas morning? Superstition says it will make you strong throughout the year. Medical science, however, thinks it might give you food poisoning. Raw eggs worked wonders for Rocky Balboa. The signals on this practice, therefore, are mixed. You decide. 

    If the egg isn't upsetting enough, a South African tradition is to eat a fried caterpillar on Christmas for extra luck. The logic may be that if you finish off the year with something disgusting, it helps put your other troubles into perspective. 

    Give your cow a present. You'll be rewarded. The earliest practitioners probably anticipated increased milk production from their happy cows. I like to believe that the beasts will reciprocate with writing success. 

    Sneezing and hearing a cricket chirp on Christmas Day will reportedly gift you good luck. These are separate events. No legend requires you to sneeze while hearing a cricket chirp, although this would likely be the grand slam of luck hoarding. 

    In Finland, having a ritual sauna with your family as part of your Christmas Eve celebration is believed to be lucky. When finished, some families leave the sauna slightly warm, making it comfortable for the house elves to visit and leave good fortune. I don't know if it works, but as a practice, it sounds way better than chugging a raw egg. 

    A story completed on New Year's Day will always sell if the first draft was written using Helvetica font. I made up this one, but it's no stranger than eating a fried caterpillar. 

    Writers do have their lucky rituals and talismans. Charles Dickens always slept facing north. Dr. Seuss reportedly kept a secret closet filled with hats. When he felt stuck, he chose one to wear until he became inspired. Do you have any charms you want to confess?

    By whatever means you conjure up success, I wish you safe and happy holidays and a fruitful 2025. 

    Until next year.  

    

Thanksgiving Stuff

 Happy Drinksgiving Eve. 

I learned online that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is known as Drinksgiving. Alcohol sales spike as people bolster themselves to spend the holiday with loved ones. Family bonds may be especially strained this Thanksgiving with the recent political turmoil. Many may want to toss back a bourbon or three before hanging out with Uncle Bob or Second Cousin Sue. That can lead to trouble. I can say with some experience that the need for criminal magistrates would fall precipitously without the job-sustaining combination of family and alcohol.

But if risking jail is not how you choose to spend your holiday, I offer a few Thanksgiving-adjacent reads. These books are from the back of the shelf; nothing is a recent publication. Nonetheless, I hope you'll find them better than incarceration. If the thought of family scares you, sequester yourself away and only read about violence. 

I've identified these books as Thanksgiving-adjacent. They are all set around the holiday, although Thanksgiving is not necessarily central to the story. 

The Wolfe Widow by Victoria Abbott

The annual dinner of the Wolfe Pack is also nearly upon us (December 7th). As mentioned in earlier blogs, several Sleuths have received the Black Orchid Novella Award at this yearly gathering of Nero Wolfe fans. This cozy, The Wolfe Widow sits at the intersection of Thanksgiving and Nero Wolfe.  

In late November, Jordan Bingham knows she has much for which to be grateful. Although she works for a reclusive curmudgeon, Jordan has a suite of rooms and regularly eats delicious meals prepared by her boss's cook. She also gets the opportunity to work with a fantastic collection of rare crime fiction, including first-edition Rex Stout's books. 

Then, she gets fired. 

Who is the mysterious woman who has hijacked her employer? Displaced Jordan must find the answer. 

I'm forever grateful to the Wolfe Pack and am drawn to any work that regularly references Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. 

Thankless in Death by J.D. Robb

This is the thirty-seventh book in the series. The author has her formula down. Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her husband live in a future New York City. They prepare for a Thanksgiving celebration, during which they will host his large Irish family. Eve is still working on her definition of family, and this holiday may overexposure her. 

Unlike other "In Death" books, the reader knows the murderer's identity early in the story. In this cat-and-mouse procedural, we watch Eve balance her life and relationships while seeking to find the killer amid a rising body count.

Jumping into a series at book thirty-seven is challenging, like beginning a television serial in Season Five. Depending on how long you need to stay cloistered from your family, you may want to start with book one. 

Trap for Fools by Amanda Cross

On the Sunday following Thanksgiving, a professor's body is found on the pavement below his open office window. The police suspect suicide. The university administration knows that many people may have wanted the professor dead. Naturally, they ask a literature professor to investigate. (We can only assume that this university didn't offer a degree in criminal justice.) The title is a reference to a line in a Rudyard Kipling poem. You'll find other quotations throughout the book.

The first book in this series was published in 1964. Although the books are dated, I've always liked the Amanda Cross series. The literary drops make me feel smarter. 

Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet 

The setting is a fall festival in Nether Monkslip, England. This book may strain the definition of Thanksgiving-adjacent. The English, after all, have their own name for Thanksgiving. They call it Thursday. 

On the other hand, unlike some of the other books listed, this story centers on an autumnal celebration. The sleuth, Max Tudor, the village's Anglican vicar, investigates the death of the festival's organizer. Although her demise appears accidental, the priest has a host of possible suspects. The priest, by the way, is a former MI-5 agent. Presumably, all the literature professors and rare book assistants were busy solving the other murders on this list. 

This book is only a decade old, so it's a fresh title on this list. The author dropped some funny lines into the text, and when I laughed, the dust on the spine went everywhere. 

Maybe you can recommend some more recent choices. If not, swing by the local secondhand bookshop on your drive home from the liquor store and search for these titles. Happy Drinksgiving, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday, y'all. 

Until next time. 

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. 

Wanderings

    On the day this blog posts, my traveling companion and I will be trekking on what will likely be our last mountain hike of the season. We're seasonal hikers, and the weather will soon shut us down. We'll be far from the internet. I apologize in advance for my failure to reply to any comments.

    We love hiking, particularly in the mountains. Without getting too woo-woo about it all, walking up and down the San Juans or the Sierra Nevadas provides a great way to reset. The Rockies require you to pay attention and to notice things. But they also offer flat meadows and lake trails when your mind can drift. I've blogged previously about how the Alpine Tunnel Trail in Colorado offered the seed for a story that Alfred Hitchcock subsequently published. My story in Murder, Neat also originated on a mountain hike. The trail didn't make it into that story, but the cold beer I was thinking about at the time did.

    A recent visit to nature prompted a few writing guidelines.

1.      1. Persistence is a key. 

We encountered this little tree while walking up Engineer Mountain earlier this year. Looking at it, I wondered how many pinecones fell upon this rock before a seedling found enough dirt to grab hold and take root. The same tree that drops the seeds shields the rock from water and sunlight. The overhanging pine is at once mother and foe to survival. It seems a harsh environment in which to thrive. Yet here we found the little tree chugging along. It would take effort to live on this barren and rocky environment. Maybe a writer could find an inspirational message about sticking to the task by studying this little pine, persevering until the word count is met or the draft is finished, even if she's not feeling particularly profound that day. Or perhaps a hiker would see a flat, shaded spot to rest after chugging up the hill behind you. Whichever one you are, I hope you find value in what this little guy offers.

2.      2. Practice is essential, but clean up after yourself.

It is hard to hit a clay pigeon sailing through the air. Accurate shooting, like good writing, is a craft that needs to be practiced. In this instance, if you look in the background, a careful observer might see a line of small clay targets poised against a log. I’m deducing from the available evidence that someone was teaching their son or daughter the art of shooting here. They began with static targets before advancing their young marksman to hit them in flight.  They left their litter behind, so we knew they’d been practicing.

After I got over my disappointment at having my nature walk despoiled by a responsible/irresponsible gun owner, I considered the lesson. Continual practice is essential to growth in any discipline, including writing or skeet shooting. But writing necessarily includes self-editing. Clean up after yourself. Read your manuscript critically before hitting send. As Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman can attest, I’ve certainly left a few empty shell casings behind on the manuscripts I’ve sent them, but hopefully nothing that looks quite like this.

3.     3. Keep your eye on the weather.

Never open a book with weather, Elmore Leonard famously wrote. But that doesn't mean the elements should be ignored. When hiking, weather can easily be the character that will sneak up and put you at risk or kill you. The elements are an essential character when you’re writing about the out-of-doors. Sometimes, they sneak in on cat’s feet. Other times, the weather heralds its arrival. Smart hikers know that things change when they're outside. Prudent ones study the forecast so that they have some idea about what they might encounter. Hopefully, they will take along some gear to safeguard themselves if the weather doesn't cooperate with the planned schedule. 

Consider the elements when you're writing. They present another obstacle for the protagonist to overcome in pursuit of the goal. More broadly, the weather should remind the hiker/writer about the importance of flexibility. I'm not a big muse guy. I think of writing as a craft practiced with discipline rather than the whisperings of a beautifully voiced Calliope. But I know we've all seen a story go a different direction than the one we originally intended. When immersed in the process, a better-than-the-original idea occasionally emerges. We follow it and end up in a different place than originally planned. To continue the metaphor, with preparation and flexibility, hopefully, we don't end up in a cotton T-shirt huddled under a skinny pine seeking shelter from rain mixed with sleet. Some who wander are lost. 

4.      4. Finally, Be open for secret doors. 

Doors feature prominently in writing tips. Bernard Cornwell says he spends a lot of time putting doors in alleys. Another recommendation is to have your character open a door when a writer is stuck. When you do, something has to happen. The protagonist could go through, a discovery could be observed, or something might emerge. The action occurs at the threshold.

Sometimes, hikers find doors in the wild. You can see this dark maw in the shadows in the center. The planned trek was interrupted when this mine entrance appeared. Seeing it reinforced my thoughts about flexibility. The dramatic tension built. We could go in, or something could emerge.

I'll hasten to add that we didn't enter. We just peeked inside. Unlike fictional characters, we couldn't write our way out of trouble if things went south. An acute case of Hantavirus is not why I go to the mountains.

The lesson I learned from the discovery is that secret doors really do appear. Strange things happen to us in real life. We can tell a credible story about an incredible happening. The challenge is for the writer to sell it.

I hope to see you on the trail with the right gear for the elements, gathering experiences you can spin into stories or, perhaps, seeing the rules for writing stories displayed in the natural surroundings. 

Until next time.

 

Untied

In 2015, I had my first story accepted for publication. I'd seen a posting for the Black Orchid Novella Award. For those unfamiliar, the Black Orchid is a collaboration between The Wolfe Pack, the Official Nero Wolfe Literary Society, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

      The challenge is to write a 15 to 20,000-word story in the deductive style exemplified by the Nero Wolfe series. I submitted a story, and it was selected. In December 2015, The Wolfe Pack etched my name onto the scroll of winners, a list that included fellow SleuthSayers Steve Liskow and Robert Lopresti. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine published "A Meter of Murder" the following summer.

(The next deadline is May 31^st, 2025, for anyone wishing to enter the contest. The details may be found at The Wolfe Pack's website.)

     The winner is feted at a banquet in Manhattan. My traveling companion and I gleefully traveled to New York City for the dinner. The evening was a clubby affair with song competitions and toasts dedicated to the cast of characters inhabiting Rex Stout's fictional universe. An erudite speaker talked about the author's place in the mystery genre surrounded by a roomful of well-dressed aficionados.

     I was an almost-published author sitting as a guest of honor at a banquet in the literary capital of the United States. I exuded bonhomie and urbanity.

      I might easily have said that I felt smart and happy. Banqueted literary sophisticates, however, allow words like bonhomie to drop effortlessly from our lips. They are what set us apart.

      Shortly after my triumphal return to Fort Worth, I received a compliment from a woman who had attended the dinner. She emailed me to say she'd read and enjoyed the story. In particular, she praised the denouement.

      Since our conversation was via email, I had the opportunity to look up denouement before I replied. I was pretty sure I knew what she meant; the context clues revealed that. But as a recently banqueted, budding literary sophisticate, it was not a word I'd ever used, so I wanted to double-check.

      In the legal profession, we tend to say final argument or summation. I knew those terms. I also had a smattering of impressive-sounding legal-Latin phrases at my tongue's command. Literary words, however, I was still picking up one at a time.

      Before replying, I looked up denouement's definition and confirmed I understood the meaning. I also checked the pronunciation guide. After a few quick taps into my search engine, I quickly and accurately wrote her back, thanking her for her kind words. I'm confident my reply dripped literary panache.

      For the scant few who might also have missed English class that day, denouement is an elegant literary term used to describe the final part of a story. The denouement is the place in the tale where the details are wrapped up, where the various threads of the plot are drawn together and resolved. Our English word was first borrowed in the 18th Century from a French term for "untying." The guides to proper pronunciation taught me to say Dey-noo-mahn, although the internet authorities have differing views on how much emphasis to place on that final N. Everyone agrees that the T gets kicked to the curb.

      It's not often that you can accurately say when you learned a word. I can pinpoint this one. My path to knowledge began on the first Saturday in December 2015.

      When I've had a brief run of publications or something else has occurred to make me think I'm all literary, I'll remember that story. Before I pull out the herringbone jacket with the leather elbow patches and begin holding forth, I remind myself of how I learned this stock literary term late in the game. It makes me remember how much more I still need to know about this writing business. The lesson, undoubtedly, has saved me from embarrassment. (Summertime in Fort Worth is way too hot for tweed anyway.) Recalling the story helps me reset my ego. The memory proves less bruising than opening the folder containing all my recent rejection emails.

      The current issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine contains my story, "The Denouement of a Most Curious Case." And there you have the story's origin. The tale might have easily been "The Resolution of a Most Curious Case" or "The Solution to a Most Curious Case." But for me, it had to be Denouement.

      The word simultaneously reminds me of a success and a failure. It conjures up an image of an education continually in progress. The story began with an idea about writing a denouement, and the tale piled up around it. Starting with "A Meter of Murder," I've always been thrilled when the folks at Alfred Hitchcock include one of my stories. I'm again honored that they chose to publish this one.

      And since Denouement is printed rather than spoken, I don't have to reveal how much emphasis I put on the final N.

       Until next time.

August 13th, A Thrilling Day

My phone, a reliably clever device, routinely tells me about newsworthy events that I should probably know happened that day.

            August 13^th has been monumental in shaping world affairs. If you're a fan of political thrillers, it should be a red circle day.

            Barbed Wire Sunday occurred on this date in 1961. Beginning at midnight, soldiers from the East German military arrived at critical points along the line separating East and West Berlin. They quickly unloaded barbed wire and concrete and began erecting the barrier that became the Berlin Wall. The government deemed the move necessary to stem the brain drain and hemorrhage of the workforce from communist East Berlin to the West. The East German secret police, the Stasi, blocked intersections between the sectors of the divided city. 

            Where would the Cold War political thriller be without referencing Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known crossing point between the city's two halves? Here, Soviet and American tanks squared off 100 yards apart in a showdown that brought the two sides perilously close to war. Prisoner exchanges occurred, and daring escapes were attempted at the thin space separating the two superpowers.

GZen, Creative Commons

Roger Moore, as James Bond, crossed through Checkpoint Charlie in Octopussy. Tom Hanks surveyed the wall in Bridge of Spies. Illya Kuryakin was frustrated in his attempts to rundown Napoleon Solo as he extracted Gaby to the West in The Man from UNCLE (the movie). Countless books have used the wall as a physical challenge or metaphor. And it all started on this date.

            The Manhattan Project got underway on this date in 1942. The research and development program that culminated in the atomic bomb was initially labeled the Development of Substitute Materials. The development project was run by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Engineering districts routinely took the name of the city where they were located. The Development of Substitute Materials had temporary offices on Broadway. Thus, they became the Manhattan District. The term “Manhattan” gradually substituted for the name of the atomic project. Always concerned about spies, Manhattan was believed to attract less attention and reveal less about the nature of the bomb's development.

            The Manhattan District was officially created on August 13^th under orders signed by Major General Eugene Reybold.

            The movie Oppenheimer most recently explored the Manhattan Project. Since the project's creation, the name has become synonymous with any apocalyptic device. Biological weapons and crippling computer viruses have all been labeled the Manhattan Project. The program established a model for government-sponsored, project-specific, big science. The world may be in more jeopardy, but the thriller writer has had an efficient tool for warning the reader about a developing doomsday mechanism since August 13^th, 1942.

            German-born Klaus Fuchs was a theoretical physicist. As part of the Manhattan Project team, he worked on developing the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. During his work, Fuchs spied on the project for the Soviet Union. After the war, he moved to the United Kingdom and continued his weapons research. In January 1950, he confessed to passing atomic information to the Soviets. Upon his release from a British prison in 1959, Fuchs migrated to East Germany. There, he became the deputy director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Physics. His work undoubtedly took him to numerous meetings in East Berlin, within easy walking distance of the wall.

            And thus, we're brought full circle.

            Fidel Castro and Alfred Hitchcock were both born on this date. Both impacted thrillers in differing ways. Finally, a shout out to William Caxton, who was also born on this date in 1422. He set up the first printing press in England. His first publication is believed to be an edition of The Canterbury Tales. 

Ilgar Jafarov, CC

            Where would writers be without publishers?

            Until next time.

            Postscript:

            In my last blog, I discussed the upcoming Olympics and made fun of rhythmic gymnastics. I've watched some of the individual and team competitions. While I'm still unclear on the ribbon, the routines performed with the ball and, later, the hoop grabbed my attention. I'd like to offer a sincere apology to all rhythmic gymnastics fans and athletes.

Olympic Ode

 The Olympic Games are nearly upon us. At my household, we're pulling out the American flags and getting geared up.

            We love to watch the Olympics. There are a tremendous number of sports that we wouldn’t concern ourselves with if they were televised every week. (I've yet to catch the professional cornhole league.) But make it an international competition, pit the USA against the rest of the world, and only show the sport for two weeks every four years; my traveling companion and I get totally sucked into sports from archery to wrestling. (Okay, not rhythmic gymnastics, but almost everything else. I’ve never gotten the thing with the ribbons.)

            One of the things we enjoy best is the opportunity to become instant experts on sports that are not regularly watched in the United States. We'll tune in to the gymnastics events, have Tim Daggett give us a five-minute tutorial on women’s uneven bars, and we will confidently evaluate the verticality of the athlete's handstand and the degree of leg separation during her transition moves.

            We can learn a lot in a short period of time.

            This past May, the New York Times ran an article in preparation for the upcoming Olympics. The brief article was fascinating to read. I learned that the modern games have not always been exclusively about sports. For many years, the Olympics awarded medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature, in addition to those for athletic prowess.

            Baron Pierre do Coubertin, the founder of the modern games, envisioned artistic competitions as an essential part of the Olympics. Richard Stanton, the author of The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions, writes that Coubertin was “raised and educated classically, and he was particularly impressed with the idea of what it meant to be a true Olympian—someone who was not only athletic but skilled in music and literature."

            The Baron could not convince the earliest local Olympic organizers that artistic competitions were necessary. In the 1912 Stockholm Games, however, he managed to make the arts part of the Olympics. As noted, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature, The Pentathlon of the Muses, were the artistic events.  Every submitted work had to be inspired by the idea of sport. 33 artists entered, and a gold medal was awarded for each category. Afraid that the Olympics would not get enough entrants, Coubertin submitted a poem, "Ode to Sport," under an assumed name. He took home the gold.

            An American, Walter Winans, won the first-ever gold medal for sculpture. The winning bronze statue, An American Trotter, showed a bronze horse pulling a chariot. His gold medal in the sculpture event went alongside the silver medal he earned in sharpshooting. (He'd also won the gold medal in shooting in 1908.)

            The Olympics were canceled in 1916 during World War I. Following the war, the games did not really get going full speed until 1924 in Paris. Today, no one is quite sure where all the panels of the winning painting, a triptych by Jean Jacoby of Luxembourg, are located. (Two thirds are stored in the archives of the Olympic headquarters.) The silver medal work, The Liffey Swim, an oil painting by Jack Butler Yeats (William's brother), hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

            From 1912 to 1952, 151 medals were awarded for the arts. The math doesn't exactly work. In some years, not all the medals were awarded if the jury did not find the submitted pieces worthy. In the 1928 Amsterdam games, the literature category was subdivided into lyric, dramatic, and epic categories. They were later consolidated back into one category and then split apart again. 

Public Domain

            Following World War 2, the Olympics returned. However, the climate for including the arts had changed. There was a renewed emphasis on amateurism. Because artists live by selling their work and since winning an Olympic medal might enhance marketability, purists increasingly viewed the art competitions with skepticism. Avery Brundage, the president of the International Olympic Committee, led the campaign to have the arts removed. Curiously, Brundage had submitted a piece of literature to the 1932 games and earned an honorable mention.

            As the Olympic sporting events blossomed, the artistic contests waned. They were not compatible with television. Judging artistic competitions always involves subjectivity. Unlike the 100-meter dash, there may not be a clear winner. Facing these problems, the International Olympic Committee voted to end competitions within the Pentathlon of the Muses. The 151 medals given out were officially stricken from the Olympic record. Today, when a country's medal count is displayed, the artistic awards are not included.

            But what if the artistic competitions were still around?   

            1924 represented the high water mark for the Olympic art competitions. On the 100^th anniversary, the games return to Paris. It is an apt time to remember the old events and, as a thought exercise, to reimagine them.

As mentioned above, the literature category showed elasticity in the Olympic competitions. Organizers subdivided the category at will. If the competition included the mystery genre, who would slip on the Ralph Lauren-designed uniform and represent the United States? Great Britain? The Nordic countries? Japan? Would your Dream Team consist of established heavyweights, or would you be bold and pin your nation's hopes on a fresh voice? 

Consider it while you dig out your national flag and prepare for the opening ceremonies.

(I'll be traveling on the day this posts. If you comment, I may be delayed in responding.)

Until next time.   

A Misheard Announcement

 Some months back, I reported in this blog that I had retired from my day job as a criminal magistrate. Those golden years lasted for days.

            I’ve returned to meeting jail inmates, albeit on a part-time basis. The staff calls me on an emergency basis to plug the holes that sometimes occur in any small office—illnesses, vacations, etc. I'm happy to help. I enjoy the work, and the occasional magistrate session keeps my bar card from getting dusty.

            They also allow me to read that collection of typos and misunderstoods that crop up occasionally in police reports. Often, these mistakes happen when a patrol officer in the field calls in their report using the department’s voice-to-text system. Others arise when line personnel use a word and, perhaps, aren't entirely clear on the definition. In either case, the results can be entertaining.

            What follows are a few of the recent examples of reporting errors. Besides a bit of fun, I hope they remind writers and citizens that police officers are human. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. Rarely are the errors cataclysmic breaches or deliberate violations of constitutional norms. More commonly, they are the errors we all make. A failure to proofread carefully or the assumption that what we actually said was what we intended to say. Anyone who has ever dictated a text message understands. We want our police officers to be flesh and blood people so that they might empathize with the individuals they encounter. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it when that humanity is displayed.

            “Behind the driver’s seat, I located a bottle of permanent schnapps.”

J.H. Henkes, Creative Commons.

        The sentence stopped me when I saw it in a police report. I had a vision of a Harry Potter-like, never emptying liquor bottle. If you have a bottle of permanent schnapps, don’t hop on a broom or behind the wheel of a car. Cast a spell for a Lyft.

            “The driver appeared to have delighted eyes.”

            I believe that the officer who called in a report intended to say that the allegedly impaired driver had the enlarged pupils of someone with dilated eyes. The voice-to-text knew better. Maybe Alexa or Siri or whatever system handled the transcription hoped that since the rest of the driver’s body was going to jail, at least his eyes might be happy.

            “I was marinating my right leg across his back.”

            Usually, given enough time, I can discern what the officer intended to say--peppermint schnapps, dilated eyes—before voice-to-text seized control. Here, I still don't have a clue. Perhaps we can make this one a contest. The best answer to the question of what the officer was trying to do during this arrest wins.

            Although, imagining this visual continues to make me smile.

            “The suspect possessed a machine gun conversation device.”

            Although I suspect that the police found the defendant in possession of a conversion device, the sentence as written begs the question. What conversation does one really need to have with their machine gun except possibly, "Don't point that at me, please" or "Put that down now!" Everything else seems useless chatter.

            “He knows he is accomplished.”

            This one may not be immediately as funny as some of the others. Hence, I buried it in the middle. The officer set out facts leading her to conclude that the defendant had sufficient intentional involvement in the crime to be guilty as an accomplice. But, perhaps, the defendant also had a healthy sense of self-esteem. He was an accomplished accomplice. That's good. In court, prosecutors get paid to say bad things about a defendant. Without a healthy ego, the defendant's psyche might be bruised.

            And, speaking of…

            “A bruise farm on her arm.”

            Likely, the officer dictated that a bruise began forming on her arm. In the relationships-as-punching-bags world of domestic violence, however, the phrase as electronically adjusted might be accurate. On some days, the bruising seems to sprout across a field of victims.

            Finally, my favorite for this collection.  

            The following sentence offers a potent lesson on the dangers of misusing homophones. Think about your interpretation and your emotional reaction to the sentence as reported and the sentence as intended.

            “The gun was concealed in his waste.”

            “The gun was concealed in his waist.”

            The second sentence (the intended one) offers a hint of danger, the real-life work-a-day world of the beat cop. The first offers a visual that has stayed with me as I envisioned the grumbling patrol officer tasked with collecting that bit of evidence. Likely, that duty would fall to the rookie officer. In police work, as in other jobs, waste slides downhill.

            I hope your eyes have been delighted to review the list of typos and misheards. If not, toss the blog in the waist basket.

            (I’ll be traveling on the day this posts. If you have an answer to what the officer meant by his marinating leg, I’ll likely be slow in responding to you.)

            Until next time. 

Gunsmoked

     The television western, Gunsmoke, was a staple at my childhood home. Weekly, we watched Marshal Matt Dillon face down an outlaw during the opening scene. To a heavy and threatening drumbeat, the marshal stepped out onto the main street of Dodge City, Kansas. The camera focused on the revolver hanging low on his hip, the sheriff's right hand held steadily above the pistol grip. The music built as the camera panned to show the sheriff striding determinedly and wordlessly forward. His opponent, the outlaw dressed in black, entered the street from the opposite side. The two men squared to face one another. The music built to a crescendo. When they drew pistols, the camera angle shifted. Through the cloud of white smoke, we watched the grim-faced sheriff. We never saw the outlaw fall, but we knew the marshal had outdrawn his opponent. As the camera held the sheriff's world-weary expression, the announcer solemnly intoned, "Gunsmoke, starring James Arness as Matt Dillon." 

Marshal Matt Dillon, Gunsmoke
© CBS Television, public domain

    CBS Chairman William Paley, reportedly was a great fan of Raymond Chandler. Beginning with the radio show, ;Gunsmoke, and later with the television adaptation, he wanted to create a series centered on the "Philip Marlowe of the old West." The opening scene, with the stylized code duelo showdown, set a tone. It cemented the single combat gunfight in the middle of the town's dusty street as a trope of the American West.

    Such gunfights, however, rarely occurred. 

    The West had its share of violence, typical for a frontier. But the formality of the single combat duel was primarily the product of dime novelists and film directors. 

    There were, of course, exceptions. 

    In 1865, Wild Bill Hickok squared off with Davis Tutt in Springfield, Missouri. The two quarreled over gambling. To secure a debt, Tutt took a prized watch belonging to Hickok. Tutt prominently wore the watch, embarrassing Hickok. Later, the two men advanced on one another. Tutt reportedly drew first, fired wildly, and missed. Hickok shot more steadily and hit Tutt in the chest. History does not record whether the watch was injured. Tutt, however, died. 

    In his subsequent trial, a jury acquitted Hickok of manslaughter. In 1867, a story describing the event appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The exaggerated tale helped form the myth about Wild Bill Hickok and the single combat duel. Today, readers can get the details on the official Springfield, Missouri website.

    On March 9th, 1877, Jim Levy (sometimes Leavy) and Charlie Harrison argued over a game of cards in Cheyenne, Wyoming's Shingle and Locke's saloon. Levy challenged Harrison to "take it outside." There, as Bat Masterson, the western lawman, gunfighter, and writer, described the event, Harrison drew quickly. He fired five shots. Levy took his time and needed only one. (Although he only required one, reportedly Levy stood over the downed Harrison and shot him a second time in the stomach. This fact tampers with the honorable gunfighter trope but, perhaps, more accurately portrays the times.) Masterson used the Levy/Harrison battle to illustrate the importance of a gunfighter's need to remain calm and take one's time. In 1907, Masterson wrote in Human Life magazine:

    That Harrison was as game a man as Levy could not be doubted; that he could shoot much faster, he had given ample proof, but under extraordinary conditions he had shown that he lacked deliberation and lost his life in consequence.

    My adopted town, Fort Worth, also helped create the myth of the Western gunfight. Although the facts bear little resemblance to the stylized book or movie version.

    Longhair Jim Courtright had been the first marshal of Fort Worth. He was tasked with keeping the peace in Hell's Half Acre. The murder rate plummeted on his watch. He also, however, likely used his badge and gun to extort money from saloon owners as part of a protection racket. Following an election defeat in 1879, he moved to New Mexico. There, a dispute over land and cattle led to an accusation of murder against Courtright. There were, it seems, lingering questions about whether Courtright's involvement in the shooting had been as law enforcement or criminal participant. He returned to Fort Worth, a place far enough removed from New Mexico to avoid extradition. In 1884, he established a private detective office here. Besides investigative services, the office resumed operations as a protection racket. 

    Luke Short, another man experienced with guns, worked as the manager of the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth. Short refused Courtright's offers of protection. Allowing business owners to decline, however, would be bad for the detective's business. On February 8th, 1887, a drunk Courtright called out Luke Short. Together, they walked down the street on Fort Worth's north side as they attempted to settle their disagreement. Outside a local brothel, the negotiation apparently reached an impasse. The two men stood three to four feet apart. Courtright drew his gun. Short, however, fired first, and his bullet tore off Courtright's thumb. While Longhair Jim Courtright attempted to switch his weapon to his other hand, Short fired again. His subsequent shots killed Courtright, the former lawman, detective, and extortionist.

    Luke Short was investigated for the shooting. The charges were subsequently dismissed. The Courtright/Short gunfight is one of the legends of Fort Worth. This town's stories are part of why I like living here. When the local chapter of Sisters in Crime began compiling an anthology, Notorious in North Texas, I used this tale as my jumping-off point. This week, we celebrate the release of that anthology. Many of the fine authors who contributed tales set their stories in Dallas. But I wanted to put my story here in Fort Worth, where the West begins.

---

(Thanks to Legends of America for the details about the gunfights.)

    Until next time.

Answering the Call

How do you approach the challenge when writing to a call?

Is a theme a fence or a gate? Does it constrain writing, limiting where the author's imagination might go? Or does it open opportunities, spurring the writer to take prose in a direction they might not have considered going without the prompt? 

My answer probably depends on whether I like the prompt. 

Private Dicks and Disco Balls, an anthology of 1970s private eye stories edited by fellow SleuthSayer, Michael Bracken, was released earlier this month. I'm honored that Michael included a story of mine, "The Kratz Gambit," within the pages. 

I like writing stories set in the past. Typically, however, my historicals occur earlier. The opportunity to put a story in a decade I lived through poked me to try something a little different. 

The 1970s are the first decade I remember. I was around for much of the swinging '60s, but for me, that meant playground swings and tires suspended from ropes tied to tree limbs. I wasn't old enough to have a feel for much of the vibe of that decade. 

But for a '70s anthology, I got totally stoked. I dusted off my good threads, the powder blue leisure suit, tied on my puka shells, slapped in an 8-track tape and fired up my Smith Corona. Seriously, I didn't do any of those things. The suit doesn't fit anymore and might be life-threatening if worn around an open flame. I no longer own the necklace, the typewriter, or the sound machine. I did, however, reminisce about the decade so that I might draw from my experiences. 

The terms of the call were straightforward. Michael sought a story featuring a working private eye and incorporating a significant event from the decade. 

As with any themed anthology, the touchstone must be the call. Which happening from the decade caught my attention? My mind ticked off possibilities. The Vietnam War, Watergate, and Elvis's death presented possibilities.  

I skipped the center-of-the-plate events. Although I needed to incorporate something significant, the decade's episode I chose must make my story unique. I wanted to stand out in the crowd. I think it's a good rule for answering a call. Where might a writer go that, while remaining true to the ask, presents a different take? Avoid the obvious choices and pass on the low-hanging fruit. The editor, finicky guy that he is, would likely only accept one Watergate story. I sought something at the margins. 

I settled on the chess match between Bobby Fischer of the United States and the Soviet grandmaster, Boris Spassky. The 1972 chess match became nightly news. The games captured national attention. Television stations across America had chess nerds demonstrating the moves on oversized boards. (Spoiler alert: the American beat the Ruskie.)

The Fischer/Spassky matches not only presented an event I thought few writers would tackle, but the games were also personally significant. My friends and I followed this micro battle between the world's two superpowers. We learned to play chess. In my case, I learned to play badly, but at least I knew how the pieces moved so that we could follow what the man on television described. 

The chess metaphor--move and countermove with one player trying to outwit another--worked great for a mystery story. But as I prepared to write my story, the events behind the tale conjured up a memory. Although my friends and I aren't reflected in "The Kratz Gambit, " I had a personal connection. Thus, my second suggestion for writing to a themed anthology. Find that personal piece. What's that thing you bring that no one else can or might? 

When plotting, I often engage in random internet searches. Into a search engine, I type words tangentially related to my story. I look to see what connections the internet might make. Random searches might open a possible direction for the tale. An article might shut down something I previously believed to be accurate. Some possibilities open while others close--gates and fences. Marry your experience to the research. 

My third thought about writing for a themed anthology should be obvious. Give the editor what they are seeking. I hit the required word count and followed all the submission rules. Although I read the titular "Disco Balls" as a cultural reference rather than a specific request for a music-themed story, I sprinkled in song titles from the period. I wanted to recognize my editor's interest in music. The songs also helped tie the story to 1972.

The advice may sound basic: pay attention to the theme and give the editor a story that fits the call and word count. But look at the theme's margins and incorporate personal experience supported by a bit of research. A writer can craft a story that will hopefully surprise the editor and secure a place in the anthology. The plan worked with "The Kratz Gambit." I'm glad Michael liked it. I hope the readers do, too. 

Until next time.