It's Aliiive!

by Barb Goffman

It's aliiiive!

Everyone, meet Plant.

Plant is my houseplant. I never bothered to name him (Her? How do you tell?) because I learned long ago not to get invested in plants. You see, no matter how much I've cared for and loved my plants, they all ultimately ... often quite prematurely ... have died.

We'll start with the pretty flowering plant I bought my mom for Mother's Day when I was in elementary school. (Okay, yes, technically this wasn't my plant, it was hers, but it was the beginning of my plant curse.) I planted it in the yard for her, and less than a week later our gardener mowed over it. Rest in peace, poor plant.

Moving onto sophomore year of college, I bought a little plant for my dorm room. Kept it on the windowsill where it could get lots of light. As the year went on, I noticed that no matter how much water I gave it, that poor plant was not thriving. I couldn't figure it out until the day I happened to set my hand on the windowsill and discovered it was freezing. And thus the poor plant clearly had been freezing all this time. Too bad plants can't shiver so I'd have had a clue. I moved it the plant to another location in the room but ... yep, you can guess ... it died.

The following year, my best friends went to a florist in town for my birthday gift. They explained my black thumb and said they wanted to buy a plant I could not kill. The florist sold them a peace lily. It was dead in a month.

A few years ago, a friend bought me an orchid plant. It had a bloom going when the poor thing arrived in my house, but that bloom withered quickly. I kept hoping for more flowers out of it, but I think the orchid must have felt my bad juju, because the poor thing didn't last very long.

And that brings us to Plant. Plant was a housewarming gift from some poor fool who didn't know that I am The Plant Killer. But the fool has been on me because Plant is now nearly ten years old. Heck, that deserves more than regular type. Plant is now nearly TEN YEARS OLD. I think Plant is living to spite me. I over-water it sometimes, Plant lives. I forget to water it sometimes, Plant lives. I better add Plant to my will, because apparently, no matter how hard I try (or don't try, as the case may be), Plant will live on way longer than I will. So, anyone want responsibility for Plant when I die? It clearly doesn't need a lot of work. Believe me, if I can keep Plant alive, anyone can.

In other news, the Malice Domestic mystery convention is in two weeks. Convention attendees will be able to vote for the Agatha Award in six categories. Fellow SleuthSayer B.K. Stevens and I each have stories up for the Agatha in the short story category. (B.K. is also a finalist in the children's/YA category! And SleuthSayer Art Taylor is a finalist in the best first novel category!) If you'd like to read all the short story finalists (and please, do read before you vote), they're available online here. Scroll down to the short stories. Each title is a link to that story. Happy reading!

Quote Unquote

by Susan Rogers Cooper

I was recently in the market for a good quote for a talk I was asked to give. So I started doing my research and found more than I bargained for. Unfortunately I can't bombard my listeners with all the great quotes I found, so, instead, I intend to bombard the reader. Go forth at your own risk.

On the act of writing:

“Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”

Colette

“I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.”

Agatha Christie

“Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped.”

Lillian Hellman

“All books are either dreams or swords. You can cut or you can drug with words.”

Amy Lowell

“Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But far better to write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.”

Katherine Mansfield

“The difference between a story and a painting or photograph is that in a story you can write, 'He's still alive.' But in a painting or a photo you can't show “still.” You can just show him being alive.”

Susan Sontag

“There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”

Oscar Wilde

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

Mary Heaton Vorse

*Note: I have also seen this quote attributed to Ernest Hemmingway.

“Writing a book is like scrubbing an elephant: there's no good place to begin or end, and it's hard to keep track of what you've already covered.”

Anon.

“The answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.”

Margaret Atwood

On the consequences of writing:

“It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.”

Margaret Anderson

“I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.”

Lydia M. Child

“A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

On the opinions of others:

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

Dorothy Parker

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”

Sylvia Plath

“The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.”

Anon.

On criticism:

“There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.”

C.N. Bovee

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

Logan Pearsall Smith

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

Logan Pearsall Smith

“Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,

But are not critics to their judgment too?”

Alexander Pope

“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense.”

Samuel Johnson

“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”

W. Somerset Maugham

What are some of your favorite quotes about writing, authors, books, criticism, etc.?  Maybe that's something we all, we writers, can reach for -- to be quoted some day.  Would that be cool, or what?

RansomWare 2,Vampires and Zombies

 WARNING  Last week, we discussed a particularly vicious type of virus, one that poses a severe risk to your computer’s contents. It’s called RansomWare and it’s coming to a computer or cell phone near you. This week, we offer specific steps to protect yourself.

To infest and infect, one of the givens of vampires is that they must be invited into one’s home. Dracula and his ilk may mesmerize or seduce, but only when a victim throws open the window can the creature waft in.

Viruses– and more typically a variant called Trojan horses– work the same way. A colleague hands the victim a flash drive, or she (or he) clicks a disguised download button or the attachment of an email. Voilà, she’s unknowingly invited the devil into her life.

Sometimes the effects are relatively minor– they may quietly turn the target into a zombie server, a computer that sends out spam, illicit files, and even malware without the owner’s knowledge. The truly bad infections can suck the lifeblood out of the system. Ransomware falls into this latter category.

Recently, Dale Andrews received an apparent email from Velma with an attachment. Strange… she rarely emails and I knew our secretary hadn’t emailed anything since the beginning of the year. Fortunately Dale didn’t open the attached payload. It may have been nothing more than a Nigerian scam letter… or it could have been considerably worse.

Pleadings

My colleague Thrush keeps enough computers to power Bulgaria, nearby Serbia and Romania. He thinks like a pro; he takes security very seriously.

His friend Mark phoned– he’d been hit with ransomeware. Arriving home in the evening, Mark had sat down at his computer, tired and less than alert. One of his emails raised the spectre of a lawsuit; it included attached court documents.

He downloaded them and… innocently unleashed the wolves. Whatever had been attached, they weren’t pleading papers. A screen popped up… his computer had been encrypted by ransomware, demanding a few hundred dollars to return his goods.

The man immediately detached his computer from his local network (LAN), one that included his backup mechanism and his wife’s computer, which fortunately contained their most critical files. His desktop was done for, but quick action saved their most important files.

Defense

The best protection against malware (malicious software) and ransomware in particular is to prepare your fortress now.

I. Backups

Back up, back up often. I previously mentioned it’s critical to back up to drives or discs that can be detached. The reason is that if your backup drive is on-line when malware strikes, you could lose your backup and everything on it.

A simple strategy used in the early days of computing is to make grandfather-father-son backups: You cycle through your discs (or tapes or other media) reusing your oldest backup each time. This includes one vulnerability in that you may back up defective or damaged files without realizing it. For that reason, archive a backup each month or so. Tuck it in a drawer or bank vault and exclude it from the recycling.

Consider using Blu-Ray discs with write-once technology. Those discs are not only less expensive than rewritable discs, they’re safer in that they cannot be later altered and their life span could last for decades.

The Macintosh includes a backup program called Time Machine. It can operate in manual mode, which is useful for detachable drives. It also offers a continuous mode in which changed files are backed up every hour to an attached drive, the cloud, or a NAS (network area storage) unit. Continuous backing up is great unless ransomware attacks the backup files.

A method of safe continuous backup is possible for desktop computers using these steps:

1. Ensure files you want backed up are either in your public folder or outside your home folder altogether. In other words, make sure items to be backed up are visible beyond the confines of your user folder.

2. 

   W-D My Passport back-up USB drive

   Establish another user account called Backup. If set up properly, it should be able to see the files and folders you want backed up. Keep things pure. Do not use this account to surf, read email, or shop on-line.
3. Attach a back-up drive, cloud storage, or NAS using a password. Only the Backup account should have the passwords readily available. Don’t access these drives from your main user account(s). (Western Digital external drives not only provide good back-up programs, they also allow the drive to be password protected.)
4. Start the back-up program, providing its security services with passwords if needed. Don’t log off the Backup account when returning to the main user account.

While you’re working, the Backup account will quietly save your data. If you are attacked, malware won’t be able to get at the back-up drive. You need only consider this for continuous automatic back-up programs like Time Machine.

II. Modems, Routers, and Firewalls

The Backup account acts as a sort of firewall to seal off back-up drives from the rest of the machine. Chances are your router as well as your computer contain software firewalls. Because of the variety of manufacturers, I won’t attempt to address specifics other than to suggest learning how or seeking help in using them.

With the router, keep open ports to a minimum. Use long passwords for both your modem and your router. Be careful whom you let into your network. Some wireless routers allow ‘guests’ with imposed limitations. If both your router and your guest’s computer, tablet, or phone features a WPS button, you can permit guests to connect without giving out a password.

III. Computer Settings

Besides judicious sharing and firewall settings, a seemingly minor option offers major potential. By default, both Windows and the Mac don’t display common extensions (.doc, .rtf, .gif, .mp3, .exe, .app, etc.) An invisible extension might look a little prettier, but that extra piece of information might help you save your computer.

Say you get a breezy email purportedly from a friend containing an attachment called FamilyFotos.jpg. You start to open it but, if you’ve activated the showing of extensions, you’ll see the full name is FamilyFotos.jpg.app … uh oh!

Or, say you visit SexyBuns.com, download HunkyGuys.mp4 (yes, I’m talking about you, Jan Barrow Grape of 103 Rodekyl Lane, Armadillo, Tx 78657) and spot that the complete file name is hunkyguys.mp4.exe

These are big clues that those files are not friendly.

Show extensions by visiting Control Panels Files and Folder Options (Windows) or Finder Preferences (Mac) and checking the appropriate box. Now you can have more confidence that LegalPapers.pdf is truly what it claims.

☑ MacOS X show extensions

Use extra caution with .doc and .docx files. Unknown files may contain malicious macros and may even suggest you turn macro support on if it’s not. More recent variants reportedly can leap the divide from MS Word to infecting the rest of your computer.

If you wish to peek at unknown Word files, use WordPad (Windows) or TextEdit (Macintosh) or equivalent text processors that ignore embedded macros. Whenever possible, use .rtf instead of .doc as a far safer alternative.

☒ Windows hide extensions

Email filtering not only keeps annoying mail out of your in-box, but it can also provide a line of defense against malware. Even if you blacklist/whitelist, keep in mind that bad guys may have hijacked a friend’s contacts list and try to spoof their address relying upon your trust.

IV. Too Helpful

Be wary of too-helpful emails and pop-up windows that offer updates to Flash, Silver Light, or Java, and especially shortcut links to your banking web site. If you receive an email supposedly from PayPal, your financial institution, HealthVault, IRS, Social Security, or other site containing personal and financial information, don’t click on any embedded links. Instead, type in the URL address yourself to be assured you’re not accessing a ‘spoof’ site trying to trick personal information from you.

Consider the irony

Notices urging upgrades– usually employing pop-up menus– can serve as fronts for malware. Don’t fall for the false convenience. Be cautious of notices your computers has been infected with a virus. If your browser screen locks up, get help. Don't call the toll-free number on the screen.

Such notices may try to trick you into installing nasty stuff. If you think you might need a newer Flash player or Java component, then hie directly to their web sites and check for download versions.

V. AntiVirus Protection

Obtain a good anti-malware suite, either free (like AVG) or from Kaspersky Lab, Symantec/Norton, BitDefender, Malwarebytes, or WinPatrol. They each take different approaches. BitDefender’s defense works as a sort of vaccine. The free Panda Ransomware Decrypt Tool tries to restore deliberately damaged files.

If at all possible, remove the wounded drive from its computer, or create and boot from an external drive to work on the damaged device. It’s possible the infection has altered the boot sectors of your hard drive. If you’re able to decrypt your damaged files, move them to a safe place and totally reformat the damaged drive.

The Myth of Customer Service

One of the internet ‘memes’ floating around the web speaks of ransomware ‘customer service’. This irresponsible wording is tantamount to insisting a rapist gives good customer service if he doesn’t kill the victim. Even professional developers who should know better use this expression, an indication of naïveté rather than an expert opinion. A paid criminal that restores files only 50-60% of the time does not exhibit good customer service.

More on that next week. In the meantime, avoid zombies, vampires, and malware.

Short Takes: The 2016 Nominees for the Best Short Story Agatha

by B.K. Stevens

"Being short does not mean being slight," Flannery O'Connor maintains in "Writing Short Stories." "A short story should be long in depth and should give us an experience in meaning." I think all the nominees for this year's Best Short Story Agatha would agree. The nominated stories include whodunits, suspense stories, and character studies. They include contemporary stories and historical mysteries, serious stories and humorous ones, realistic stories and stories laced with fantasy or whimsy. But all the nominated stories, I think, are long in depth, offering readers a variety of experiences in meaning.

All the authors of the nominated stories have contributed to this post. Each picked an excerpt from her story and commented on it briefly. I hope you enjoy these glimpses into the stories and also hope you'll decide to visit the Malice Domestic website to read the stories in full. And if you're going to Malice, I look forward to seeing you there.

 

"A Year without Santa Claus?" by Barb Goffman

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2015

Here's the passage:

"Look at this email from Santa."

"First someone poisoned Frosty's doppelganger," Stan read aloud. He turned to me. "Doppelganger? Who's he trying to impress with his fancy language?" 

Stan had never been a big fan of Santa's. Something about not getting a certain potato gun he'd wanted as a kid. I sighed loudly and tapped the tablet. "Read."

"Okay, okay." He looked back down. "First someone poisoned Frosty's doppelganger. Then my look-alike was run down. And now someone's offed an Easter Bunny impersonator. Shot him between the ears. New Jersey's too dangerous for me this year. Sorry, Annabelle. Maybe next Christmas. Love, Santa." Stan's eyes returned to mine. "Uh oh."

Uh oh indeed. I shook my head. This was a catastrophe. Santa couldn't skip out on our kids.

It's two weeks till Christmas, and Santa has just notified Annabelle, the head of everything magical that happens in New Jersey, that he's not coming there this year. A murderer is on the loose--it's not safe, he says. Annabelle can't let the poor kids suffer, so she sets out to catch the murderer. But even with her magical powers, Annabelle can't just conjure up whodunit. So she sets off to investigate the old-fashioned way, asking questions and taking names. But will it be enough? Can Christmas be saved?

To read the story:  http://www.malicedomestic.org/PDF/Goffman_Year.pdf

  

"A Questionable Death," by Edith Maxwell

History and Mystery, Oh My (Mystery & Horror, LLC)

In the following passage from "A Questionable Death," 1888 Quaker midwife Rose Carroll has brought a pregnant client of hers to see David Dodge, a physician at the new hospital in the neighboring town. Rose's client, Helen, has been showing symptoms of illness not related to her pregnancy.

"I'll need a small lock of your hair," David told Helen when he was finished examining her.

It had taken us twenty minutes to find a hack, we had to wait a bit to see David, and he had taken care with his examination, so it was now getting on for five o'clock.

"Why?" Helen asked, taken aback.

"Just to aid in assessing your health," David said, slipping me a look behind Helen's back. He handed her a small pair of scissors.

Helen shrugged, but handed the scissors to me. I clipped off a small bit from near her neckline and handed the deep brown lock to David, along with the scissors.

"Thank you for coming in," he said. "I'll have an answer for you within a day's time. And Rose, thanks for bringing her. I'll summon my carriage and driver to take you both back to Amesbury."

"That's very kind of thee," I said.

"I'll need to use the outhouse before we leave." Helen blushed a little.

"Oh, we have the new chain-pull toilets," David said with a note of pride in his voice. "The lavatory is just down the hall to the right. It's labeled Ladies." He pointed the way.

After the door closed behind Helen, I gave him a quizzical glance.

"My teacher in medical school would call it gastric fever." He gazed at me. "I suspect poison."

"Poison?" I whispered, moving to his side.

"Arsenic. I'll tell you for certain after I've analyzed the hair." His brows knit, and he went on, "Don't let on to her. Yet." 

This short scene comes about a third of the way through the story. It reflects the rapid changes in the late 1880s--the new chain-pull toilets in the hospital, the technology to analyze arsenic from a clipping of hair--contrasted with the horse-drawn carriages and Rose's Quaker way of speaking. It also gives the reader a likely cause for Helen's symptoms, which Rose will continue to investigate, and shows that she and David have a relationship as medical professionals in addition to their romantic one.

To read the story: https://edithmaxwell.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/questionabledeath.pdf 

"A Killing at the Beausoleil," by Terrie Farley Moran

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, November 2015

My Agatha-nominated story, "A Killing at the Beausoleil,"is a prequel to the Read 'Em and Eat  cozy mystery novels, including the Agatha Award winning Well Read, Then Dead, as well as Caught Read-Handed and the soon-to-be-released Read to Death.

In this excerpt we meet Sassy Cabot and Bridgy Mayfield on their first day in Fort Myers Beach. The building manager of the Beausoleil is showing them their new rental apartment.

Bridgy leaned in. "Sassy, what a gorgeous place to start our new lives."

Pleased with her comment, K. Dooney went for super-wow. He tugged on one cord of a wall's worth of creamy vertical blinds, and, like a well-trained platoon, they made a snappy left turn. Florida sunshine streamed in between the slats and danced all around the room. I fell into an instant fantasy of sipping my morning coffee while sitting on the terrace, drenched in sunlight. Mr. Dooney yanked another cord, and the slats marched in unison, half column left, half column right.

Below us, great white birds with wingspans measured in feet, rather than inches, circled lazily around fishing boat bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico. The horizon pushed on forever.

A view that might seem nice enough standing on the beach appeared majestic from the fourth-floor window. I let out a deep sigh of contentment.

Usually the bouncy one, Bridgy was more restrained. She tapped K. Dooney on the arm. "Who is that man sleeping on our terrace?"

In Well Read, Then Dead Sassy mentions that she and Bridgy moved to Fort Myers Beach three years ago. A number of readers contacted me because they were wondering how Sassy and Bridgy settled into their life on Fort Myers Beach. So at the urging of the readers, I decided to write this prequel short story, which was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

This particular scene comes early in the story. It is a favorite of mine because it gives the reader a glimpse of the vibrant south Florida setting while indicating trouble to come in the person of the "sleeping" man.

To read the story:  http://www.malicedomestic.org/PDF/Moran_Beausoleil.pdf

 "Suffer the Poor," by Harriette Sackler

History and Mystery, Oh My (Mystery & Horror, LLC)

Anne Heatherton, my story's protagonist, tours London's East End with a group of philanthropic women of means. The conditions that exist here in the 1890s appall the ladies. The group's leader expresses her view of how they should proceed.

"Well, ladies," Mrs. Pinckney, the group leader, announced, "we have a great deal to think about. But I am truly confident that we can make a difference. I believe it is our moral duty to share the blessings of our fortunate circumstances with others. But certainly not to be patronizing or morally superior. Don't you agree?"

The women nodded emphatically and whispered to each other as they moved toward the outskirts of the East End.

 This passage illustrates the dilemma of offering assistance to people who suffer from abysmal poverty and yet seek to maintain their pride and independence.

To read the story:  http://www.malicedomestic.org/PDF/Sackler_SUFFER_THE_POOR.pdf

"A Joy Forever," by B. K. Stevens

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March 2015

In "A Joy Forever," narrator Chris, an aspiring photographer, travels to Boston hoping to take a picture that captures "the spirit of New England." To save money, Chris stays with his crude, domineering uncle, Mike Mallinger. After a miserable day of failing to find a good subject for the photograph, Chris returns to the house, where Mike's second wife, Gwen, is working on an embroidery project. Gwen seems to be meek and submissive, seems to have surrendered utterly to Mike's bullying and abuse. She sympathizes with Chris's artistic frustrations and recommends patience, because "sometimes, you can't make good things happen right away." Here, Chris responds.

"You're sure patient." I walked over to look at her tapestry. "That's lovely, Aunt Gwen. Did you design it yourself? Are you going to fill in all that space with those tiny flowers? That takes more patience than I'll ever have."

The design consisted of a mass of flowers--not arranged in a landscape or vase, not forming a pattern in any usual sense, but a joyous profusion ordered by a harmony I could feel but not define. The colors were dazzling, the variety of flowers amazing. No two were exactly alike, and some, I was sure, bloomed only in her imagination, never in any garden. And each flower was composed of dozens of tiny stitches. Each must have taken hours to create.

She blushed--a proud, vibrant blush this time. "I'm glad you like it. I've been working on it for a long time. A long, long time. I take it out whenever I have a spare minute. So I can't do much at a time. But I work on it every day." Her smile hardened. "Every single day. I'll never give up, not till I finish. And when it's done--why, when it's done, it's going to be wonderful."

I hope this passage hints that Gwen may be keeping secrets, that she may be neither as helpless nor as harmless as she seems. I hope readers will sense that everything Gwen says may have a double meaning. She's talking about her tapestry, yes, but is she also talking about some other project she's been working on "every single day" for "a long, long time," some other project she'll "never give up"? Whatever that project is, "when it's done, it's going to be wonderful"--it's going to be a joy forever. This passage also continues the flower imagery I've tried to develop since the story's first paragraph, the imagery that represents Gwen's independence and suppressed creativity. And it juxtaposes, for the first time, Gwen's tapestry and Chris's photograph--two artistic projects that will come together again when the story ends.

To read the story:  http://www.malicedomestic.org/PDF/Stevens_Joy.pdf

The Authors

Barb Goffman has won the Macavity and Silver Falchion awards for her short crime fiction. She's been a finalist seventeen times for national crime-writing awards, including the Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. Her award-winning story collection, Don't Get Mad, Get Even, includes seven of her nominated stories. She has two new stories scheduled to be published later this month. "Stepmonster" will appear in Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning (on sale 4/26), and "The Best-Laid Plans" will appear in Malice Domestic 11: Murder Most Conventional (on sale 4/28). Barb runs a freelance editing and proofreading service focusing on crime fiction. http://www.barbgoffman.com/

Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and the Local Food Mysteries, the Country Store Mysteries (as Maddie Day), and the Lauren Rousseau Mysteries (as Tace Baker), as well as award-winning short crime fiction. Her "A Questionable Death" is nominated for a 2016 Agatha Award for Best Short Story. The tale features the 1888 setting and characters from Delivering the Truth, which releases on April 8. Maxwell is Vice-President of Sisters in Crime New England and Clerk of Amesbury Friends Meeting. She lives north of Boston and blogs with the other Wicked Cozy Authors, and you can find her on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, and at her website, edithmaxwell.com.

Terrie Farley Moran is the best-selling author of the Read 'Em and Eat cozy mysteries series. Well Read, Then Dead, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel 2014, was followed by Caught Read-Handed in 2015. Read to Death will be released in July 2016. Terrie's short mystery fiction has been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Her short story "A Killing at the Beausoleil," prequel to the Read 'Em and Eat novels, has been nominated for an Agatha award for Best Short Story. She also co-writes Laura Child's Scrapbooking Mystery series. Together they have written Parchment and Old Lace (October 2015) and Crepe Factor (October 2016). website: www.terriefarleymoran.com

Harriette Sackler serves as Grants Chair of the Malice Domestic Board of Directors. She is a multi-published short story writer. Her latest story, "Suffer the Poor," appears in History and Mystery, Oh My! and has been nominated for this year's Agatha Award for Best Short Story. She is a member of Dames of Detection and is co-owner, co-publisher, and co-editor at Level Best Books. Her nonfiction book about House with a Heart Senior Pet Sanctuary will be published in 2017. Harriette lives in the D.C. suburbs with her husband and their two dogs. website: www.harriettesackler.com

B.K. (Bonnie) Stevens is the author of Interpretation of Murder, a traditional whodunit offering insights into deaf culture, and Fighting Chance, a martial arts mystery for young adults. She's also published over fifty short stories, most in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Some of those stories are included in Her Infinite Variety: Tales of Women and Crime, a collection being published by Wildside Press. B.K. has won half a Derringer and has been nominated for Agatha and Macavity awards. This year, both Fighting Chance and "A Joy Forever" are nominated for Agathas. B.K. and her husband, Dennis, live in Virginia and have two amazing daughters, one amazing son-in-law, and four perfect grandchildren. www.bkstevensmysteries.com

Voice in Wax

By Dixon Hill

A great voice, but not what I'm talking about.

I suspect I spend far too much time thinking about a thing called "Voice."

I don't think about voice, as it pertains to my writing, most of the time.  I figure the natural voice that comes out in the piece is probably the right one for it.  Of course, there are those times when I sit around wondering if I'm telling a certain story through the right point of view, and at those times I consider how changing the POV, or even perhaps the character who's narrating the work, might alter the story's voice.

Mostly, however, when I think about voice, it's because of my kids.  Usually because I've recently spoken to one of my kids' "Language Arts" teachers, or my kid is working on an essay, or my kid is working on an essay with a "Team" -- which means a group of kids the teacher assigned a group project to, which is quite prevalent in today's classrooms.

There is quite a bit of emphasis placed on voice, these days, in the public school system -- even down to very early grade levels.  And, I can't help thinking it doesn't really belong there.

One reason I think this, is because many Language Arts teachers my kids have had can't seem to properly define voice, themselves, so I question their ability to teach the concept to others.  Another reason, is that I've run into a lot of high school and young college kids who have been taught about voice, in their early years, who wind up telling me voice means essentially: "Writing an essay so you can tell how I really feel about the topic."  They don't use that sentence, of course, but what they tell me boils down to what that sentence says.

Some of my son's Middle School friends, a few days ago, told me much the same thing, adding an idea that I'd heard before from other kids.  This idea can be boiled down to: "The best way to use voice, when writing, is to use the letter 'I' as in 'I think ...' or 'I feel ...' because this tells the teacher what your 'real voice' is about the subject."

As a parent who likes to support schools and teachers, I sometimes feel a bit hamstrung when I run into statements like these.  I don't want to further confuse the kids, but I do want to help them understand things a bit better.  And, I certainly don't want my son's grade to suffer because a teacher gets upset about first-person writing in an essay.

This is a Jump Boot.
Notice the built-up toe and heel.

So, the other day, when my son's friends said this (They were all over at our place, working on a "Team Essay" assignment.) I asked them: "Any of you guys ever polished boots?"

Most of them looked at me as if I had three heads, but one kid had polished a pair of shoes on Sunday
mornings sometimes.  I took that as my lead.  I asked him if he used Kiwi wax.  He didn't know.

And, thus, I began my lesson.

Taking a pair of old Jump Boots out of the closet, along with a battered can of Kiwi and an ancient diaper, I sat down in front of them and began demonstrating how to spit-shine a pair of Corcoran Jump Boots.  They were all boys (thankfully, because I'm much better with boys than girls) and the idea of spit-shining army boots struck them as both cool and gross.

That's a good combination when you want to capture a Seventh Grade boy's attention.

I lit the wax on fire, first -- which blew their minds.  Then I parked the can lid on top to extinguish the flames, explaining that I was trying to melt the wax, in order to make it easier to spread.  When I pulled the lid back off, they leaned forward to peer at the melted wax in the can.

I dipped my diaper in the wax and began to spread it over the boot, while saying, "You know, polishing boots has got a lot in common with writing with voice.  I mean, there are guys who really just concentrate on the head-lights and tail-lights (I pointed to the built-up areas at the toe and heel of the boot as I said this.) and those guys do a good job of shining their boots.  No question about it.  But,,," And here I started polishing the uppers and the instep. "...if a guy pays as much attention to the rest of the boot, as he does to the head-lights and tail-lights, the boot gets polished just as well, but the result is a bit different, don't you think?"

As I worked, I had one kid put some water in the upside-down Kiwi can lid, and I used that water to polish the toe.  I pointed out that a lot of soldiers use water to shine their boots -- they don't really spit on them.

This resulted in a hubub of boys who thought I was saying that I didn't spit on my boots.

"Oh," I said, "I spit on my boots.  Like this."  I spit on the upper and started polishing it with the diaper.  After a minute, I stopped and said, "Look, can you see a difference?"  They agreed that they could (I'm not so sure they really could.), and I said, "Well that's one way polishing boots is like writing with voice.  See I can polish my boots with water, or with saliva from my mouth -- and both ways work -- but it makes things a just a little bit different, doesn't it?  The same way I can make things different by concentrating all my wax on just the head-lights or tail-lights, to highlight those things, or I can give the entire boot -- or my story or essay points -- equal emphasis."

They all agreed there was a difference, but they also unanimously agreed this had nothing to with voice in writing.

"Well," I asked, "what if I move the diaper in a straight line, instead of in small circles like I've been doing?"  I started using a straight line movement.  After a while, they agreed that the way I moved the polishing cloth did have an impact on the result, but not much of an impact.  I explained that the difference was subtle, and not easy to define.

They argued that it was easy to define, because they could see some straight lines in the area where I hadn't made little circles.  Then, because they were in 7th Grade, we had a discussion about the word 'subtle.'  I also tried to work in the idea that the straight lines they saw on the boot were part of the 'structure' of the wax I'd laid down and polished there.  "Aren't there subtle ways you could choose the words, or sentences you construct your essay with, that would also change the structure of what you're writing?" I asked.

In the end, I showed them that they could wave at themselves in my boots.  I'm not sure they finally understood my idea, but I did see some signs of understanding begin to dawn on a few faces.  Some of them seemed to realize that the way they wrote their essay had an impact on the way a reader understood that essay, much in the same way that a person polishing a pair of boots could influence the way somebody perceived the final shine.  I suggested they think about it, and try importing some of these concepts into their writing.  Maybe, I said, they could find a method of writing that would give a teacher the impression of what they really thought about the subject (they INSISTED this was necessary for the teacher to give them a good grade on 'voice' in their essay, so I finally went with it -- I mean, pick your battles, right?), but without using the word-letter 'I', or spelling things out directly.  If you're going for impact from 'voice,' I stressed, remember to keep it subtle.

Over all, it took about 40 minutes to get my point across.  And, another two hours of answering questions about every ten minutes, while they worked on their essay.  But, they got the essay done, and turned it in the next day.

We'll have to wait and see what grade they got -- assuming my son ever bothers to let me know.

See you in two weeks!
--Dixon

Illustrated Mayhem

by Janice Law

It was a great grief to me when, sometime between the late ’50’s and the ’70’s, publishers stopped illustrating adult fiction. Not that illustrations for adults ever rivaled the glories of children’s books. Forget the full color splendors for volumes like Treasure Island created by N.A. Wyeth or the marvelous line of  John Tenniel’s pictures for Alice in Wonderland.

Just the same, quality novels often had line drawings to enliven the blocks of text which too often today are set up tight to save paper or, in the case of certain popular authors, given ludicrous amounts of spacing and giant margins in order to create a “big” book. Would we had pictures with either or both!

For a time in the ’80’s the lack of illustrations was to some extent compensated for by the care and technical skill of cover art. The book jackets Houghton Mifflin supplied for my first four Anna Peters novels, had beautifully wrought and realistic collage paintings, done by hand, mind you, not on the computer. And this for what were definitely ‘mid-list’ novels. Those jackets, too have gone by the board.

I’ve been thinking about illustrations, especially illustrations for mystery novels and stories, because during a dry spell in painting, I did covers and illustrations for two little three-story collections. I wanted to learn how to put up ebooks, and thought that three mystery short stories (originally published in Alfred Hitchcock and Sherlock) and three stories of the uncanny  (two unpublished, one in the old Fantasy Book, would make good test projects.


Thanks to the kindness of a very patient techie somewhere in Texas, The Double, (the mysteries) and The Man Who Met the Elf Queen are now available for 99¢ from iBooks. The Elf Queen book has chapter illustrations, too. Thus ends the commercial!

All the illustrations were done freehand on my Wacom drawing slate with an electronic pencil. Not everyone likes the process: basically one holds the pad in one hand and “draws” on the white surface with the pen, producing lines over on the computer screen. A certain ability to disassociate is probably helpful, but I like it a lot, because it is easy to combine line with perfect flat areas of color, flowed in via an icon that looks like a bucket.

The only caveat is that enclosed areas must be perfectly enclosed. Even one pixel missing and the flowed color swamps the entire image. Thankfully, there is an Undo button, and even for someone who is not neat and tidy, the bucket tool enables the creation of perfect flat ‘print like’ areas of color.
So much for technique.

The bigger problem for the non-professional is, I think, consistency of image. It is not too hard to produce an attractive illustration. What is difficult is making a character look recognizably the same in different settings and from different angles.

I now appreciate another difficulty. The writer has a notion of what a character, setting, or action should look like and, having suggested that satisfactorily in print, she is sometimes surprised by the changes the illustrator produces. But graphic design has its reasons. When I finished the drawing of the Elf Queen, I thought to check my story. Oh, dear, she was supposedly wearing a sable trimmed cloak! Too bad, the addition of dark brown fur, in addition to being more work, would upset the color balance.

Similarly, the Magus in The Potion of the Empress had dark eyes in print, unsurprising as he was an ancient Roman. However, both an older drawing done in an early Apple graphic program, and my new color version, gave him a chilly light eye, very necessary given the shadows that formed his background.

If nothing else, trying to devise pictures for these little web books has given me sympathy for the illustrators at AHMM who have been illustrating my Madame Selina stories. Do they fit my ideas of the medium and her assistant? Usually not, or not entirely, but they are none the worse for that, being appropriate in size and pattern and style for the magazine and all different, too, which is really interesting.

Just the same, I thought I’d try my hand at both her and Nip and was pleased with the results, but I know better than to attempt a series of panels where I need to keep their features and expressions consistent. Amateur drawings can be lovely but the graphic novel – or even illustrations for a series – are best left to the pros.

Hearing Bells

There is probably not much point to this piece except some information about how the mind of a writer works as compared to that of, say, a normal person.  But here goes.

A while back I had a dream in which a crime was committed.  What the crime was, I do not recall, but a detective was called in. I don't know if he was supposed to be a cop, a P.I. or an amateur sleuth, but he dressed - and spoke - like a British gentleman from the 1920s.

And the wealthy owner of the house obviously knew him.  "Thank heavens you've come!"

The detective was cheerfully casual.  "Oh, you know me.  Any bell is the captain's!"

At which point I woke up.  Then I grabbed for the pen and notebook which - like many authors - I keep next to my bed for just such an emergency.  I wrote down: Any bell is the captain's?

I should explain that based on the tone my detective used, this was clearly an old saying or catchphrase.  The sort of quotation you don't bother to put in quotation marks, because everyone knows it's a quote.  All's well that ends well.  You can't win them all.  Any bell is the captain's!

Of course I went to the web and searched for the phrase.  No luck.  I asked friends about it without explaining why.  One thought it was from old sea movies.  Maybe so, but I can't find any evidence to that effect.

So I told some people the context (if I can use such a word for that dream scrap).  We wound up with two possible meanings.

* Because of my rank I can pick any assignment I want.  The captain answers any bell he chooses. 

* I treat every request as the highest priority.  I answer every call as if it is from the captain.

Which are nicely contradictory, aren't they?  Perhaps some night I will return to that dream and ask the smug twit what the hell he was talking about.  In the mean time don't be surprised if that phrase shows up in one of my stories.  And sweet dreams.
 

Now’s the Time for Your Tears

Since this is a blog about crime and crime writing I thought I’d do a post about songs that deal with crimes, both real and fictional. Originally I was going to do this via songs from a variety of artists. And I still will in the future. But in starting to do that one I saw that I was using several Bob Dylan songs and since I’m a huge Dylan fan, particularly of his material from John Wesley Harding and earlier, I thought I’d do it only on Dylan songs this time and save the rest for later.

These songs are, of course, filtered through Dylan’s eyes and may not be 100% accurate in terms of history. But they are “accurate” in terms of the times they represent, which certainly were a changin’. For example, I’m sure that if there was a real Robin Hood he might not have been as pure and good as made out in the ballads, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. But these tales tell us about who we are and what we want as a society at the times they come about. (All song credits are at the end.)


Hurricane tells the story of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, a middleweight boxer who was wrongfully convicted of murder in a complicated case that took many years to resolve. After his murder conviction, Carter spent 20 years in prison, eventually being released on a writ of habeas corpus. Though to give both sides, there are those who dispute his innocence. Dylan read Carter’s book, came to believe he was innocent and decided to write a song about it. He goes through many verses telling Hurricane’s story in a way only he can.

Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder “one,” guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. This one is from much earlier in his career, 1963 as opposed to 1975 for Hurricane. Hattie Carroll was a 51 year old barmaid killed by wealthy Maryland tobacco heir and farmer William Zantzinger, who Dylan refers to as Zanzinger. I don’t usually shy away from controversial things, but the story of what Zantzinger did that night, assaulting several other people first and then Hattie Carroll, is so unpleasant that if you want to know more about it you’ll have to look it up yourselves. It just makes me cringe. The upshot is that for the murder of Hattie Carroll, Zantzinger received a six month sentence for manslaughter, after which he went back to life on the farm and selling real estate. He did, however, get in trouble with the IRS in later years and died at the age of 69 in 2009, unrepentant. He later claimed the song was a “total lie,” to Howard Sounes for Down the Highway, the Life of Bob Dylan, adding that, "He's a no-account son-of-a-bitch, he's just like a scum of a scum bag of the earth, I should have sued him and put him in jail.”

And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears

Only a Pawn in Their Game is Dylan’s take on the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963. Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council (formed in 1954 to resist school integration and civil rights) assassinated Evers. Two all-white juries couldn’t reach verdicts on the trials of Beckwith at the time. It wasn’t until 1994 that Beckwith was finally convicted, based on new evidence that came out. While blaming Beckwith on one level for the murder, Dylan’s song also considers him to be only a pawn in a larger game of politics and societal strife.

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game

John Wesley Harding, Dylan’s song about old west outlaw John Wesley Hardin, without the “g”. I’d heard that he added the G because in so many instances he dropped Gs from word endings. Is it true? Is it apocryphal? Either way, Hardin was hardly a hero or even an anti-hero. He’s said to have killed 30 to 40 men, depending on who you talk to. One for snoring too loudly.

John Wesley Harding
Was a friend to the poor
He trav’led with a gun in ev’ry hand
All along this countryside
He opened many a door
But he was never known
To hurt an honest man

Much as I like this song, and I do, these lyrics have little to do with the real-life man. In an interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone, Dylan said, that the song "started out to be a long ballad. I was gonna write a ballad on ... like maybe one of those old cowboy ... you know, a real long ballad. But in the middle of the second verse, I got tired. I had a tune, and I didn't want to waste the tune; it was a nice little melody, so I just wrote a quick third verse, and I recorded that."


Joey: Dylan expounds on Joey Gallo, an enforcer and hitman for the Profaci crime family. Dylan, at the urging of co-writer Jacques Levy, had a more sympathetic take on him. He also claimed that Levy wrote all the lyrics to the song. I suppose you could say this song continues in the tradition of ballads that tell of the exploits of criminals in a more sympathetic and heroic way than they were in reality. Because of this, critic Lester Bangs, described the song as “repellent romanticist bullshit." Decide for yourself.

Joey, Joey
King of the streets child of clay
Joey, Joey
What made them want to come and blow you away.

The Ballad of Hollis Brown is the story of a South Dakota farmer who, beaten down by hopelessness and poverty, and in desperation, kills his wife and children. Then himself. It seems nobody knows if this is based on a real person. The details of such a real man are hard to find. But again, even if it’s something out of Dylan’s imagination, the sensibilities in it are a reflection of the times.

There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There’s seven new people born

The Death of Emmett Till. Fourteen year old African-American Emmett Till was beaten, had one of his eyes gouged out and was shot through the head, for supposedly flirting with a white woman in Mississippi. The woman’s husband and his half-brother were brought to trial and found not guilty. Because of double jeopardy, and knowing they couldn’t be tried again, they later admitted their guilt in a Look Magazine article and got paid for it.

William Faulkner wrote this about the case in On Fear (1956), “If the facts as stated in the Look magazine account of the Till affair are correct, this remains: two adults, armed, in the dark, kidnap a fourteen-year-old boy and take him away to frighten him. Instead of which, the fourteen-year-old boy not only refuses to be frightened, but, unarmed, alone, in the dark, so frightens the two armed adults that they must destroy him… What are we Mississippians afraid of?”

’Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door
This boy’s dreadful tragedy I can still remember well
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till

***

All of these stories, the true ones at least, are more complicated than the songs might suggest or that I can go into here. My objective in writing this is not to get into the politics but to show how crimes, real and fictional, become song and thus part of the culture and sometimes even change it.

---

Please also check out my guest post on Madeline Gornell’s blog this week. I talk about “Getting Sucked into the L.A. Vortex,” via various Los Angeles and Southern California locations in my noir novella Vortex. People have said that Los Angeles is a whole ’nother character in my writing. And I agree. The top pic below is The Shakespeare Bridge in the Los Feliz Neighborhood of L.A. The bottom pic is Bombay Beach ruins at the Salton Sea, Southern California.

Oakshade at English Wikipedia [GFDL or CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

***

Song Credits:

Hurricane: written by: Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll: written by: Bob Dylan
Only a Pawn in Their Game: written by: Bob Dylan
John Wesley Harding: written by: Bob Dylan
Joey: written by: Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy
The Ballad of Hollis Brown: written by: Bob Dylan
The Death of Emmett Till: written by: Bob Dylan