Kenneth Wishnia is no mean author of mysteries, but he also teaches English at Suffolk County Community College in New York. I am delighted that this semester one of his classes is using as a textbook the anthology I edited, Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy.
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking to his class via zoom. They asked a lot of great questions and - how wonderful! - had clearly read the material.
But I want to talk about one point that came up. Someone asked which authors had influenced me and that led to me rambling about Donald E. Westlake and how terrible the movies based on his books had turned out.
Ken spoke up in defense of The Hot Rock, which I admit is the best of them, but that got me trying to think of a first-class movie comedy based on a humorous novel. At first I couldn't come up with any. Eventually I remembered some and realized how few of the novels in question I had read. So I am going to list what I came up with and invite you to add more.
CATEGORY 1: Read the book and seen the movie.
The Princess Bride. One of my favorite movies, and it is based on a great book. Perhaps not surpisingly the screenplay was written by the author of the book, William Goldman. In As You Wish by Cary Elwes (who played Westley) we learned that on the first day of production they had to stop filming because the sound man was picking up strange noises. It turned out that Goldman was at the far end of the set praying out loud that director Rob Reiner did not ruin his masterpiece. Happily his prayer was granted.
American Fiction. Based on the novel Exposure by Percival Everett. This is a case where I liked the movie better than the book, possibly because I saw the movie first. Both are delightful.
Confess Fletch. Based on Gregory Macdonald's novel. Don't get me started on the more successful Chevy Chase movie Fletch, because I despise it.
Thank You For Smoking, based on the very funny book by Christopher Buckley.
CATEGORY 2: Seen the movie but haven't read the book.
The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Based on Nathaniel Benchley's The Off-Islanders. By the way, his father was Robert Benchley and his nephew was Peter Benchley. Quite a talented family.
Bananas. "Elements" of the plot are from Richard P. Powell's novel Don Quixote U.S.A.
M*A*S*H. Based on the novel by Richard Hooker, alias Hiester Richard Hornberger, Jr. and W.C. Heinz. HRH really had been a surgeon in Korea.
Mister Roberts. Based on the novel by Thomas Heggen. Heggen's success ruined him. He couldn't figure out how to write a second book and drowned in a bathtub at age 30 with a heavy dose of barbiturates.
The Devil Wears Prada, based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger.
About a Boy, based on the novel by Nick Hornby.
No Time For Sergeants, based on a play by Ira Levin, based on the novel by Mac Hyman.
Our Man in Havana. Graham Greene wrote the screenplay, based on his own novel. A few years ago Christopher Hull wrote Our Man Down In Havana: The Story Behind Graham Greene's Cold War Spy Novel. It's interesting but a more accurate subtitle would be: Graham Greene's Experiences in Cuba.
Kind Hearts and Coronets. "Loosely based" on Roy Horniman's 1907 novel, Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal.
Bridget Jones' Diary, based on the novel by Helen Fielding.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Remembered this one at the last moment! Shane Black had apparently written most of the script when he decided it needed to be a crime story. He took the detective elements from Brett Halliday's Bodies Are Where You Find Them and wrote/directed a very funny flick.
CATEGORY 3: Haven't read the book or seen the movie, but I've heard they are good things bout both..
Clueless. A California high school girl's attempts at good deeds backfire. Based on Emma, the only Jane Austen novel I could not get through.
Breakfast at Tiffany's. Based on Truman Capote's novella.
Election. Based on the novel by Tom Perrotta.
Crazy Rich Asians, based on the novel by Kevin Kwan.
Mrs. Doubtfire, based on Madame Doubtfire, byAnne Fine.
So, what am I missing? I'm sure you will mention some that make me bang my head in frustration for not thinking of them Remember, it has to be a good comedy based on a novel.
This is a modified reprint of a column from January 2019. While it is geared toward writers, I think the information could be helpful toward meeting most any goal.
I planned to title this column The Power of Persistence. It seemed perfect for January, when so many
people make resolutions for the new year. But then I thought, maybe "tenacity" would be a better word than
"persistence." I had always treated
the words as synonyms, but are they? Maybe, I thought, I
should check. It turns out there's an important difference
between the two words.
Persistence means trying repeatedly to reach a goal through the same
method, figuring eventually you'll succeed. Tenacity means trying to
reach a goal through varying methods, learning from each failure and
trying different approaches. For anyone striving to achieve a goal, tenacity
may be the better approach. How
does this apply to writing? First, let's talk about getting writing
done. Everyone has their own method. Some people write every morning
before daybreak. Others write at night. Some people write
for a set number of hours each day. Others write as long as
it takes to meet a daily quota. Some people plot out what they're going
to write. Others write by the seat of their pants.
It doesn't matter
what your approach is, as long as it works for you. So, does it? Are you getting enough writing done?
Enough revision done? Are you making the best use of your time?
I have a friend (and editing client) who used to be a pantser. But she
found that after finishing every draft, she had so many loose ends to
address and problems to fix, it took her much longer to revise than
she'd like. So she started forcing herself to plot before she began
writing each book. Not detailed outlines, but she figures out who kills
whom, how, and why, what her subplot will be (again, just the basics),
and what her theme is. These changes in her approach have enabled her to
be so much more productive. She writes faster now, and she needs less
time for revision. That's tenacity in action.
Moving on to a finished product, how do you react to rejection? If you
have a rejected short story, for instance, after you curse the
universe, do you find another venue and send that story out immediately?
Or do you reread it and look for ways to improve it? If a story
has been rejected several times (there's no shame here; we've all been
there), do you keep sending it out anyway or do you put it in a drawer to let
it cool off for a few months or until the market has
changed or your skills have improved?
If sending a story out a few times without revising after each rejection
usually results in a sale for you, great. Then your persistence works,
and it means you have more time for other projects. But if you find yourself sending a story out a dozen times without success,
then perhaps you should consider a new approach. After a story is
rejected, say, three times, maybe you should give it a hard look and see
how it can be changed. Maybe you should let it sit in a drawer for a
while so when you review it, you'll have a fresh take.
And if you're getting a lot of rejections, perhaps it's time to
re-evaluate your markets or what you write. I know some writers who
started their careers writing science fiction, but it turned out that
they were better suited to writing mysteries. Once they let their
true selves out on the page, they started making sales. I know a writer
who's been working on a novel for years, but she
can't seem to finish it. Yet she's had a lot of success with short
stories. If she were to decide to only write short stories and let the
novel lie fallow, that wouldn't be a failure; it would be tenacity in
action: finding what works for her.
I was about to write that the one thing you shouldn't do is give up, but
there might be value in letting go. If your goal is to write a novel or
short story but you never seem to finish your project, and if the mere
thought of working on it feels like drudgery instead of joy, then maybe
being a professional writer isn't for you. There's no shame in that. Not
every person is suited to every task.
When I was a kid I loved
swimming, but I was never going to make a swim team. I wasn't fast
enough. Maybe with a lot of practice and other changes I could have
gotten there, but I didn't want to take those steps. And that's okay. I
enjoyed swimming for the fun of it, and that was enough for me. Maybe
writing for yourself, without the pressure of getting to write "The
End," is what gives you joy. If so, more power to you. And maybe it
turns out you don't want to finish that book or story you started
writing. That's okay too, even if you did tell everyone that you were
writing it. You're allowed to try things and stop if it turns out they
aren't the right fit for you.
But if you believe writing is the right fit, yet you aren't as
productive as you'd like, or your sales aren't as good as you
want them to be, then be tenacious. Evaluate your approaches to getting
writing done, to editing your work, to seeking publication.
Maybe you
need to revise how you're doing things. Are you writing in the morning
but are more alert in the evening? Change when you write. Is your work
typically ready to be sent out into the world as soon as you finish? If
you get a lot of rejections, maybe it's not. Maybe you need to force
yourself to let your work sit for a while after you finish, so you can
review it again with fresh eyes before you start submitting. Do you have
a contract, but your books aren't selling as well as you'd like?
Perhaps you should find someone you trust who can try to help you
improve.
No matter how successful you are, there's always something new
to learn. The key is to figure out what works for you and keep doing it,
and also figure out what isn't working for you and change it.
That, my fellow writers, is my advice for you. Be tenacious. Evaluate
what you want, and evaluate your methods for getting there. If your
methods aren't working, change them. If in six months your new
methods aren't working, change them again. Work hard. Work smart. And be
sure to enjoy yourself along the way, because if you're not enjoying
writing, why bother doing it?
***
And
now a friendly reminder: I'm honored to have two short stories nominated this year for the Agatha Award, "A Matter of Trust" from the anthology Three Strikes--You're Dead! and "The Postman Always Flirts Twice" from the anthology Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy. They, as well as the three other Agatha-nominated stories, can be read online for free. Click here to go to the Malice Domestic website and scroll down to the short story titles. Each one is a link to a pdf of that story.
Malice Domestic attendees will be able to vote for the Agatha winners during the convention next month, so this is a great time to sit down with a cup of tea and read all the nominated stories. Enjoy!
Victim statements, a presentation of the impact of a crime during a judicial proceeding, became common here late in the 20th century, although other cultures have had similar and earlier versions. One of the more flamboyant examples in art occurs in the latter stages of the trial in Rashomon, the great Kurosawa film about the murder of a traveler and the rape of his wife.
Unable to determine whether the truth lies with the accused or the wife, the court enlists a medium to question the spirit of the dead man. Unsurprisingly, the ghost's version of a victim statement is also biased, yet this is fair enough, given that the other two have presented their own self-serving narratives.
I began thinking about victim statements while reading Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars. It has some of the same characters as his highly praised There There, but ranges back in time to the later stages of the Indian Wars and the remote ancestors of characters like Lony and Orvid Red Feather.
The novel begins with the ghastly massacre at Sand Creek, November 1864, when members of the Third Colorado Cavalry under Colonel John Chivington attacked a Cheyenne and Arapahoe village, killing and mutilating anywhere from a couple of hundred to as many as 600 people, mostly women and children.
The attack was so egregious that several of Chivington's officers had refused to participate, and one testified later at a Congressional hearing highly critical of the Colonel. None of this, however, changed the situation on the Plains. Treaties continued to be made and broken, the buffalo, and even native ponies, continued to be slaughtered, and Cheyenne and Arapahoe land continued to shrink.
Were the plains tribes then doomed to utter extinction by government policy? Not quite. There was an alternative that two of the Wandering Stars Sand Creek survivors wind up experiencing. Taken into US military custody and imprisoned in an old fort in Florida, they undergo the regimen of English language education, military drill, and Christianization that would later be the pattern for the now notorious Indian Schools.
Their new non-Native names are Jude Star and Victor Bear Shield. They are the male progenitors of the subsequent characters, and as Orange is neither an historian nor a lawyer, their victim statement is in the form of a novel, made up of their stories and the testimony of their descendants, male and female, right down to the twenty-teens.
Orange is an excellent writer, and many of the short narratives are gripping, particularly the historic accounts that will be new to many readers. What is striking is that it is not the brutal events (and Star and Bear Shield see and experience a lot) that cause their families the worst damage but rather the cultural losses. Besides the near extermination of the buffalo, the key animal in the whole plains ecology and in the Cheyenne economy, these included the loss of ancestral languages, religion, art, diet, even clothing and hairstyles.
The re-education program that intended to "kill the Indian, save the man" was in some ways more devastating that any battle, because it took away identity and substituted something coerced, something the descendants know is not authentic. Characters like Opal Viola Bear Shield and Orvil and Jacquie Red Feather know that they are missing something vital, and without even the residue of the old ways that sustain Jude Star and Victor Bear Shield, they fill up the void with alcohol and drugs.
Tommy Orange
The later sections of the novel deal with their struggles with addiction, and more interestingly, how they begin to piece together the remnants of the old culture and adapt what in contemporary society can be useful and meaningful. This is not an easy task. For some, while even the identity of their original tribe is lost, they still remain "other" in the society. Yet they persist. Wandering Stars serves not just as a literary victim statement, but as a testament to survival.
Millions of years ago, Mother Nature bit into the upper left corner of Indiana. That chomp became the lower tip of Lake Michigan, a salt-free inland sea with waves and tides. In some places, shores are rocky, but great swaths of sand dunes form the Indiana Dunes State Park and the Indiana Dunes National Park. Generations of families camp and picnic, sunbathe and swim, seek solitude, sail and pedal and paddle, and play in the sand along the lake. In the distance lie islands where Scouts pitch tents and couples find privacy.
That’s where my then newish girlfriend Candy (real name just as sugary) and friends chose to vacation. She was invited by her cousin and cousin’s boyfriend, Nan and Dan. There on an extended August weekend, they’d boat and ski among the islands where they’d sleep for the night.
The plans proved frustrating to me. I mentioned I had a work commitment Friday through Sunday, but I was free other weekends. Nope, said Dan, that’s the date they’d reserved for motorboat rental. Well, damn.
Candy and I had been tacitly exclusive for six weeks. Neither of us were mature enough for marriage material, but she was cute, cuddly, and fun. Her mother liked me and mistook my workaholism for gravitas.
Her eyes limpid, Candy said, “Don’t worry baby. I’ll phone you every evening.”
“No, you can’t,” said Dan. “We’ll be out of range of cell phone towers.”
Candy departed with tears and a big, sloppy kiss. My nape twinged. I felt uneasy.
That weekend, I took hostage an oversized computer and buried myself in work– software that would be shipped to Böblingen, Germany on Monday. I survived on Shandong fish, way too many litres of cola, and not much sleep.
At six Sunday evening, Candy called. “I’m dying for pizza. Can you pick up on your way? I’ll unlatch the door and hop in the shower.”
She stepped out of the bath the moment I arrived. Her tan looked good and she blew a kiss as she towelled off. “Photos on the coffee table,” she said.
I leafed through them. Picture of their packed SUV. Candy and Nan in bikinis, Dan in those long, odd-looking, misnamed shorts. Picture of the boat, picture of the largest picnic basket I’d ever seen. A case of beer, bottle of cheap wine. Shot of Candy struggling on waterskis and another of Nan nailing it. Nan topless. Candy topless.
Okaaay, I’d lived on South Beach, tops optional. I visited piscines (swimming pools) in France, tops optional. I’d strolled through nude gardens in München, clothing optional. Like most guys, I want my girl to be joyful and playful with me, not other dudes, but… We weren’t engaged, so I wouldn’t get worked up.
Next, photo of an island and its beach. Picture of a campfire that wouldn’t light. Shot of Candy, Dan, and Nan standing in the boat, arms around one another’s waists, the three of them… topless. I took a deep breath and turned to a photo of them playing volleyball. Portrait of… wait. I turned back to the trio.
Candy was saying something in the bathroom, but I couldn’t hear the words. Blood surging made my ears sound buried in surf. Try not to judge me. I stood, stiffly, I walked toward the door.
Nan, Dan, Candy: backside of the photo, so to speak, because of our PG rating
“Hey,” Candy called. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
She glanced at the photos on the table. “What? Just because I tanned topless?”
“Because you deceived.”
I closed the door on her protest, feeling rotten as I left.
Not ten minutes later, Nan phoned. “What’s wrong with you? Candy likes you. She loves you. No need to get jealous.”
“Cheating.”
To Nan’s credit, she didn’t attempt to deny. “How did you know?”
And that’s the question posed by a true event. To salvage something from this disaster, make this misfortune your mystery.
What caught the attention of my fledgling detective skills?
A few weeks ago, something good--and unexpected--happened to me, publishingwise: a story was accepted by one of my favorite markets, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The thrill I got from that acceptance probably doesn't mean a lot unless I tell you this: It was my first acceptance there in three years.
Confession time
EQMM has been a tough market for me, ever since I first started submitting short stories for publication, back in the mid-90s. I like to think I work hard on everything I write, and I try to research the magazines as well as I can, reading a lot in whichever one I submit stories to, and I've had some modest success with most of the mystery markets available to us over the years. But not so much at EQMM.
I've made a total of seven sales to EQ in the thirty-one years I've been submitting stories to them, and while I'm proud of (and grateful for) each of those acceptances, I should also explain that I've received many, many, many rejections from them. In fact, it took me six years of rejections to finally break into EQMM, and that first sale wasn't even a short story--it was a 12-line poem. My next sale there took four more years, and it too was a mystery/crime poem. Since then, I've been luckier in my submissions to them--four short stories in the past ten years, three of which were recognized with awards, plus this latest acceptance--but be aware, that good fortune sits on a scale opposite dozens of rejections.
Advice
My point in telling you all this is to say DON'T QUIT.
Keep on trying, even when you wonder if you'll ever get there. This is one piece of guidance I always tried to emphasize to my students in my short-story classes. As I've said many times, I can't guarantee that you'll sell a story if you submit it, but I can guarantee that you won't sell it if you don't. NOTE: The only times that advice hasn't eventually paid off for me is with Analog and Asimov's--they've never accepted any of my stories, although I've tried often--but that's not quite the same thing. I like reading SF, and writing it too, but it's not my favorite genre. Mystery/crime/suspense is.
So . . . if you're one of those talented writers who have had tons of stories published at EQMM--I'm talking to you, David Dean and Josh Pachter--my hat's off to you and you'll always be my heroes. But if you're someone like me, who has had some difficulty in regularly sneaking past EQ's palace guards . . . keep on trying. Tote that barge, lift that bale. I think that's the key to all this. (Though I do suspect that those jokers Dean and Pachter have some kind of secret handshake that they've never revealed to me.)
Facts
In case you're interested, my published stories at EQMM have averaged around 4000 words and have included mostly non-urban settings, no otherworldly elements, straightforward plots, and truly off-beat main characters: a 75-year-old retired farmer, a teenaged chess addict, a seven-foot-tall female schoolteacher, a self-driving car named Mary Jo, etc. This latest sale was of the same length as the others but was different in a few ways: a suburban setting, an extremely twisty plot, etc.--and was also the only story I've written in a long time that began not with a plot in mind but with a title in mind. For some reason, the title "Me and Jan and the Handyman" popped into my head one day and stayed there. By the way, I have no idea when the story'll actually be published, but it's comforting just to know I have one sitting in the TBP queue.
Questions
What about your own experiences, in submitting stories to markets you admire? Do you have a bucket list? Have you been successful? Did it take a long time for you to "break in"? If so, after your first success at a favorite market, was it easier afterward? Have you been able to publish there regularly? Are there any favorite publications that you're still trying and can't seem to crack? Let me know in the comments section below.
In closing, and in case anybody wants to read that first piece of writing I sold to EQMM--it was a poem called "Never Too Late," and appeared in their August 2000 issue--here it is, in all its "eat your heart out, Robert Frost" glory:
"You're Al Capone?"
He said, "That's right."
"You're dead, I thought."
He said, "Not quite."
"Then you must be--"
"I'm 103."
"So you're retired?"
"That's not for me."
"But how do you--"
"Get by?" he said.
He pulled a gun.
"Hands on your head."
Yes, it's a crazy poem, and poses no threat at all to Mr. Sandburg or Ms. Angelou, but it allowed me to work my way into one of my favorite magazines. So--again--it IS "never too late."
To quote Galaxy Quest (doesn't everybody quote Galaxy Quest?): "Never give up, never surrender." Keep writing, and keep sending work to whatever publications you think are the best.
From time to time, we writers are asked to speak about our work. Some of us enjoy it. The rest of us scamper away and hide. The profusion of words we conjure up so easily in our work dry up the moment we step in front of an audience. Even if we have carefully outlined our talk ahead of time, it sounds unconvincing the moment it drops from our lips.
What are we missing? Heart. Simply put, we are forgetting to give ourselves to the audience. I think if you knew just how easy that is to do, you’d volunteer for such talks.
About a decade ago I was in the audience at a weekend library event on Long Island, New York, where a well-known author was about to give a talk on the occasion of his latest book. As I took my seat, I dug in my pocket for my pen and notebook. I do this every time I’m in an audience, provided there’s enough light to see. Force of habit, I guess, for a former reporter.
Most of the time, I don’t bother taking notes because what I’m hearing is not worth capturing.
The speaker on deck that day was Garth Stein, author of a No. 1 New York Times Bestseller called The Art of Racing in the Rain. You may have read it. It’s heartwarming literary fiction about a golden retriever who dreams of being reincarnated as a human. (In the film version, the dog narrator was voiced by actor Kevin Costner.) Besides the movie, the book has since spawned a middle-grade/YA edition and four children’s picture books.
After the talk, as attendees traipsed out of the auditorium to buy books and have Mr. Stein sign them, I reviewed my notes and realized that he had used a very compelling structure to shape his talk. It was supremely logical, and has stayed with me all these years.
Open With What They Know
Mr. Stein had worked as a director, producer, and screenwriter of documentary films. At the time, he had produced three films, written two plays, written five novels, written one of those picture books, and won an Academy Award for short film. But on that day in the library, it was a safe bet that everyone in the bookish audience had heard of him because of his “dog book”—even if they hadn’t read it!
A lot of writers who are “perhaps best known” for a particular book rail against talking about that one. One writer I know tells people who hire him for speaking engagements that he will only talk about his current book. That’s his ground rule for book clubs too. He doesn’t want to talk about the same book for fifteen years.
Rather than shy away from the dog book, Mr. Stein made it the lede of his 45-minute talk. He told a charming story about how he got the idea, the struggles he had writing it, and at long last his agent’s reaction to the finished work.
“The book is narrated by a dog!” the agent said.
“Yes it is!”
“You can’t do that,” the agent said, enumerating all the reasons why.
Mr. Stein had a momentary crisis of faith, then he canned the agent and found one who believed in his work. A great story, because who can resist the tale of an artist standing by his work? Knowing just how hard it is to find an agent, I was impressed. And of course, it helped immensely that the book hit the bestseller list. It was the perfect squelch to the first agent’s objections.
The Valley of Youthful Dreams
From there, he swiftly recounted how he first dreamed of becoming a writer, and the sacrifices he made to get there. I don’t need to share his story because anyone who writes has plenty of material to work with. In this section, he also described his manner of working, because for some hilarious reason civilians always want to know about a writer’s PROCESS—a word I have come to hate.
“What’s your process?”
“So, what your process like?”
“Tell us about your process.”
Jeez Louise, you would think it was some kind of bewildering mystery.
So…if you are going to give a talk using this structure—which is where this is all going, if that isn’t already obvious—I will tell you right now that the folks in the audience don’t want to hear, “Well, um, I just sit in a chair and make sh*t up until it’s done.”
No way. Romance the heck out of them. Tell as good a story about your writing of a story as the ones you sell to your editors.
Heck, Gay Talese told a reporter once that he hung his typewritten pages on a clothesline in his New York City apartment, using clothespins. Then he read those pages from across the room with a pair of binoculars. He insisted that this was the only way he could develop the requisite distance to judge and edit his work. (No, I am not making this up. I heard a recording of the interview in college.)
If you don’t have a process, steal Talese’s. Or tell people that in between writing short stories, you write earwormy songs about the Ides of March. (See below.) Make yourself adorable. You probably are; you just can’t see it.
Wrap with What’s Hot, What’s New
Mr. Stein wrapped his talk by discussing his latest book. Makes perfect sense, right? That’s the reason he was on tour! Even here, he repeated some of the classic storytelling beats: how he got the idea, the challenges that he knew he would face during the writing, and the ones he didn’t expect. In any good story, there are always hurdles to overcome. Audiences eat that up. Such anecdotes are perfectly acceptable so long as you have triumphed.
Sometimes the triumphs are small ones. My wife and I have written a few books together. Three have been works of nonfiction history. For the entire writing period of that first book, we stopped in the middle of the day, got in the car, and drove to one of those restaurants in town that sell prepared meals. We’d buy a sandwich or salad out of the case, drove right back home, and eat lunch together on the front porch. It was summer. The weather was always beautiful in the Carolina mountains. We were working so hard to meet our deadline, and this was our only way to enjoy the weather. Crumbs swept from our laps, we went back into the office to write for a few more hours. We did that for three months straight, weekends included, until we had a decent first draft. Every time we tell this story, a chorus of awwwwws ripples through the audience.
You don’t have to try very hard. People like a story that makes them fall in love with the writer. If they think they understand you on a personal level, they’ll be moved to try one of your books or they’ll turn to your story first when they pick up an anthology. Hey, it happens every time I hear Lisa Scottoline speak. She’s hilarious, and I want to spend more time with that voice on the page.
Remember the three-legged stool: The thing they know. Your writer’s journey plus process. What’s hot right now.
It’s so easy, you don’t have to obsess about it. You just have to recount things that really happened, and make sure your anecdotes conform to the usual story beats. Up/down, try/fail, culminating with…success. If you show up for the audience, they will show up for you. Your obligatory Q&A session at the end will be a delight.
Years later, when I came across my Stein notes, I realized just how critical each part of this three-legged stool structure was to the overall effect of the talk. If he had omitted one, the stool would have collapsed.
If he had not opened with the dog story, or if he had not spoken of it at all, it would have been thrumming in the back of everyone’s mind. If he had opened with the new book, we’d be panting like dogs to ask him about his hero, Enzo the golden retriever.
Following his big success story with another up/down tale of his writing journey—a story nearly every writer has of trying and failing until something clicks—stoked our sympathy. By the time we got to discussing his latest book, we were all so emotionally invested in his career, we were eager to stick around to learn what happens next. He had coaxed us on a journey of suspense to boot.
At the end of the signing, my wife announced that all of us were going out to lunch at a cute place not far from the library.
“Who’s all of us?”
Well, Mr. Stein, of course. Plus two other writers, my wife, and me. I was only expecting to dine with my wife and our hostess for the weekend, who was, yes, a writer. (No one ever tells me anything.) A publicist from the publishing house came as well, making a party of six, but she left early. Folks, believe me when I tell you that she and I were the only ones at the table who had not been on the bestseller list.
That all changed some years later. But that’s a story for another time. Until then, go forth and tell the world about your work. You’ll kill. I just know it.
Watch Rob’s video tomorrow on the 2,068th anniversary of Julius Caesar’s assassination.
Speaking of killing, short story writer and fellow SleuthSayer Robert Lopresti debuted this March-appropriate song this week. Since it refers to a murder, I feel it’s appropriate to include on this blog. I just happened to see the video shortly after he posted it, while I was diligently adhering to my daily procrastination regimen of dog training, gardening, and home repair videos.
Rob reports that he is taking a songwriting class and this video represents a rare case of him doing his assignment. He’s playing an autoharp, which is resting on his lap and goes unseen in this video but appears in others on his YouTube channel. (You might enjoy his album of droll folk songs here.)
Fun fact I learned in high school Latin class: the ides are not always on the 15th of a month. Discuss.
With knives and flowers coming out of hiding, Spring must be just around the corner! Well done, Mr. Lopresti.
Back
when, in what now seems like the Bronze Age, a guy named Col Needham started
the Internet Movie Database. He was a
movie nerd who lived outside Manchester,
UK, and he
began by scribbling notes in longhand.
When he was fifteen, he got his first computer, a DYI with 256B of
memory. (You read that right, 256 bytes.)
This was the early 1980’s, so VHS had been introduced. Col
didn’t have to go to the movies to see movies, anymore. And he was still
taking notes, but now he was storing them on his computer, in a program he’d designed. The online community was primitive and insular,
Col and his like-minded
movie pals were file-trading on USENET.
He eventually wrote a searchable database, and in 1990, he published the
software for free. At this point,
websites – such as they were – were college-based, or research lab
proprietaries, and IMDb launched in July of 1993, at CardiffUniversity, in Wales. It was one of the first hundred or so
websites ever curated for any
purpose, anywhere.They went mainstream
in 1995.
It’s
worth noting that IMDb was all user-based.They were amateurs, and the database was compiled in much the same way -
if you think about it – as the Oxford English Dictionary.Ask a select group of people with an odd
enthusiasm, or Attention Deficit, to hunt up the earliest use of a word, say, or
Robert Redford’s first screen credit (Season 3 of Maverick, 1960).See, makes it
look easy.
Thirty
years ago – that long ago, and that recent – AOL began sending everybody in
Christendom trial CD’s of their dial-up software.Every two weeks, according to a recent
article in the Post, traffic to IMDb
doubled.And they started taking
ads.This was a crazy idea.Nobody understood you could monetize the Web.IMDb now averages 250 million users monthly,
one of the fifty most-visited websites in the world.(I hesitate to inform you that it’s owned
these days by Amazon.)
Back
in 1995, my public library in Provincetown, Mass., didn’t have internet, and I started going up-Cape
to Orleans, where you could use their
public library to log on to catalogues for print media, and pull up material on
the screen at will, whereas before you had to go all the way to Boston, to the
big public library on Copley Square, and research magazine and newspaper
morgues on microfilm – and you were of course confined to what they had on
file, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the papers of record.For me, this was revelation, apotheosis, to have access to this
limitless archive.It wasn’t limitless,
really, there were probably no more than a couple of thousand gateways, if
that, open to public browsing, where you didn’t need academic credentials – and
it was an even greater revelation to stumble onto this clunky, user-generated, fan directory.It was a vanity project, or in Col Needham’s
frame of reference, an Ed Wood picture, but as far as I was concerned, a wet dream.
This,
seriously, is one of those “Let’s put on a show,” moments, Judy Garland and
Mickey Rooney trying to save the orphanage.Col Needham and his wife Karen, and a few other dedicated goofs, made it
happen.God bless.
What do you do when things haven’t worked out as you
originally planned?
We recycle.
Last
week, Black Cat Weekly ran my story, "Fifteen Minutes from
Fame." Initially, I'd sent it to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
but they passed. Keeping the universe balanced, AHMM ran my
story, “The Angler’s Guide to Walleye Ice Fishing,” in the current March/April issue.
In 2022, I submitted that story for the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology. The
Minnesota committee ultimately decided it wasn't one they'd include. I got a
nice email of decline.
Like
every other member of humanity, I never like getting rejected. But like
everyone who submits stories, I accept it as part of the process. I try to find
the positive. It means I’m producing and sticking myself out there. We can’t
win if we don’t play.
And I
really like it when a resubmission is accepted. It validates my belief that the
story was worthwhile.
We all recycle. Blogs get repurposed. And stories take too much effort to write. We can't be one and done.
To be
clear, I don’t resubmit to the same publication. If an editor says no, I treat
it as firm and move on. I don't want to damage my credibility with the small
world of publishers by making a few cosmetic changes, giving the story a new
title, and running it back in the hope that it'll sneak by this time. (The only
exceptions are those rare times when a story is returned with a qualified
rejection—the editor’s email told me that the story would likely be accepted if
some changes were made.)
But
that doesn’t mean that I give up on the other stories either.
Michael,
Barb, and other folks who regularly make editorial decisions have discussed on different blogs why stories
might get rejected. They've taught me that rejection does
not always mean I've written a bad story. They've emphasized the subjective
element of acceptance/rejection. I take my editors at face value. Success or
failure may turn on factors over which I have no control. If they've accepted a
story with a theme like mine recently, my story may not have a chance,
regardless of its strength. I may be the victim of poor timing or bad luck.
Or I
might have submitted a stinker.
Before
recycling a story, I hope I use the rejection as an opportunity for reflection. I’ll
reread my submission critically. Should I have ever sent it off to begin with? Assuming I
come away from the reread convinced that the story has merit, I will invariably
see ways that a rewrite might make it better.
Occasionally,
an editor’s rejection email points out what they didn't like about the story. I
incorporate those comments into my review. But even if a rejection supplies no reason,
its quick splash of cold water makes it easier to look at the story with an eye toward finding its flaws.
After polishing it further, I'm reading to get this story back in the game.
Before resubmitting, I need
to ask whether I’m sending the story to an appropriate publication. I don’t want to
throw my work time after time at calls that don't fit. Is this story right
for the prompt? If I have to tilt my head and squint to see the connection, I
should save the story for another day. If I have a dog story and the call is
for a cat anthology, I can’t simply do a ‘find and replace’ and resubmit. I
don’t need the rejection, and the editors don’t need the timewasters. As a
writer, I need to maintain my credibility as someone who submits serious
stories. That doesn’t involve depending on random chance.
I also like to wait before
resubmitting. A bit of distance makes my self-examination more effective. It
also separates me from the competition. I have no doubt that in the days after
the Minneapolis anthology rejections went out, Ellery Queen and Alfred
Hitchcock were inundated with stories set in the upper Midwest. The two-year
pause before my submission, I believe, let that wave pass. Hitchcock may have
recognized it for what it was, but enough time had lapsed for them to be ready
for a midwestern story again.
We can't give up on the stories
we've written—well, not most of them. They need to be recycled. Take heart from
the words attributed to humorist Stephen Leacock. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it."
Until next time.
I'm traveling on the day this blog posts. Apologies in advance if I don't respond promptly to replies.
I don’t have to tell you there’s a lot of tribal hostility going on in America these
days. Aside from being damaging to
society, these impulses are truly stupid.
First off, people are hardly ever made up entirely of their racial,
political, gender and socioeconomic affiliations. They are mostly just people. Pardon the cliché, but we’re all a lot more
alike than we are different. And that is
a fact.
We all need to eat, sleep and pass
waste. We all fall in love, grieve our
losses, get carpel tunnel, worry about money, like dogs and cats (most of us),
fuss over our appearance (most of us), drive cars, hang out with friends, watch
TV, coo at babies, suffer our kids’ adolescence, revere
grandparents/writers/actors/sports heroes, do foolish things when we’re young
and have aching joints when we’re old.
We are genetically nearly
identical. Apparent differences are
chance deviations almost unidentifiable in the human genome. Intelligence, physical strength, endurance, the
ability to play ping pong, beauty/homeliness and crooked teeth are randomly distributed across all people throughout the world.
Culture is what attaches itself to these vague dissimilarities,
exaggerating differences and inciting conflict where none is necessary.
My grandfathers were both hearty working-class
blokes who overcame a lot of adversity to achieve a measure of success in the
world.
My grandmothers were upper middle-class
creatures of privilege, who married below their social status. I went to a high school with kids from all
over everywhere, less than half of whom went on to college. None of us stuck to our neighborhoods, and if
you played sports, ethnicity mattered not a wit. I think this helps explain why I could always
swim in any socioeconomic stream that presented itself.
I’ve always gotten along with everyone
who wanted to get along with me, irrespective of their origins or distinctive
characteristics. To me, difference is
endlessly involving. I had plenty of
friends who were a lot like me, but I never thought I should restrict myself to
their association.
In my professional life, I worked
within a few international organizations, where this belief in our common humanity
was cemented. You only have to close the
bar with drunken Japanese, Vietnamese, Swedes, Germans, Egyptians, Nova Scotians,
and a few crazy Kiwis (I could go on) to feel kinship with the entire world.
I’ve always written my books
accordingly. Thank God my publisher Marty
Shepard never thought it necessary to suggest I add greater diversity. First off, he didn’t need to, and secondly,
such a thing would never have occurred to him.
And this was a guy with impeccable left-wing credentials. All he cared about was what worked for the
story. We never once talked about a
character’s race, religion, sexual orientation or economic standing as a thing
apart from his or her role in the book.
Other writers write books where a character’s
identity is at the center of the narrative (Marty published a number of these),
especially when they belong to groups that have been disadvantaged,
disenfranchised or otherwise discriminated against. That’s a good thing, especially when it helps
spread empathy and compassion. But
nonetheless, the only basis for criticizing any book is the artistic quality of
the work. In that, everyone should be
fair game, because these are the standards that need to endure and make our art
form deserving of attention and regard.
Scientists will tell you that fear and
hostility toward The Other is wired into our brains. I don’t doubt it.
But biology isn’t destiny, and as the only
animals who posses morality, we have it within us to overcome atavistic
impulses. This fear and hostility are
almost entirely the result of ignorance about The Other. This is easily fixable if you have an open mind.
Contrary to the old saying,
familiarity breeds understanding. Understanding
breeds a greater awareness of the world as it actually is, not the distortions
of the bigoted, manipulative and censorious.
Sometimes one has to write a potentially very unpopular article and today is my day. I hope you'll give me a break on this one, because I purchased a book and read it till the end and, given my investment, I have an opinion. You can call it a whine and offer me some cheese, but here it is.
Just read a mystery novel. The narrator appeared nice, sympathetic with the victim and then, bam, it turned out that the narrator lied the whole novel.
The writing was exquisite, the characters finely drawn and yet, at the end, I was not impressed. Dashiell Hammett famously said (referring to people not narrators) that liars are bores. In this case, I was not bored, I was annoyed. There are different types of unreliable narrators: ones who fool themselves and ones fool the reader. The former, narrators who fool themselves are utterly human - I expect and enjoy them in novels. The latter, the liars who fool the reader, are different. Some enjoy the twist of the narrator as liar in a novel. I do not. Give me an honest narrator. Make them limp with naiveté, hobble with some impairment in insight, and I'm still on board. Make them a liar and I feel like I've wasted my time.
Now that, in two paragraphs, I've probably annoyed many, let me spend the rest of the paragraphs explaining.
Like many people, I'm a two-fisted reader. In one hand, I always hold a mystery novel and in the other hand, I've always held science books. I expect the narrators in both hands to tell the truth.
Can you imagine reading one of Louis Leaky's books - where he presents careful fossil evidence showing that the birthplace of humans was Africa and not Europe or Asia as previously thought - only to reach the end of the book where he tells you that he'd been digging in Scotland? Or imagine a doctor meticulously going through your results, telling you that you have incurable lung cancer and, after helping you tell those who love you, hearing their anguish and sharing yours, the doctor explains you don't have cancer but was enjoying the reactions you and yours had to the false diagnosis. I suspect that you would never read Leaky's books or go to that doctor again.
Even science and mystery books with reliable narrators have intrigue - the narrator is limited by their knowledge, the times they live in, their own foibles and shortsightedness. I'm fine with all that. I just don't like being told, at the end of investing my time, that I've been lied to.
How is any of this a walk-back of my initial criticism? That was the explanation, here's a part of the walk-back: I strongly suspect that when any of us reads mystery novels, our criteria for judging them is impacted by what else we read. If you're a two-fisted reader of mystery and impressionist art or, mystery and Shakespeare, for example, what you expect from a book may be different. A book that annoys one person, delights another.
Here's the other part of the walk-back: the books we read push us towards certain professions, then our profession in turn pushes us to certain books and these books push back into our professions - this is an endless loop, a constant dialogue - a dialectic - where one changes the other. Many have discussed the natural relationship between medicine and writing mystery novels - many of my colleagues also read mystery novels - but I recently read this very clear explanation of the relationship:
"Almost all mystery novels open with something unpleasant happening to the victim (read, patient). The perpetrator (disease) causes harm, but does so in such a sly and covert fashion that the protagonist (doctor) is left in the dark. Through diligence and careful observation, new clues (symptoms, signs, laboratory tests) are discovered and the villain (disease process) begins to take shape and structure. If it is a good novel with a happy ending, the perpetrator is uncovered by the protagonist and is punished or eliminated (treated successfully). As you see, there is not a whole lot of difference between mystery novels and complex discharge summaries. Thus, in a sense, doctors are trained to be writers and storytellers."
One can see how a profession, in my case medicine, influences how one feels a story should progress. In other words, I was not built - by my two-fisted reading and my work - for a unreliable narrator who lies as a technique to tell their story. I apologize to the excellent author who triggered this article but I will not be buying their books. Luckily, many other readers will because they're an excellent writer.
As the final part of my walk-back, this as an ode to the reliable narrator - please write that book. Give the reliable narrator warts or shortsightedness, give them anguish or arrogance, but make their attempt to tell an honest story an earnest one - no matter how much they fail at it - and many of us will truly appreciate this book.
Shakespeare's plays read pretty on the eye. Vivid imagery, brilliant wording, poetic turns. But those plays are meant for the ear, to be performed. Lustily, for the player to chew the scenery amid ghosts and mix-em-ups and especially his many death scenes.
A general consensus puts Shakespeare's onstage death count at 74 characters. This is in just 38 plays, 17 of which were comedies. Many more characters shuffle off the mortal coil offstage for practical or emotional reasons. Estimates of Shakespeare's full carnage range to well over 200 characters, depending on how the count defines a killing.
And I've counted. The tragedies, anyway. I can't get excited about the historical plays. My math is as follows: Body count equals (a) clear deaths during the play, (b) clear deaths pending at the final curtain, and (c) deaths immediately before Act I where the character pops up later as a ghost.
It's March, so let's open with Julius Caesar. Famously, Caesar is first to meet his maker, and things get out of hand from there -- the whole point of the play.
Julius Caesar: group stabbing;
Cinna the Poet: torn apart by mob;
Portia: suicide offstage, swallowing hot coals;
Cicero: executed offstage;
Cassius: assisted suicide, sword;
Titinius: suicide, sword;
Young Cato: death in battle;
and finally Brutus: assisted suicide, sword.
That's a lot of suicide, but the play orbits around honor and what's honorable. The losers take the high road out. Brutus and Cassius are so concerned about honor, or status really, that they have to find somebody else to do the bloody part.
If eight deaths sound like a pile, it's middle of the Shakespearian pack. Slightly less stabby is Romeo and Juliet, at six:
1. Mercutio: swordfight; 2. Tybalt: swordfight; 3. Lady Montague: grief, offstage; 4. Paris: swordfight, 5. Romeo: suicide by poison; 6. and Juliet: suicide by dagger.
Othello takes out only five and only after Iago has head-cased everyone:
Roderigo: stabbing;
Desdemona: smothered;
Emilia: stabbing;
Othello: suicide, dagger;
and Brabantio: grief, offstage.
Desdemona gets an extended I'm-not-dead-yet revival despite having been suffocated. That kind of suffering and speechifying end isn't unusual for Shakespeare, but showing her murder onstage is. He preferred to kill off his men for the crowd, usually by sword or such carving. Shakespeare wrote in and for his time. 400 years ago, the main characters were men, so following the action to the tragic end was important to the drama.
By contrast, the women tended to die offstage. Being a man of his times, his female characters were often thematic devices for the main men. Shakespeare also wrote for patrons and royals, and he would've thought twice about offending his meal tickets. Of course, it wasn't even women playing his women back then. Lads got those parts, and a good director wouldn't risk a grand death scene on a young actor's chops.
Whatever the reasons, the lead woman dying offstage sets up the bring-out-her-body moment. Cue Hamlet. Hamlet gets a bad rap for inaction, but he's responsible, one way or another, for every death other than the father he wanted to avenge.
King Hamlet: Poisoned shortly before play, a ghost;
Polonius: stabbed, mistaken identity;
Ophelia: drowned offstage, possible suicide and duly brought on;
Rosencrantz: executed offstage;
Guildenstern: executed offstage;
Gertrude: poisoned by mistake;
Laertes: poisoned stabbing;
Claudius: stabbed, then poisoned;
and finally Hamlet: poisoned stabbing.
Poisoning is my favorite Shakespearian gimmick. Most often, he can't be bothered to specify the actual poison. It's just boom, you're poisoned. But that was a way to do it back then, which goes double for those stabbings. Were Shakespeare writing today, his swordfights would be shootouts.
King Lear edges ahead with eleven deaths, most in its grim finale:
1. First servant: stabbed; 2. Cornwall: stabbed; 3. Oswald: stabbed; 4. Gloucester: shock of joy, offstage; 5. Regan: poisoned by jealous sister, offstage; 6. jealous sister Goneril: suicide by dagger, offstage; 7. Edmund: killed in duel; 8. Cordelia: hanging, offstage; 9. Lear: Grief and exhaustion; 10. Fool: fate unknown, presumed dead; and 11. Kent: resolved to commit suicide.
Speaking of grim, there's Macbeth. Its death count is whatever anyone wants it to be given the major battles, violent repression, and general mayhem. The confirmed dead is eleven. You have to believe Macbeth cleaned up his assassin situation before anyone talked, but here's the confirmed eleven.
Macdonwald: killed in battle offstage;
Thane of Cawdor: executed offstage;
Duncan: stabbed offstage;
Duncan's Guard #1: stabbed offstage;
Duncan's Guard #2: stabbed offstage;
Banquo: Stabbed in ambush;
Lady Macduff: stabbed;
Macduff's son: stabbed;
Lady Macbeth: suicide offstage, unspecified;
Young Siward: killed in battle;
and Macbeth: killed in battle on or offstage, beheaded offstage.
Those deaths happen in perfect order to frame the tragic fall. For all of Macbeth's carnage, most of the killing happens offstage unless a director loves an opening battle scene. Instead, the scenes follows Macbeth between the violence and wrestling with his conscience. It starts with arguably the most important but overlooked death, Macdonwald. Macbeth disembowels the guy offstage, showing both his heroic loyalty and the killer within. When he finally goes full tyrant, the murder moves onstage, with Banquo and Macduff's family.
Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy, though, is way bloodier. His top massacre is Titus Andronicus, an early play that wallows in its violent excess--on purpose. The play is about brutality and how far people will take their grudges. Death count, here we go:
1. Alarbus: ritual sacrifice; 2. Mutius: stabbed, filicide; 3. Bassianus: stabbed; 4. Martius: beheaded, offstage; 5. Quintus: beheaded, offstage; 6. Tamora's Nurse: stabbed; 7. the Clown: hanged; 8. Chiron: slashed throat, ground into powder, and baked into pie served to his mother; 9. Demetrius: same; 10. Lavinia: stabbed; 11. Tamora: stabbed and fed to wild beasts; 12. Titus Andronicus: stabbed; 13. Saturnius: stabbed; and 14. Aaron: buried up to neck and left to die.
Take that, Game of Thrones.
Stabbings and poisonings were his old reliables, but Shakespeare had a full arsenal when it came to dispatching characters. Guilt and served as pie, as examples seen above. A few others:
Snakebite;
Heavy sweat;
Indigestion;
Dismemberment and tossed into fire;
And the topper of toppers, bear.
Poetic turns or not, it's a mistake to read Shakespeare as stilted or stuffy. He was putting on a show, blood, guts and all. It's endless amusement for a literature nerd, almost as fun as watching actors land those deaths in the footlights.
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