The Unreliable Narrative

Preface
My apologies. This is unavoidably political, in the larger sense, but not a polemic. It's about grief.

***

Something is happening in this country, with regard to the coronavirus. If it were fiction, we could call it multiple POV, a chorus of voices competing for our attention.

The unreliable narrator is a longtime convention, in mysteries particularly, a famous example being The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, or more recently, Gone Girl. All the same, in fiction as (we hope) in life, our suspension of disbelief depends on accepting certain ground rules, and at the least an agreed-upon reality, a common yardstick.

So the question is, how do we engage, how do we maintain a sense of balance, or of structure, if the narrative keeps contradicting itself? In other words, how do we manage doubt? To return to the fictional model, mystery stories are inherently conservative, in that the crime, usually murder, violates the social contract, and resolution restores it. Even in noir, retribution is orthodox and rigid, a setting-right, with something almost Greek in its penalties, the appetites of the Furies satisfied. But if no weight is put on the scales, and no balance is required, nothing is restored. Order is relative, not absolute.

We have, in this strange political theater, not so much an unreliable narrator as an unreliable narrative, a story taken out of context. Exit, pursued by a bear. And this isn't simply one or the other, my way or the highway. It's a hall of mirrors, reflecting many alternatives.

In fiction, again, in fairy tales or fantasy, dystopian or post-Apocalyptic, mysteries, thrillers, cozies or Gothic or paranormal, the most outrageous or outlandish conceits can be convincing, if they're internally consistent. This is the most basic rule. You can bend time, or the laws of physics, you can disregard every convention except the one: that similar acts have similar consequences. 

We each and all, of course, believe we see reality. We might very well believe we see the only reality. This is certainly delusional, but it's comforting nonetheless. We have very little tolerance of ambiguity. Quite probably our belief systems are grounded in self-image, or our sense of self is reinforced by belief, two things integrated. I suspect we choose a reality out of necessity, and yours can conflict with mine, because they're mutually exclusive.

Darwin may sort this out for us, survival of the fittest being adaptive, not necessarily predatory. Then again, you might not believe in natural selection, you might prefer a different model, that we are Chosen. Either way, the rough numbers come out about the same.

The astonishing thing, to me, is that unlike a fiction, life is essentially messy, and has no shape or storyline, other than what we impose. To imagine that reality - as an absolute, not a construct - pays any attention to us is no more than vanity. And to pretend that we can pick and choose which reality we inhabit is foolhardy, although that seems to be the human experience, if history's any judge. More astonishing is the lesson fiction teaches us, in that we use stories to impose order, that narrative, or history, is necessary. Like sunlight, physically and psychologically.

All the crazier, then, that what we're seeing in our body politic, and the breakdown of our national conversation, is that chaos is self-inflicted. We've agreed to it.

***

Postscript
This, from The Atlantic, may be paywalled. I recommend it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/

It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing

Can music be noir? I think so. And Nat King Cole’s song The Blues Don't Care (written by Vic Abrams and Murry Berlin) is a good example, judging by the lyrics:

The blues don’t care who’s got ’em,
The blues don’t care who cries,
And the nights don’t care who’s lonely,
Or whose tears are in whose eyes.

When someone’s heart is broken,
The blues are not to blame,
’Cause the blues don’t care who’s got ’em,
So they just added my name.

(final verse is at the end of this piece)


The blues might not care whose got ’em, but I do: Bobby Saxon, the lead character in my upcoming novel The Blues Don’t Care.

The story takes place in the 1940s on the Los Angeles home front during World War II. It’s about a young piano player named Bobby Saxon who wants to play with the house band at the famous Club Alabam on Central Avenue, the heart of black life in L.A. If Bobby gets the gig he would be the only white player in the otherwise all-black band. And if that isn’t enough, in order to get the gig the leader asks Bobby to play detective and help clear one of the band members of a murder he is falsely accused of.

Duke Ellington and his orchestra

And while the book deals with some controversial issues in the context of a historical mystery-thriller it also explores the zeitgeist of the times. And part of that zeitgeist is the music. Both the music Bobby listens to and plays in the story and the music in general, big band, swing, torch songs. Music that I’ve grown to love over the years.

Herb Jeffries

When I was a kid, my dad would play swing music on the radio. I hated it. I wanted to listen to rock ‘n’ roll. I also got to see Benny Goodman, though maybe I didn’t appreciate it as much as if I’d seen him later on. But maybe having been exposed to it it came back to me later on, especially after watching old movies from the 30s and 40s that sometimes included that music. Then, as adults, my friend Linda and I got into swing music and would go to swing dances and concerts at various venues and even went to see many bands or singers from that era that were still around. We got to see Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell sing Tangerine and Brazil. We saw Tex Beneke lead the Glenn Miller Orchestra. I got to see Johnny Otis, who took over as band leader of the house band at the Club Alabam, though I would have loved to see him there.

Benny Goodman and his orchestra

Doing the “research” for the book, especially listening to the music and watching the movies from the era, wasn’t exactly torture for me. One problem though was that I wanted the title to be The Blues Don’t Care. And I wanted that to figure at least a little bit into the story. But, as far as I could tell the song was released much later than the time frame of the story, which led me to believe it might have been written later, too. So how to get around that problem? Artistic License: we see the songwriter working on an early version of the song in the Club Alabam in the course of the story. Problem solved…I hope.

Duke Ellington and his orchestra

So, here’s some songs from the 30s and 40s that Bobby might be listening to. Also good for background music, mood music if you’re writing something set during that time or just for your enjoyment. Or maybe even to read The Blues Don’t Care by.

Duke Ellington – Almost anything by him is worth a listen. But you might want to start with the terrific Take the A Train.

Jimmy Dorsey – Half of the famous battling Dorsey brothers. I particularly like his sound. And it’s with him that Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell sang their classics Brazil and Tangerine and other songs.

Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell

Cab Calloway – A character over many decades. He even has a cameo in a Janet Jackson video: Alright, a great song and video, too. Also featuring the Nicholas Brothers and Cyd Charisse.

Billie Holiday – Take your pick. Too many great ones to choose from.

Herb Jeffries – AKA the Bronze Buckaroo, since he starred western “race movies”. His song Flamingo, recorded with Duke Ellington, is a classic and he even makes a cameo singing it in the novel.

Freddy Martin – Band leader, who for a time employed future talk show host and Jeopardy creator Merv Griffin as a singer with his band. And who maybe is an odd choice here. But I saw a clip of his band doing a two-piano piece called La Tempesta that is pretty amazing. And, since Bobby is a piano player this becomes his signature piece. I wish I could find a clip now.

Artie Shaw – Frenesi and Begin the Beguine: Two classics from the era.

The Andrews Sisters – Check out Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, but don’t stop there.

Tommy Dorsey – Opus One, I’ll Never Smile Again (vocals by Sinatra).

Lena Horne – Stormy Weather: What can you say—a classic.

Vera Lynn – The Forces Sweetheart in England. She sang a lot of popular songs during the war: I’ll Be Seeing You, We’ll Meet Again, The White Cliffs of Dover (written by Glenn Miller and Ray Eberle, which surprised me).

Kay Kyser and his Orchestra – Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.

Spike Jones and Donald Duck – Der Fuehrer’s Face. Satirical, funny song, that was born in a Donald Duck cartoon and made even more famous by Spike. You get a two-fer here, both versions: Mr. Spike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWF8iRCan7I

Mr. Duck:

Louis Jordan – G.I. Jive, written by Johnny Mercer. Recorded by many. Louis Jordan had a #1 hit with it.

Harry James – Sleepy Lagoon, from which the infamous Sleepy Lagoon incident took its name.

Benny Goodman – Sing Sing Sing, just an amazing and rousing piece of music. To me it’s sexier than some modern music with risqué lyrics. If this doesn’t get you at least tapping your toes you’re dead. And with Gene Krupa on drums, Harry James on trumpet and a band that can’t be beat. It was the Goodman band’s appearance at the Palomar Ballroom (in L.A. I might add) that really jump started the swing craze.

Count Basie – One O’Clock Jump, Basie’s theme song.

Glenn Miller – One of the most popular band leaders of the time, if not the most popular. Definitely the latter to listen to my mother. In the Mood was one of his biggest hits.

There’s so many more. It was really hard narrowing it down.

And here’s the last verse of Nat King Cole’s song:

And the nights don’t care who’s lonely,
Or whose tears are in whose eyes,
When someone’s heart is broken,
The blues are not to blame,
’Cause the blues don’t care who’s got ’em,
So they just added my name. 

If that isn’t noir I don’t know what is.

This is an album I got in the days of vinyl that I think is a pretty good starter collection and I think you can get it streaming:

So, like I said. It was pure torture listening to all this great music. Research, you know.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

Frank Zafiro grilled me for the Wrong Place, Write Crime podcast. I survived...and so did he. Hope you'll want to check it out. (And thanks for having me, Frank!)

https://soundcloud.com/frank-zafiro-953165087/episode-75-open-shut-w-paul-d-marks


Coming June 1st from Down & Out Books – The Blues Don't Care:

 “Paul D. Marks finds new gold in 40s’ L.A. noir while exploring prejudices in race, culture, and sexual identity. He is one helluva writer.”
                                                               —Michael Sears, author of the Jason Stafford series

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website  www.PaulDMarks.com

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The Starless Sea

Although most of my writing has been mystery novels and short stories, I have also published a number of contemporary novels, as well as short stories in other genres. For this reason, I am always interested in novels that combine genres or generally break the usual compositional rules.
Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea, a love letter to reading, books, and stories of all types, is a fine example. Distinguished by an intricate plot that mixes myth, fable, adventure, and mystery, its greatest strength turns out to be an incredibly detailed and imaginative setting.

That's right, setting.

We like to say that character and plot are absolute keys to success and normally they are. In the case of The Starless Sea, however, while the plot is effective and the protagonists, likable enough, what one is apt to remember is the creation of an alternate world, dominated by books and stories, far beneath our feet.

Clearly this world, without sun or visible means of ventilation or food production has many, many implausibilities, not to mention the sea of honey, the bees, the Owl King, the seemingly wise cats, and the immortal Keeper. But never doubt the power of a good storyteller. The Harbor where Zachery Ezra Rawlins enters (via an elevator in New York's Central Park) is described with such precision and such a wealth of detail, that it is easy to suspend disbelief. And well worthwhile, too, because that alternate world is where the various stories, some no more than a page or two, some newly-invented fairy tales, and some full-fledged adventures, all come together.

Zachery is a graduate student in Emerging Media, who finds that all he really wants to do is read after a romance goes sour. Scanning his university library's bookshelves, he chances upon Sweet Sorrows, an anonymous volume from a mysterious donor, that recounts an incident in his own life. This triggers a bibliographic mystery, which, in turn, leads him to adventures with members of a mysterious society and their enemies; to Dorian, to whom he will lose his heart, and to Mirabel who may be human or may be a metaphor, but who knows her way around the starless sea and its harbors.

Zachery winds up below ground, while in the upper world, life goes on for people like his friend Kat, an aspiring game designer also enthralled by fiction. At the same time, in another dimension, one of fables and myths, various stories unfold, interesting oddities what will all be eventually pulled into the overall narrative. This complicated structure must have presented many challenges for the author, but the breaks have a useful function. They interrupt what might have become an overly claustrophobic and precious atmosphere of the vast libraries of the starless sea venues, whose very physical structures are sometimes devised from stories on paper.

The narrative spine is provided by Zachery's adventures, interwoven with the experiences of the heroic Dorian; of Eleanor, who literally fell into the Harbor as a young child and of Simon, later her lover and man lost out of time, along with appearances by the enigmatic Mirabel and her antagonist Allegra, the Painter, who wants to preserve a world that both Mirabel and the Keeper know is in decline.

Erin Morgenstern

The line of the novel only becomes clear in its closing stages, but the adventures of the main characters prove strong enough to support the weight of fantasy and myth and, yes, the many metaphors, that fill the book. A clue to the author's ambitions comes when Kat reflects on the type of game she would like to construct: " Part spy movie, part fairy tale, part choose your own adventure. Epic branching story that doesn't stick to a single genre or one set path..." She concludes, "A book is made of paper but a story is a tree."

So speaks the video gamer.

But in The Starless Sea Erin Morgenstern has done something similar the old fashioned way with print on paper.

Florida by the Numbers

Thursday, a hundred rankled Orange County protestors and children converged on Orlando City Hall to demand an end to government stay-home oppression. They cried out against the horrors of forced unlabor. They sought to be loosed from the bonds of dictatorial rule and set free. And Mike Huckabee clamored in Florida courts to be unshackled from the Orwellian tyranny that required him to follow laws like ordinary, common citizens. He needed to be liberated from onerous beach-front activity restraints because… something.

When Michigan activists protested in drive-in Operation Gridlock, police noted that in their cars, citizens were inadvertently practicing safe, social distancing. Not so in Orlando, where unmasked citrus cankers breathed and sneezed and coughed at will. The numbers can’t be real: 2⅓-million cases globally, 33 383 in Canada, ¾-million in the US, 25½-thousand in Florida, 3000+ in Central Florida– apparently fake news, including 78 local deaths.

The last time I agreed with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer was, um, pretty much never, but damn, folks. We’re trying to save lives.

Central Floridians took matters a step further into the Twilight Zone. They contend Dr. Anthony Fauci is a lying, malevolent hoaxer who inexplicably holds the President’s ear, deliberately wreaking havoc at the Federal level. Fauci’s motives are, um, deep state, Obamacare-coddling, and a really nasty infection that afflicted Florida’s governor. Whatever, it demanded protesting.

By the Numbers

Politicians may choose to ignore the science, but it’s difficult to ignore the math. Updating as you read this, the count of cases and deaths are spooky.

Say, each coronavirus victim infects two other people, and those two each infect two others, etc. It doubles exponentially. (The reality is closer to 2½×, but 2× is scary enough and much easier to calculate.)

In an ancient tale from Persia (or India), a king agreed to pay the inventor of chess in rice, one grain on the 1^st square of the chessboard, double that (two) on the 2^nd square, double again (four) on the 3^rd square, and so on for all sixty-four squares. Beginning with Square Zero (think Patient Zero) each square would contain:

№		results in…		№		results in…		№		results in…
0		1		22		4 194 304		44		17 592 186 044 416
1		2		23		8 388 608		45		35 184 372 088 832
2		4		24		16 777 216		46		70 368 744 177 664
3		8		25		33 554 432		47		140 737 488 355 328
4		16		26		67 108 864		48		281 474 976 710 656
5		32		27		134 217 728		49		562 949 953 421 312
6		64		28		268 435 456		50		1 125 899 906 842 624
7		128		29		536 870 912		51		2 251 799 813 685 248
8		256		30		1 073 741 824		52		4 503 599 627 370 496
9		512		31		2 147 483 648		53		9 007 199 254 740 992
10		1 024		32		4 294 967 296		54		18 014 398 509 481 984
11		2 048		33		8 589 934 592		55		36 028 797 018 963 968
12		4 096		34		17 179 869 184		56		72 057 594 037 927 936
13		8 192		35		34 359 738 368		57		144 115 188 075 855 872
14		16 384		36		68 719 476 736		58		288 230 376 151 711 744
15		32 768		37		137 438 953 472		59		576 460 752 303 423 488
16		65 536		38		274 877 906 944		60		1 152 921 504 606 846 976
17		131 072		39		549 755 813 888		61		2 305 843 009 213 693 952
18		262 144		40		1 099 511 627 776		62		4 611 686 018 427 387 904
19		524 288		41		2 199 023 255 552		63		9 223 372 036 854 775 808
20		1 048 576		42		4 398 046 511 104				total:
21		2 097 152		43		8 796 093 022 208		•		18 446 744 073 709 551 615

The total, my children, if your eyes haven’t glazed over, is 2⁶⁴-1, or 18 446 744 073 709 551 615, eighteen quintillion. Legends disagree whether the king made the maths wiz an economic advisor or executed the smartass.

The numbers, which start out relatively flat, soon zoom out of control. Relating to coronavirus, say the 10^th generation victims infect a thousand more and the 12^th another four thousand. The 20^th level infects one million and the 30^th one trillion. This is why it’s critical to disrupt the spread by masks, isolation, thorough cleansing, and sterilizing public places like Washington. But you knew that, right?

Please take care.

The Left Behind

Many are all atwitter about stimulus checks and several states have moved to protect landlords and tenants. In the rush to pass legislation, Congress and legislatures overlooked some citizens, including many college students and working teens. But here an Florida, another group in dire need has been forgotten. Sean Baker even made a movie about them starring Willem Dafoe.

Stay safe and read on…

Downer Endings

As most of you know, we at this blog usually write about (1) mysteries or (2) writing or (3) mystery writing. And when the subject is writing, I've noticed that it's usually about either our own creations or about what it is that makes fiction (stories/novels/movies) effective and interesting and entertaining. (As if we know.)

Today I want to talk about stories that don't have happy endings. Movies, specifically. There are of course many of those, and some have endings that aren't just sad, they're downright depressing. Yes, I know, that might not be a good topic to focus on right now, during these uncertain times, but hey, I needed something to post today. Velma, our secretary and first-sergeant here at SleuthSayers, gets grumpy if I don't turn in my column.

For the record, I've always felt that the end of a story doesn't have to be either happy or sad (or even totally believable--look at The Black Stallion, or The African Queen)--but it does have to be satisfying. Every good story needs a problem for the hero/heroine to solve, and if by the end of the tale he doesn't get what he's been seeking, whether it's love or treasure or freedom or redemption or the world championship or whatever, the audience needs to understand why. Some of my favorite movies have clear, positive, cowboy-in-the-white-hat-wins endings. Everybody likes those. Other favorites of mine--Witness, Casablanca, Rocky, Vertigo, Hombre, Chinatown, Rain Man, and many others--end with the hero not getting what he wanted, or what he thought he wanted. But with those stories there was always a reason for that failure, and usually the outcome was for the greater good, or to teach him (and/or the audience) a life lesson. In Dead Poets Society, to mention just one example, the hero is fired from his job, but because of the way it was done the viewer leaves the theater feeling uplifted.

I once heard there are two words that come to mind when the subject is depressing endings: foreign films. That of course isn't always true, but I had to throw it in.

With regard to downer endings in general, I think they come in several flavors:



1. The death of the hero

Cool Hand Luke
Thelma and Louise
Braveheart
Saving Private Ryan
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Love Story
Bonnie and Clyde
Shane
Easy Rider
The Room
The Wild Bunch
Gran Torino

2. A continuation of the disaster/crisis

On the Beach
Night of the Living Dead
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Melancholia
Cloverfield
Fail-Safe
I Am Legend
The Happening
The Birds
Miracle Mile
The Road

3. An unresolved ending

No Country for Old Men
The French Connection
Blade Runner
2001: A Space Odyssey
Inception
The Blair Witch Project
The Wrestler
Doubt
Taxi Driver
The Florida Project

Barton Fink


4. A surprise ending

Shutter Island
The Mist
Planet of the Apes
Primal Fear
Fight Club
10 Cloverfield Lane
The Departed
Atonement
Seven
Soylent Green


NOTE: In my opinion, some of the above (Shane, No Country for Old Men, Seven, The Wild Bunch, Fail-Safe, etc.) were extremely good movies and some (The Happening, The Room, Love Story) were not. This isn't about good or bad or my idea of good or bad; we're just talking about endings.



Not that it matters, but I think the movie that had the most depressing ending ever was The Mist--probably because it was both tragic and needless. I enjoyed the story, but boy that ending was a punch in the gut. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. The odd thing is, the Stephen King novella from which it was adapted wasn't as bleak at the end. (On the flip side, the movie Cujo ended happy and King's novel Cujo ended sad.) The second most depressing ending I can remember was to one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen: They Shoot Horses, Don't They? But it was also satisfying in that it explained with crystal clarity, in its final thirty seconds, its mysterious title.

One more observation: Some movies with depressing subjects have upbeat endings (The Shawshank Redemption, Deep Impact, Ghost, Oklahoma Crude, Stand By Me); some fairly upbeat movies have depressing endings (Somewhere in Time, Titanic, King Kong, Million Dollar Baby); and let's face it, some depressing movies have depressing endings (Leaving Las Vegas, The Road, They Shoot Horses, The Elephant Man, The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream). Something for all tastes.

How do you feel about all this? What are some of your favorite downer endings? Which are the worst? Have you ever seen an otherwise good movie whose ending ruined it? Ever seen an otherwise bad movie whose ending saved it? How about those that started bad and went steadily downhill? Have any of your own stories and novels ended with a letdown?

I suppose, since I have nothing positive to add, that's the way I'm ending this column.

Stay safe!

Hack This

Manipulating time, space, characters, and settings are several of the logistical elements fiction writers juggle while revealing their story.

A story's minutia may not be as challenging to manage when an author writes chronologically. However, when the structure is more complicated, such as bouncing back and forth in time or by telling the story through multiple point of view characters, keeping track of details such as who did what, when and where can be tricky. How did the crime unfold? At what point did which character know which clue?

If you're lucky, any mix-up made will be passed off as a red herring. If not, you risk unwanted confusion, killing suspense, drawing the reader out of the story, or potentially spoiling a twist.  Savvy readers will call you out on your goofs every time.  Ouch.

What's a detail-challenged mystery writer to do?

Whether you are embarking on a new project or already revising, here are a few hacks that have helped me keep my writerly ducks in a row.

Write chronologically. I'm a chronic Plotter (except for the one novel I attempted to Pantster my way through, but I'll save that fiasco for another post). No matter how I envision the structure unfolding, I always write my first draft of any story chronologically. By doing so, each character--by default-- will never know more than what I've already revealed in the story/backstory. It also helps to keep my insider plotting information from seeping out too soon.

Color-coded sticky notes. I've written two (not yet published) novels and several short stories, which all utilized a time-hopping before/after narrative. Before and after what, you may ask? Usually some traumatic event.  In on particular novel, I braided three point-of-view characters on this before/after sequence and quickly learned I was juggling more than just a story-line. As you can imagine, each character's emotions, voice, and perspective, changed substantially before and after said event. Only a few chapters in, I soon realized that keeping track of six different voices was chaotic ambitious.

What did I do? I resurrected a favorite time-honored analog technique--sticky notes and a long piece of yarn. In this image of my dining room table, the horizontal blue yarn represented the novel's traumatic event (in this case, the death of one of the POV characters), all the notes above the yarn represent chapters occurring after said event, and all the notes beneath the yarn occurred before.  No surprise, each POV character has their own color (blue, orange, or yellow), and on the face of each note, I list the chapter's primary plot developments.  Here's my hack: I numbered each sticky note in their alternating before/after chapter sequence that I expected for the final draft, but then reordered them chronologically (all the *before* sticky notes followed by all the *after* ones) to finish writing my first draft.  Voila!

Graph Paper Timeline. In my work in progress thriller novel, the historical narrative spanned four generations of Slovak women surviving world wars, German occupation, and communist oppression. Even though I wrote the scenes chronologically, setting a fictional family among the first world atrocities of the twentieth century, I needed to be extra careful remembering which character had a living memory of current and past events. This time, my dining room table wasn't long enough for all the sticky notes I'd need for a one hundred year guide.

Instead, I taped together several pieces of graph paper. Each square represented one year, segmented off in five-year intervals.

Below my horizontal black timeline are all the European historical events I felt relevant enough to impact my characters' (fictional) lives. Above the line are the lifespans of my novel's primary characters (each is assigned a different color), which identified their major milestones (birth, marriage, children, death).

Finally, I drew vertical black lines intersecting my fictional and non-fiction events, one per historical chapter. This way, I was able to keep track of what current and historical details my characters would have known at any give chapter. Anything to the right hadn't happened yet. I found my timeline hack to be especially helpful during my not-so-linear revision process.

While nothing beats a good editor, fact-checker, or critique partner, creating scaffolding for your story can help you manage the unwieldy business of building a fictional world.

What writer hacks do you lean on to keep track of details?


PS – Let's be social:

• Twitter- @KKMHOO
• Facebook-  Kristin Kisska
• Instagram - @KristinKisskaAuthor
• Website- KristinKisska.com

The Pros and Cons of Tinnitus

I've written on this blog a number of times about the scourge of tinnitus, and how I've had to maneuver around it since I was four years old. I had German measles, and the resultant high fever did the nerve damage which has given me the constant companion of a ringing sound in my left ear for the fifty-one years since. If you'd like more general background on my battle to concentrate and actually write with this constant distraction in my head, you can find it at the other end of this link. If you're interested in hearing about the toll tinnitus takes on me, how exhausting it can be battling through it to really listen to others (a big part of my day gig) and yet how important it is to do precisely that, you can find that discussion here.

Today's post, while tinnitus-related, is a bit different. And in these trying times, when we need good things to talk about, let me just say this: this post is all about the positives.

Like George Benson. More on him in a bit. And my life-long love of music. More on that in a bit, too.

Yep. This guy.

"Positives and tinnitus," you say. And I hear your skepticism. But bear with me.

As I mentioned before in one of my previous posts on the subject: "I'm not saying there is anything good about having tinnitus. There isn't. It's a plague. I don't actually know what silence sounds like. And in addition to the ringing, I have significant hearing loss in my left ear."

The post I'm quoting from (which, again, can be found in its entirety here) was all about how tinnitus forced me to learn to be a better listener, to be more attentive, in all the forms that word itself takes. And while I still believe all of the above, that's not the positive I'm laying out here.

I reconciled myself to never being without tinnitus for even one second of my life many years ago. In my twenties, thirties and forties, I even began to be able to tune it out.

Until I became a father.

My son (who is turning eight in a couple of months) had a piercing shriek as a toddler which brought my tinnitus roaring back into the forefront of my hearing range. In the years since he learned to walk and stopped shrieking at that particularly maddening frequency, I've struggled to relegate tinnitus once more to the background. The ringing monster, it seems, is strong, and it's also pretty relentless.

This is not to say I can't do that. And it has gotten easier to do over time. Then again, it's always with me.

Or it was, until a week ago. (And at last we come, after a couple of false starts, to the true positive in this post!)

No, my tinnitus isn't cured. It's just been mitigated.

I now know what it's like to not hear tinnitus. And I have audio technology to thank.

I still don't hear silence. But thanks to a combination of the best streaming service out there and a birthday gift I recently gave myself, I can now hear a whole lot of what I've been missing (hearing loss, too, remember?), and tinnitus-free.

TIDAL

I subscribe to TIDAL, which is the brainchild of rapper and music mogul Jay-Z. As streaming services go, it's pretty impressive on a number of levels. Its profit-sharing model is far more generous to the musicians who generate the content it peddles to listeners like me, and I like that. The same cannot be said of Spotify (which is why Taylor Swift famously and unceremoniously pulled her content from that service several years back), Apple and Amazon Music, or any of the others out there. TIDAL also has a HiFi lossless audio option (for an in-depth discussion of digital music compression, and what lossless audio actually is, and how it's far superior to standard compression, click here for a link to an old CNET article which is worth your time and trouble.). For our purposes, and in the interest of brevity, suffice it to say that most of the processes of digitizing the sounds made by instruments, including the human voice, flattens out the sound at levels human beings aren't supposed to notice.

However, many of us do. Digital audio often feels flat to me. Like alot of medieval art, there isn't much depth of field to it. All of the elements come across at the same size and the same level, with no perspective, per se. I also often picture the experience of listening to digital music sliding across the surface of a glass table.

On the other hand you have lossless audio. Like vinyl before it, lossless audio preserves the topography of recorded sound, giving it the fullness, depth and richness that digital music can't match.

And nobody wants to see this

And yes, I know, we as a society make fun of "vinyl snobs," dismissing people who prefer its sound, and rhapsodize at tiresome length about it, applying awkwardly fitting adjectives such as "warmth," etc., as somehow pretentious. They're frequently grouped in with lovers of hipster beards or man buns.

Well, I'm none of those. I'm a mid-fifties music lover with low-end hearing loss and a constant ringing in my left ear. So if there's a music delivery system out there which is technologically advanced enough to help me reshuffle the aural deck which has been stacked against me since before I started kindergarten, guess what? I'm all in.

Which is why I pay $19.99 per month for TIDAL's "HiFi Lossless Audio" option. Paired with my Sonos speaker system, it's helped me hear things I might otherwise miss. In fact the Sonos soundbar my wife recently helped me sync up with the television in our living room has helped make it so I don't need the subtitles. Not even for the British stuff!

Yep, clear as a bell, and with a Yorkshire accent, that is saying something!

This experience got me thinking: if Sonos could help, what might the right pair of headphones do to help me experience sound more like people with normal hearing levels did?

As it turns out, a whole lot.

So I stared doing research. I have some great 1MORE bluetooth earbuds and a pair of Beats headphones which are wonderful for shutting out extraneous noise when I'm in a loud room. But what about headphones intended solely to enhance the sound piping through them, as opposed to those intended (like my Beats and my wife's awesome Bose headphones) to cancel outside noise?

Enter Massdrop and Sennheiser. These two companies joined forces on the Massdrop X Sennheiser HD 6XX headphones. They're open-backed, so, as the dozens of reviews I pored over noted, they wouldn't be all that effective in a noisy room. But then, the noise I was looking for them to cancel out isn't external.

They're priced on the low end for "high end" headphones, and stack up well against other models which retail for five times their price. So I decided to take a risk and get them as a birthday present to myself.

The result? Well, let me sum up with an excerpt from the conversation I had with myself after giving these beauties a try:

"How did I know...this was just what I always wanted? I am so thoughtful! Thank me....very much...."

All kidding aside, I have to say, when I got these headphones out of the box, plugged in and gave them a test, I honestly got emotional. My wife was sitting right next to me, and saw me tear up. The experience was that powerful.

And that's where George Benson comes in. I chose his song "Give Me The Night" as my first listen with these new headphones.

Now, this song came out in 1980. Over the intervening forty years I have listened to it at least hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. And yet, with  the combination of these headphones and the lossless audio, I was hearing this song for the first time.

Suddenly I could hear instruments which had always been buried too deeply in the mix for me with my hearing impairment, to ever pick out before. I was experiencing Benson's guitar riffs played alongside and beneath his vocal for the first time. AND, even more remarkable: I was not hearing any tinnitus in this "new" mix.

For the FIRST TIME since I was four years old!

So. Yeah. I got emotional.

Every now and again you hear about someone who has been deprived of one of their senses (usually sight) suddenly regaining all or part of that lost sense, and it's nearly always portrayed as an overwhelming experience. Well, I get that now. Because I've had that experience.

And while it's true that this enhancement to my hearing is only conditional and only part-time, and I'm still legally deaf in one of my ears most of the time, man, I will take it. I mean, imagine, if you will, getting back something which has been taken from you a piece at a time over decades, and getting it back all in one moment.

Because now I know what I've been missing all these years.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna wrap up for now. After all, I've got a lot of old favorites to hear all over again for the very first time.

See you in two weeks!

My Misadventure on West Thirty-Fifth Street

Yesterday the mysterious Press published The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe,  which Publishers Weekly described as, ahem, "superb."  And who am I to argue?

I have a story in the book and I am racking my brains to say anything about Rex Stout and his wonderful creation that I didn't say here or here or even here. 

So let's take a different approach.  Last year Josh Pachter told me he was going to be editing a book of  different authors' takes on the world's fattest master detective and asked if I had anything to contribute.

I had to regretfully decline.  I don't really write parodies and I am not such a fan of pastiches (which I define as writing another story in the style of an already existing body of work.)

But then I realized that there was a third possibility: a homage.  To me this means you muck around in another writer's universe but don't create another work of the type that writer has already produced.

It can be a subtle difference, I admit.   If I write another Sherlock Holmes story, attempting to keep as closely to Conan Doyle's style as possible, that's a pastiche.  But when Nicholas Meyer wrote The Seven Percent Solution, rewriting the history of Holmes and adding Sigmund Freud to the story, that was a homage.  Got it?

And it occurred to me that I could look at Wolfe and friends from a different viewpoint than Stout had done.  So I told Josh to give me a little time before he started the presses, so to speak.

An important fact about great literary characters: seen objectively a lot of them are annoying as hell.  Seriously, how long could you have tolerated the smug genius of Holmes before you strangled him?  How about Rumpole, Columbo, or House, M.D.?  Even Huckleberry Finn might have been pretty exasperating.  All of them are great to visit, but you sure  wouldn't want to live there.  As Ogden Nash wrote: "Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance."

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote a number of books about the Howard Families. To oversimplify, these are people who are much longer-lifed than most folks.  The one member of the group who never seems to age at all uses the name Lazarus Long and he is virtually worshipped by his fellows.

But, boy, he seems truly irritating to me.

In Heinlein's book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, we finally see Long through the eyes of a non-Howard character and guess what? He loathes the guy.  I felt vindicated.   

So I wrote a story that looked at the residents of that famous brownstone on West 35th Street from the viewpoint of their neighbors who had to put up with late night meetings, the occasional shooting or bombing... And Josh made "The Damned Doorbell Rang" the last story in the book.

I call that superb.

Byte Me

Back up your files!

So many stories are no longer accessible.

I’ve been hearing this since the advent of personal computers, and I’ve always tried to adhere to what is, on the surface, good advice.

I no longer have the cassette tapes from my first computer—a Radio Shack TRS-80—but I have a collection of 5.25” floppy disks, 3.5” diskettes, Zip drives, and CDs containing word-processing files created with WordStar and various iterations of Microsoft Word on a variety of PCs and Macintoshes. Except for the CDs, I no longer have any working computers that can read the disks, and the self-extracting archives I created to store large documents and then copied over each time I’ve upgraded to a new computer no longer self-extract. So, even though I have backed up much of what I’ve written, I can’t access the work from the first few, post-personal computer, decades of my writing career.

More than four decades of writing.

On the other hand, almost everything I’ve archived on paper in my six files cabinets is still readable. The few exceptions are contracts I copied using my fax machine before I had regular access to a photocopier or my own copiers and scanners. (Faxes and copies created using thermal fax machines slowly darken over time.)

BLAST FROM THE PAST

How we submitted electronic ms.

Back in the day—sometime after the advent of personal computers with word processing programs and before the use of email for manuscript submission—several of the publications for which I wrote liked to receive electronic files on diskettes. So, I prepared a label with my (no longer valid) contact information as well as information about the disk and what was on it. I’m unsure why the disk pictured was returned to me, but apparently I submitted a story titled “I Hired a Private Eye,” which I saved in Rich Text Format as a file named PrivateEye.rtf on an IBM-formatted diskette.

MUSEUM PIECES

I’ve written before about my typewriters—“Three Typewriters and a Desk”—but I’ve never written about my computers. Alas, they have mostly just been tools to which I have no inherent emotional attachment.

My "computer museum."

My first personal computer was a TRS-80 connected to a small black-and-white television I used as a monitor and to a cassette tape player I used to back up files. I was never able to use it to write, and my most significant accomplishment was learning enough BASIC to create a short, text-based choose-your-own-adventure type game.

My next computer was an IBM PC, provided by a client who subcontracted consulting work to me, and since then I’ve worked my way through several brands of PCs before transitioning to Macintoshes and working my way through several generations of Macs.

I still use both PCs and Macintoshes on a regular basis, but the Mac has become my computer of choice, and I no longer own a functioning PC. Temple calls the collection of dead PCs in the garage my “computer museum.”

PLAN AHEAD

So, backing up your files is still valid advice—especially backing up unsold work and unfinished works-in-progress—but think ahead. How will you access those files next year or next decade when the software used to create the files no long exists and the media they are stored on is no longer accessible?

I certainly wish I’d planned ahead.

“Sleepy River” appears in the May/June 2020 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, due out later this month.

Spare Time and Spare Parts

We all need to fill much too much spare time right now, but social distancing is easier for a writer because it's part of our life anyway. Unfortunately, I may have domesticated Zach Barnes and Woody Guthrie too much and fear that I'll turn them into family sitcoms, so, for the first time since 2003, I have no novels in progress. I have a few ideas for short stories and a novella, but a few weeks ago I turned to the Nostalgia Plan, AKA Recycling 101.

I store pretty much everything I cut on flash drives or external hard drives: a line of dialogue or description, scenes I cut from novels or short stories, an interesting character, projects I abandoned, and even stories rejected so often I ran out of places to send them. I cannibalize enough to make it worthwhile.

I published Blood on the Tracks, the first Woody Guthrie novel, in 2013, but I wrote the first version of that story late in 2003. In various forms, revisions, and under at least four titles, the book(s) received over 110 rejections.

Sifting through the wreckage, I found a complete MS called The Cheater, an earlier version of what eventually saw print. Between 2006 and 2008, I pitched it to 58 agents. Interestingly, three of them asked for a full MS, another asked for 100 pages, and two others asked for 50 pages or the first three chapters. They all turned it down, usually without comment, but one with the kind of rejection that makes writers crazy: "You're a good writer and there's a lot to like here, but I can't sell this."

No further explanation.

Eleven years later, I still don't know why that MS was rejected, but I suspect that it was because I changed genre in mid-story. The premise was that the PI who would later become Woody Guthrie met Megan Traine at their high school reunion and they teamed up to solve a murder that involved one of the their classmates. Alcoholism and domestic abuse were important themes, and I suspect agents freaked when the cozy went south.

A few weeks ago, I went through the book again. I even found two pages of revision notes from 2010, when I considered revising that 78K-word story for my then-publisher, who had a 70K-word limit.

The cozy high school reunion idea is autobiographical. I met the inspiration for Megan Traine at my own reunion. Although we graduated together (Our class graduated 691 students), we never met in school, and she became a session musician in Detroit. The reunion idea was the crux of several versions of the book, but I finally decided that was the problem and abandoned it for Blood on the Tracks. 

The Cheater, which I also sent out twice as Alma Murder, presented another problem. The PI was from Connecticut and his name was Erik Morley, but Megan Traine was constant through all  versions of the book. Her character deepened, but changed very little between 2003 and her real debut ten years later. I figured if I put her in Detroit with a different lover, she'd look a little slutty, so I decided to change her name and background. The plot would still work, and I liked the POV of the classmate, a woman accused of killing her abusive husband. She was a lawyer and a functioning alcoholic. So much for the cozy, right?

I studied my revision notes, revised them some more, added new ideas, and rewrote about 40 pages of the book. I changed Megan Traine's name and background and cut all the music scenes from earlier versions (Erik Morley still played guitar, another constant with Woody and one of the few things he had in in common with me).

It was like sticking my hand into a garbage disposal.

The more I read, the more I realized that Meg and music generated some of the best scenes in that book. Changing her would force me to re-write or cut parts that gave all the characters more depth.

Fourteen years ago, I loved the book and the characters and we were a team. The rewriting. . . not so much. It became a chore instead of a passion. I stuck it out for about three weeks, then remembered the advice all doctors have at the top of the list.

First, do no harm.

I was mutilating something I loved and the changes would make it different, but not better. I decided to leave the book alone.

Maybe I'll publish it someday as an eBook, and UR-version of Blood on the Tracks. If I do, Alma Murder still works as a title. Or, maybe, I'll just leave it sleeping on the hard drive where it's happy.

I was surprised that a 14-year-old MS still felt like I actually knew what I was doing. Now, the biggest change would be a global edit to replace the double-space after end punctuation. And maybe to eliminate a few semi-colons.  I have several short stories on that same disc that don't merit reworking. I guess this particular story was more important to me.

Samuel Johnson said that only a blockhead writes for any reason other than money. But sometimes money's not enough, either. Sometimes we do it for love.

What do you have in your closet?

Surviving COVID19

COVID19 is a dangerous adversary and everyone is discussing how stressful they are finding living in the age of COVID19.

There have been many excellent recommendations on how to reduce stress. Many of these recommendations have focused on stress reduction strategies like exercise.

Given my area is mental health, I would like to add to the conversations on stress by presenting a different lens.

First, let’s talk about what stress is and is not, because to tackle something one must always know what one is getting into the ring with. 

In 1936, biologist Hans Selye described a common physiological response in rats subjected to harmful factors and he named this the stress response. “The main features of the syndrome were suppression of the immune system, ulceration of the lining of the stomach and small intestine, and activation of the two … stress-response systems.”

Over the last 80 years, there has been extensive documentation of the widespread damage of stress on our body and brain.

So stress doesn’t just feel bad - it is really bad for you. Reducing stress can save your life and a sense of control is the one way cortisol and other factors provoked by stress can be reduced and the health impacts minimized.


What is crucial is that stress is not just bad things happening to you – it is bad things happening with a sense of having no control over these things.


You might be thinking: if control is crucial to managing stress, how on earth can you control a global outbreak of a virus? How can we control not only the illnesses and deaths but also the economic consequences on such a large scale. Control? It seems like a rather ludicrous word in the face of all this.

All true points. Thank you for making them.

My answer is to introduce some people whom I have known that belong to “The Greatest Generation”- those who lived through World War II. They earned their name because of their tenacity and 'can do' attitude. They did not enter the war with these attitudes but, rather, they were forged by the hardships they faced.

My father-in-law, Bill, and his twin brother were pilots in World War II. Bill’s brother died when his plane went down in Europe and he was never able to speak of him again – it was as if the grief of his loss had torn out his heart. Bill went on to get an engineering degree, marry, have children and live a life of laughter and love.

My mother-in-law, Verna, stayed home and helped in many ways the war effort. She told me stories of how they would try to get butter to make her beloved pastries, how they would save things so they could send packages to those who were fighting along with letters. The volume of letters diminished over time because many of the young men she grew up with died.


Neither of them had any ability to stop the war or save those they loved. Both were irreparably broken by the losses they sustained. Both walked into life after the war with a strong stride. They survived the war by small acts and large ones that were all acts of resistance. Bill was a man who embraced competence – taking care of his family and being the one who got things done – and Verna was loving, taking everyone under her wing. Perhaps those characteristics were their tribute to those they lost and a way to ensure that they would keep those around them safe.

Let me introduce you to Lili. She was Jewish and was sent away from her parents as a small child into hiding. She lost her parents and everyone in her family. I learned later that she had anxiety and many difficulties all her life in response to this, but what I remember about her was that she was one of the kindest people I have ever known. If the world robs you of so much through cruelty, kindness is the ultimate act of defiance.

None of them had control over global events that ended up at their door. What they did was to take control during and after in small and large ways. Ultimately, their characters are a testament to how they became known as the greatest generation, because it was not what they endured but how they endured it that defined them.

Back to COVID19. We have no control over when we will have a vaccine and this nightmare will end. However, the reality is that we have never had control over large global events and this is no different. What we do have control over is our small corner of this planet and that is where we fight. 

Much has been discussed about the courage and tenacity of my colleagues during COVID19. When I speak with them, they talk about doing what they have always done; medicine with the patient in front of them. They read voraciously about this virus, they consult others for more information, they organize their homes to have decontamination zones to keep their family safe and do many other things to manage their corner of the planet.

Many of my non-medical friends are reading and watching the news to educate themselves, they are designing new ways to get groceries safely and clean them down. They are reaching out to friends and family to inform them, check up on them and laugh with them.

When we talk about the new normal – it is the ability of each of us to have small and large acts of defiance and resistance to keep those we love safe.


We will not recover without scars. We can only hope to minimize the number we lose and comfort those who have lost people. There will be anguish: times when we wake up in the middle of the night drenched in fear. When we emerge from this - we can do so with a character forged by how we responded to COVID and how we controlled our corner of the world.