Thank God for the Man Who Put the White Lines on the Highway

 

Every city has its sound. That's part of what goes into the setting. There are jazz towns like New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco. Memphis is all about country and roots-based rock. Nashville owns country. I won't call Seattle grunge, but Seattle still burns the punk torch.

Living here in Cincinnati, I sometimes lament that I moved to a "wedding singer" town. The bands here all play cover tunes, although my former spouse is married to a guy who plays some tasty Southern Rock originals. (Link at the end of the article, with a few others you might like.) Some cities are like that, content to have bands that do nothing but cover tunes. Which is sad because I really think rock would benefit from hearing originals from the Rusty Griswolds, Naked Karate Girls, or the Menus, all highly regarded Cincinnati bands that sometimes sound better than the ones they cover.

But, if I haven't beaten you over the head with it recently enough, I grew up in the multi-county empire known as Cleveland. And Cleveland gave us not only the name "rock and roll," it gave us Kansas transplant Joe Walsh, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the spell he put on you, half the members of The Cars, and Nine Inch Nails. (Yes, they started in Cleveland as an offshoot of another band Trent Reznor played in, the Exotic Birds.) Unfortunately, it also gave us Eric Carmen with the song that caused a million wrists to be slit, "All by Myself." (Thanks, Eric. The makers of prozac, Xanax, and Paxil thank you.)

It also gave us one Michael Stanley Gee.

Who?

Better known as Michael Stanley. Of the Michael Stanley Band. Those of us of a certain age will remember three of his songs. Those of us from the Midwest of that same certain age will remember quite a few more. (Working from home, his last regional hit, "Shut Up and Leave Me Alone" gets put on heavy rotation on Spotify whenever the sales team has a "crisis.") The first is that early eighties guilty pleasure, "He Can't Love You Like I Love You." Michael doesn't sing on this one, but he is memorable.

As you can see from the video, the city's blue-collar, manufacturing ethic is on full display here. "He Can't Love You..." was a fun song and a breakout hit for MSB (as we know them). Joe Walsh and Eric Carmen left town to make it big, as would Trent Reznor when NIN gained traction. MSB insisted on staying put. After all, you can travel to New York to record and tour anywhere. Why should they abandon their hometown? Over on the country side, Willie Nelson did not really gain success until he went home to Austin, Texas. That might have contributed to their difficulties breaking the charts.

The second song is Cleveland at heart, a jilted boyfriend making the long, lonely drive home during a snowstorm. "Lover" has a line that, if you're from that area, you hear over and over every winter. "Thank God for the man who put the white lines on the highway." Even before I knew what noir meant, I thought the song was noir as hell.

It's companion song, "In the Heartland," is pretty much their signature tune and explicitly mentions local spots, including the "boys on Mayfield" looking for a fight. Readers of Les Roberts's work will recognize that particular street as the turf of Cosa Nostra off-shoots, the Mayfield Road Mob, purveyors of fine illegal booze from 1920 through 1933.

Of course, I wax nostalgic about one of my graduating class's high school heroes as Michael Stanley pass away a couple weeks ago. After he called it a career, Stanley joined local classic rock station WNCX as an on-air personality and worked in television. He was a natural, an affable, down-to-Earth guy who refused to surrender his blue collar roots. We still love him for it.

So, perhaps it's fitting that I leave you with MSB's final hit, an ode to his hometown that should have been the state rock and roll song. (I still haven't forgiven Governor Celeste for picking "Hang on, Sloopy." Jerk.) Because like Michael Stanley, Cleveland is still very much "My Town."

For that tasty Southern rock I mentioned, check out the Russell Jinkins XL Band on Facebook.

 

And for more Northcoast rock, check out Northcoast Shakedown. No, I had nothing to do with the band. Except sharing DNA with the oh-so-talented lead guitarist, Chris Hottle. That, and I might have signed off on the name.

A Kinder, Gentler...Bootlegger

Roy Olmstead

 Two weeks ago I wrote about rum runners and the ships that anchored out into international waters anddelivered illegally imported booze to them. This week I've decided to move ashore and talk about the guys who offloaded the hootch and ran the considerable risks (at equally considerable profit) of delivering to a thirsty nation.

And one guy in particular. Ex-cop and "gentleman bootlegger" Roy Olmstead.

Born and raised in Nebraska, Olmstead moved to Seattle in 1904 (aged 18) and worked in a shipyard before joining the Seattle Police three years later, in 1907. Within ten years, Olmstead was a lieutenant. That lasted for three years, because once Prohibition kicked in Olmstead realized the massive amount of money to be made supplying illegal liquor to the masses, and began a side business running hootch. 

And this very week in March of 1920, Olmstead was nearly caught in a raid. He escaped, but was recognized by one of his fellow officers, and was arrested at his home the next morning. The whole escapade cost Olmstead a $500 fine and his job.

Rather than be discouraged, Olmstead threw himself whole-heartedly into the illegal liquor distribution business, and over the next five years became one of the most successful 'leggers in America. By 1925 his operation was one of the biggest employers in the Puget Sound region, had started up his own successful radio station (which his wife largely ran out of their home, and which he used to help get coded messages to his contacts in the liquor business.).

He delivered to such infamous speakeasies as the "Bucket of Blood" (actual name: the Hong Kong Chinese Society). He put cops (LOTS of them) on his payroll to act as lookouts for his operations. He eventually had his own boat, the "Zambesie," which he sent to pick up shipments in the Haro Strait.

Olmstead always seemed able to either stay one step ahead of or buy off both the feds and local law enforcement. This included the Canadian authorities, who taxed liquor bound for the States at a higher rate than booze bound for places like Mexico (after all, it was only illegal to bring liquor into the U.S. In Canada there was no law against exporting to the States.). So Olmstead would hire ships in Vancouver, fill them to the gunwales with booze, forge papers saying they were bound for Mexico, then have them sailed down into Puget Sound and offloaded with no one the wiser.

And he managed this without resorting to the varieties of violence so common everywhere else in America that Prohibition ran up against organized crime only too willing to break legs to get what it wanted. And no prostitution, racketeering, no other illegal activities. Just running booze. The best booze money could buy. Olmstead didn't cut his liquor with furniture polish. Only the best for his customers.

And it worked. Eventually he was profiting to the tune of $200,000 a month. 

It couldn't last.

The Seattle Police tapped his phone. In 1925 Olmstead got hauled before a federal grand jury on two counts of conspiracy to violate the Prohibition Act. He was convicted, sentenced to four years in prison, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court (Olmstead v. United States), claiming that the wiretap evidence was inadmissible. (The Supreme Court disagreed.)

Olmstead went to jail at McNeil Island in 1927, once his appeals had run their course. He was a model prisoner, served his entire four years, converted to Christian Science and even testified on the government's behalf on a number of subsequent federal cases. 

He learned carpentry in prison and once he was released in 1931, he began volunteering in a number of prison outreach programs, focusing specifically on dealing with alcoholism. He taught Sunday school. For the remaining thirty-six years of his life (he died aged 79 in 1966), Olmstead remained popular with the community, never losing the famous charm that had stood him in such good stead while he was the so-called "King of the Bootleggers."

Roy Olmstead on his way to jail in 1927. Smiling.

By Way Of No Explanation

  I'm working on a story with a twist ending and I am trying to figure out how much to explain.  It's a tricky thing.  Wherever I draw the line there will be some people who are baffled and others who find it blindingly  obvious.

All twist endings are surprises but not all surprise endings are twists.  Have you ever read a story or watched a movie and immediately wanted to start it over to see if  the author played fair, or notice what you missed?  That is a twist ending.

Ideally you want the twist to happen with a bang.  You don't want to have to spend pages and pages explaining it.  It should be a self-evident flash of lightning, not a lengthy stretch of exposition.  There is a reason everyone loves the end of The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, but people complain about the last few minutes of Psycho (after the shocking climax).

And so it is with my story.  I could end by taking five hundred words to say: "Years ago Character A did x to Character B.  And, in the present day, because Character C is related to B, he chose to do y."  

Instead I pared it down a single sentence nine words long.  They are carefully chosen, fully foreshadowed words, but only nine of them.  (By the way, I generally get paid by the word.  See the sacrifices I make for my art?)

If this thing gets published I am sure some readers will get frustrated.  Some will go back and read the story again to see that it all makes perfect sense.  And some will be delighted.

Or maybe the editors will hate it and I'll have to start over.  Wouldn't that be a twist?

By the way, yesterday Trace Evidence, the blog of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, published a new piece of mine about the difficulties of writing a series about the same character.  Enjoy.

Drafts? I Don’t Keep No Stinking Drafts!

When Eve Fisher wrote “I’m so relieved to hear that I’m not the only one with 50 versions of the same damn story on my hard drive” in her response to Bob Mangeot’s SleuthSayers post “Don’t Make Me Turn This Car Around,” I spit my drink across the room. Then I reread Bob’s post and realized I’d missed his mention of having “75 versions” of a story on his hard drive.

Clearly, Bob, Eve, and writers like them live in a different universe than I do. I only ever have a single draft of a story—the current draft, which, when I finish fussing with it, becomes the final draft.

I’ve found that keeping multiple versions of a story encourages me to look backward while I’m working—How did I handle the second scene in version three? Was the dialog in the fifth scene more pithy in version twelve? Why did I insert so many exclamation points in version twenty-seven?—when what I should do, and what I try to do, is constantly look forward.

Perhaps part of the reason I don’t keep multiple versions of stories is that I never actually have multiple versions. I write and edit as I go so that my first complete draft is my final or near-final draft. Often all that’s required at that point is a serious, in-depth proofreading.

Not all writers work as I do. Some pound their way through a draft, dumping everything into it as they go. Then they create a second draft, rearranging scenes, rethinking their characters’ motivations, revising so many bits and pieces that the second draft may actually be a different story. Then they do the same again for a third draft.

DRAFTED

Okay, I lied. There are two exceptions to my having only one version of a story:

1) Early in my career I wrote for men’s magazines. Many of the stories were equally appropriate for genre magazines with one exception: graphic sex. So, I sometimes created two versions of a story: one with graphic sex intended for men’s magazines and one without graphic sex intended for genre magazines. Sometimes the version with sex sold; sometimes the version without sex sold. (And sometimes I sold first rights to the version with sex and later sold the sexless version as a “slightly modified” reprint.)

2) When I receive a copyedited ms. from an editor, I maintain my original version until we’ve completed the editing process and the story’s been published. Then I delete my version and retain only the published version.

DO YOU FEEL A DRAFT?

So, one-and-done or multiple versions? Is one method better than the other?

Nah.

Whether you’re a one-and-done writer or a 75-versions writer, the end result is likely the same: a publishable story.

And that’s what we’re all striving for.

The Waiting

 by Steve Liskow

Lately, I've seen writers posting at various sites that they're having trouble writing now. The lockdown has made them stir-crazy or they miss their friends or the family is becoming too needy. They need interaction to get ideas or to keep the energy flowing, and their output has suffered.

I'm not writing much now, but for a different reason. Up until last year, I usually produced a novel and three or four short stories during the year. Last year, for the first time since about 2004, I wrote no novel. I wrote a novella and sixteen short stories. This year, I wrote two short stories in January and have finished a novella, but I haven't writen any other fiction in several weeks.

I have vague ideas for two or three anthology calls, but they aren't coming together the way they usually do, and I think I know why. At least, I know where I'm casting the blame.

Last year, I sold more short stories than usual.

BUT...

Sanford Meisner once defined acting as characters responding to each other's actions. When there's nobody out there reacting, it's hard to act...or write. You write a story, polish it, send it out, then...nothing.

Waiting for a response that never comes is like playing racquetball into Jell-O. If someone rejects a story, I can react by sending it somewhere else, but when nobody responds, I can't do anything. Since last July, I have sent out 22 submissions (a good week for John Floyd or Michael Bracken). Four were rejected and four were accepted, but after eight months, fourteen are still in limbo and it's paralyzing me. 

I used to work on a novel between submissions but  without that big project to occupy me, time crawls by like a glacier. I respect the markets that say "no simultaneous submissions"--which may be stupid or naive, and is certailnly counter-productive--so I don't send a story out again until I get that first response. A few stories are at anthology markets where the deadline is still in the future, so I won't hear about them for a while. And a few are at a market that is notorious for slow responses. Others are at a market that only responds "if interested." 

Significantly, both those two are PRINT markets. I usually send stories to them first, then sent the stories to other markets if they're rejected. That's going to change soon, though.

Two online markets that reply quickly--and have bought several of my stories--have raised their pay rates significantly in the last few months. I've moved them to the top of my submissions list. It's also true that many stories I write for anthologies get picked up elsewhere. 

Yes, I sold two stories ten days ago (A personal first: two sales in one day), but it's even worse than when I used to audition for roles in theater. Then, if you didn't hear anything in a week or so, you could assume you weren't cast and move on. 

As Tom Petty said,  

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you get one more yard/

You take it on faith, you take it to the heart

The waiting is the hardest part.

COVID-19: Lessons learned and justice are not the same

The World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020 and by March 11, 2021, 2.6 million people have died from Covid-19.

On the news and social media on March 11th, 2021, passing the year mark of this pandemic was the subject of numerous discussions. There were many honouring those who died. Many pointed to the tsunami of grief, the bravery of our frontline healthcare workers, the generosity of neighbourhoods, friends and family.

As I was falling asleep that evening my thoughts went to crime and justice. 

When people die or are harmed by the actions of others, they want justice.

Elderly parents have died in Long Term Care Homes where families felt they were not cared for or protected. Doctors, nurses, personal support workers, paramedics and other have been infected because they did not have adequate personal protective equipment – some have died and others are still suffering from Post-Acute Covid Syndrome. Many others have been infected and died because they were told that they didn’t need masks to protect them from COVID-19, until they were finally told to wear masks. Many are now waiting for available Covid vaccines but some are getting infected and dying while they wait. 

Who is brought to justice when it is clear that deaths are clearly cause by the actions of others? 

There will be commissions on how we care for and protect the elderly. There will be analysis on why aerosol and asymptotic spread were not identified earlier. There will be some form of reckoning on the lack of PPE for healthcare workers who were forced to work without proper protections. These will all be filed under lessons learned to maybe influence how we move forward. And maybe is the operative word.

What I worry about most is whether those who lost loved ones, those who still remain ill from post-acute COVID will feel that justice is served? Lessons learned serve those who come after us, but what about those who bear the scars of this year? What do they need to move forward?

Here I came to my worst conclusion in this line of thought: those responsible for true harm, whether they be politicians, organizations that said they would care for our elderly or those who made decisions that killed our health care workers-will not be held to account. They will be responsible for a large number of deaths through their actions and nothing will come of it. There will be no justice.

Let’s roll back to the beginning: if someone harms another, we demand justice. How does it work if many people make decisions and take actions that harm hundreds if not thousands of people. Under the cover of group work, apparently nothing.

Crimes are punished in part as a deterrent for future crimes. I hope we don’t learn that mistakes that cost lives can be done with impunity if they are done by governments, organizations like Long Term Care Homes and those who are responsible for safely equipping healthcare workers. 

So, at the end of a painful year full of death and suffering, of course my mind turned to crime. The worst kind: those that are not punished. 

As I fell asleep, I thought about how, in a pandemic, we can discuss the bad things that happened. We cannot really get justice. No one is really responsible. We will simply have some large files on lessons learned that may simply be ignored anyway. 

Now, late night thoughts are sometimes morbid. I hope I’m wrong.

Don't Make Me Turn This Car Around

I’ve convinced myself–against all experience–that Asheville is four hours from my driveway. Every trip, I’m cranking the music and thinking about the Blue Ridge fading off like haze, line after line in their peek at eternity. Yep, just four hours away. As a scientific fact, the trip from south Nashville is five hours minimum–with luck and a heavy foot. You get the Lookie Lous gawking around Pigeon Forge, then flatbeds loaded with timber crawl up the steep grades. Next, a malingering road construction project where I-40 tunnels into North Carolina. I've become certain it isn’t a construction project at all. There’s never actual construction. No, it’s a social experiment to document how drivers come unglued when jammed together into one lane for zero reason. Another time chunk gone. I pull into Asheville ruing whatever the hell happened to that quick escape east.

My writing works the same way. I set out after a shiny idea, but the problems start soon enough. The tone is off. The POV isn’t working. The plot takes a bad turn. All that can be fixed, but also like those Carolina trips, it’ll take longer than I think.

My first published crime story was in MWA’s 2014 anthology Ice Cold. I had a shiny idea indeed, plus a Shakespearian body count and key death at the end. I edited it mercilessly. And quickly, as I recall it today, except I count seventeen manuscript versions on my hard drive. My story in next month's AHMM clocks in at a svelte thirteen versions. My max on a published story? 75 versions on my hard drive.

Some process lessons from along my journeys:

Begin with the End in Mind

Yes, this old saw. Bear with me. I’m not talking killer twists but personal intentionality. What does a writer want out of writing a story? Creative bliss? Cool. My hard drive also has those stories. The pure joy of that is an amazing gift. Or is a piece meant for an audience? How competitive or specific an audience? Once a potential editor and their readers get involved, they become your boss. They deserve edits with their quality standards and enjoyment in mind, edits that may wilt creative bliss into drudgery. 

Drudgery also describes minutes lost to Knoxville traffic if you hit it at the wrong time. Maybe I have hard feelings about that.

This Is the Best Thing I’ve Ever Written

I considered it a healthy sign as writing growth when I stone cold understood that an early draft wasn’t anywhere near as groovy as my creative high believed. I might’ve had a great concept, say like to get to Asheville in four hours, but reality and hard work comes around as it must.

Take that story in Ice Cold. I believed that key death made for a Frankly Amazing Ending until an editor demonstrated--mere days before the deadline--that it was a Terrible Ending and also Physically Impossible. Cue more versions, the fast kind. 

Unobjectively loving a piece is my signal that the draft objectively stinks. It means I’m still thinking about me, not a reader. It means I haven’t pushed an idea enough to risk hating it.

Be Constructive with Your Readback

At some point, I find myself tweaking a manuscript here and there, but the creative momentum is kaput. Either it needs more critique or else a deeper think. Surgical procedure deep, and if so, I’ll print the thing and read it aloud. Many times. As an earth-friendly step, I’ll let Word’s readback feature sub in for an occasional cycle. Typos and clunky sequences ring plain. Missing layers and connections emerge. That’s the story finding its core. Oh, darling passages will remind me that of course I can’t cut them, and in a joy-crushing grind, out they go. I’ll keep iterating until I do hate the piece and might pitch the computer out the window rather than read one more word.

This Is the Worst Thing I’ve Ever Written

It’s not.

Despair and loathing are signs the piece is nearly ready. I step away for a bit until I’m all planed out emotionally.

The The

Recently, a critique partner highlighted where I’d used the verb “amble” three times over a few hundred words. Nobody ambles that often, not even cowpokes. I’ll search for crutch repetition like that.

One crucial word gets a special check: “The.” Such a weak word, the. Any cluster of it correlates to undercooked prose. I comb through anything with those three letters in that order, like “Then,” “they,” “other,” and so forth. Those buggers aren’t power words, either (Note: “Either” is a “the” word). Once my excess “the” and crutch stuff is out, no kidding, the piece has another level of energy. It’s found its style.

Lock Down

And I’m not done yet. Sure, I’m done with it mentally and spiritually, but it’s spit and polish time. I’ll let Word read a last cycle while I check along on my master document. I’m looking to confirm those final changes sound and work how I want. Darlings and typos can sneak back in. When I’m satisfied (exhausted) with a page, I mark it as locked down. When all pages reach lockdown, I scream or weep or drink wine, whatever gives me permission to get off the hamster wheel.

Such are my steps to submit something that makes me proud. Someday, maybe I’ll get more efficient. Until then, it’s like with the Asheville drive. I may get there in a bad mood, but I get there. Soon enough, I’m happily lost in those Blue Ridge lines like haze. The mistake isn’t underestimating the travel time but not completing the trip.

The Joy of Monotasking

When my wife and I hang out in the backyard at the end of a day, inevitably our conversation turns to productivity. How can we get more things done without driving ourselves crazy?

Over the years, we’ve devoured a number of books that promise to help their readers crack this nut. Two of our favorites are books that have, in a certain sense, sparked mini-movements. Getting Things Done, by David Allen, inspired legions of developers to create software that embodies Allen’s principles: religiously collect all your to-dos in one place so you can routinely process things in one go; if a task can be done in two minutes or less, freaking do it now and don’t waste time adding it your to-do list!

Deep Work, by Cal Newport, is more of a manifesto. He argues that human beings do their best work when they think deeply about a project, and ruthlessly keep their workplace and time free from distractions. His official definition:

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

The challenge facing any professional today, he says, is fighting to accomplish this deep work. It’s bad enough that we all have to contend with mindless admin or household tasks, but now we’re bombarded with ceaseless emails, the promise of “free promotion” if only we’ll become slaves to social media, and the fatuous lie that is multitasking.

In contrast, Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, famously responds only to emails he thinks are worth it. (We know this from personal experience. Denise and I have tried to lure him into doing an interview. No response.)

He did, however, talk to a reporter for the New York Times. It’s a wonderful chat, archived here. In trying to explain why ceaseless interruptions by social media and email are making us miserable, he says,

“…the culprit here is network switching. Human brains take a long time to switch. If you’re going to put your target of attention on one thing and then switch it to a new target, that takes a while, right?”

And later he adds:

“And then if you wrench your attention back to what you were trying to do, it creates this whole pile-up in your brain, which we experience as a loss of cognitive function. We also feel frustrated. We feel tired. We feel anxious. Because the human brain can’t do it.”

I greatly enjoy Deep Work’s opening anecdote. Newport describes how Carl Jung got some of his major books and academic papers written. Jung built a Spartan, two-story stone tower in Bollingen, in the woods overlooking Lake Zurich, and used it to escape from the obligations of clinical practice, academic lectures, and the temptations of Zurich’s coffeehouse scene. (He later enlarged the house, but you can see the original design here.) He conceived that tower not as a vacation home, but a place to which he escaped to get work done. Alone, away from others, Jung walked in the woods, thought deeply, and managed to get a lot of writing done. The ideas born at Bollingen are today regarded as the strongest counter-arguments to Freudianism. 

If you want to write, you need to think. Sometimes deeply. Even if what you’re writing is playful. I have heard of some people who can write while playing classical music, or jazz, or whatever, in the background. I’ve heard of a mystery writer—was it Stanley Ellin or Robert L. Fish?—who could bang away happily on his typewriter while his kids were inches away, playing in their pool. I believe all these stories, but I can’t say I necessarily admire such skills.

Some of the best advice on writing is sitting on the windowsill facing Denise’s desk. She describes them as a “A list of do’s, a list of don’ts.”

One, as you can see, is Elmore Leonard’s famous 10 Rules of Writing, which I don’t need to go into, because it’s sparked tons of other columns in the mystery world. (One of my favorite follow-up essays half-joked that Leonard probably had forgotten he had a deadline for a piece for the New York Times, so he sat down the day the piece was due, and quickly banged out those 10 rules, machine-gun-reporter-style, never expecting that so many other writers would later obsess about them.)

The other little list Denise treasures is culled from the work of Henry Miller. It’s a work schedule Miller hammered out in the 1930s to help him get one particular book done. I’ve made the image big so you can read his rules, but you can find the complete list at numerous websites, like this one.

 

 

It’s worth thinking about how Miller’s approach might apply to your own work. If you want to get a task or specific project done, you work on it until completion. You resist the urge to do all the other Bright Shiny Ideas that are bouncing around your brain, and which always seem so much more exciting and promising than the piece of crap you’re trying to write right now.

And yes, Miller’s rules may not apply to the one big project you’re working on, nor are they for every writer. This is, after all, Miller’s list. But still, when I read his rules, I feel seen: Work on one thing at a time until finished. Start no more new books. Work joyously. Go out and see friends. (Boy, so I miss that in the long malaise that is 2020-21.) But also: when you cannot create you can still work. Yes, yes, yes! Man, is he right about all of that.

I don’t know if Professor Newport has ever seen this list, but I think he would approve. At the end of Newport’s interview with the Times, he’s asked for book recommendations, and he tosses off a few, observing that by necessity literary work is the epitome of deep work:

“there’s really no way to produce real insight in writing at that level without actually just having the ability to be alone with your own thoughts and observing the world, and just letting that percolate and letting that move, and trying to craft and move and work with it.”

I like that. Also, for some reason, writing this post reminded me of our man Curly, played by Jack Palance, in the 1991 movie, City Slickers. Remember his genius piece of advice?

I recently watched another sort of clip; an interview with one of John Steinbeck’s sons. Thomas Steinbeck said his father would take time every morning to sharpen 24 pencils because he hated the distraction of having to stop his work and sharpen them in the middle of whatever he was working on. I suspect that anyone who’s ever written knows the real reason Steinbeck sharpened those pencils. He was procrastinating, because sometimes writing is terrifying, especially if you have struggled with depression and self-doubt, as Steinbeck did.

Nevertheless, I went out that day and ordered a box of 24 pencils. They’re (relatively) local-to-me pencils, made by the good folks at the Musgrave Pencil Company, in Shelbyville, Tennessee. They’re made of cedar, come in a fragrant cedar box, and smell marvelous when you take the time to sharpen them.

So I guess my advice this week is to take the advice of other writers and thinkers. Stay safe. Work joyously and recklessly. Work on one thing that freaking matters to you right now. Heaven help you if you start a novel or story with the weather! And take the time to smell the pencils.

 

____________________

See you in three weeks!

— Joe

josephdagnese.com

Notes from the Culture Wars: Heartland Edition

1 - Nomadland

Of course I watched Nomadland on Hulu.  Beautiful, and yes, I've been everywhere in South Dakota that they filmed. My favorite park is the Badlands and always has been. (But, while Wall Drug has the best maple donuts in the country, it is never, ever, ever that empty of people.)

At the same time, I found the movie depressing, and not just because of the economic fact that there are lots of people who cannot earn enough working full time to live on, nor have enough retirement from working full time to live on. I already knew that. There are people who work full time in every major city in America who can't afford an apartment. It is a scandal, a shame, a horror, and something should damn well be done about it.

But you know, the battening of the rich upon the poor has been going on for millenia. What really bothered me was the social isolation.  Everyone wandering around on their own, meeting at the various job sites around the country, gathering at the places out in the desert, etc., where they can live off the grid, but separate mentally, separate emotionally, separate financially.  A fierce independence and determination to not be "beholden" in any way.  A toxic independence, in my book.

Now I'm not talking about the people who love travel, and are in perfect health. And perhaps that was Fran.  But most people would like to settle down and stay put, especially as they get old and creaky.  And the only way you do that is by banding together. That's how the poor have survived the predation of the rich for millenia. That's how I survived 2 years on the streets of L.A. That's how the peasants survived Calvera's constant depredations in The Magnificent Seven.  That's how [almost] everyone lived through The Grapes of Wrath, Cross Creek, and the entire Jim Crow South.

At one point in the movie a few people mentioned that they couldn't actually live on their retirement (me, too).  And the obvious answer is - live together!  Whether you want to call it a boarding house, a commune, or a house sharing, a bunch of people can rent (or even buy) a place and all have their own room, share the facilities, the rent, the chores and the expenses of life a lot easier than one lone widow /widower can do it all themselves.  Dickens is full of boarding houses.  In It's a Wonderful Life, after George has wished himself out of existence, he finds a world where his mother is running a boarding house.  I've lived in 2 communes in my day, one in L.A. and the other in Atlanta.  I still think it's a damn good way to live.  And I know I'd prefer it any day than living in Nomadland.  

2 - State of South Dakota v. AG Jason Ravnsborg

On February 23, Governor Kristi Noem released videos of Ravnsborg's two interviews with law enforcement late Tuesday. I think the highlight that sickened entire state was this:

An investigator asks Ravnsborg how he retrieved his insurance card, which was in the glovebox. Ravnsborg describes leaning in from the driver seat, trying to avoid glass in the passenger seat. He denies seeing a pair of glasses. “They’re Joe’s glasses,” an investigator says. “So that means his face came through your windshield.”  (Argus Leader)

And he repeated - again - “I never saw him.  I never saw him.”  

Anyway, the Governor and practically the entire state is calling on Ravnsborg to resign, and the SD Legislature said they'd impeach him.  But then the legislature decided to postpone any impeachment proceedings until after Ravnsborg goes to court over his 3 misdemeanor charges.  Gov. Noem - who obviously wants Ravnsborg GONE - weighed in today, saying they don't need a special session for it, and don't have to wait.  (Argus Leader)  Obviously Gov. Noem wants him gone - the only speculation is why.  What surprises me is that Ravnsborg hasn't grasped yet that if he is impeached he'll lose his law license.  We'll see what happens.  

3 - South Dakota Legislature, Where Bad Bills Never Die

Every legislature has its quirks. We have a little feature called "smoke out", which allows legislators to force committees to deliver failed bills to the chamber floor if they can secure the support of 1/3 of the chamber’s members.  And of course it's just been used for three of the damnedest bills:

HB 1212, which says, in part, “A person who unlawfully enters or attempts to enter a person’s dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle is presumed to be doing so with the intent to commit an unlawful act involving force or violence.” So much for innocent until proven guilty.  It's also, basically, a "stand your ground" law, because if you think they're doing something unlawful - you can shoot them and claim immunity.  NOW ON THE GOVERNOR'S DESK FOR SIGNATURE!!!

HB 1075, which says “Any federal statute, federal regulation, or executive order of the President of the United States, and any order of a federal or state court is null, void, and unenforceable in this state if the purpose or intent is to impose or enforce, against a resident of this state, an extreme risk protection order, including such an ex parte order, under which the resident, in order to reduce the risk of physical harm to himself, herself, or another, is: (1) Required to surrender any firearms or ammunition in his or her possession; or (2) Prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm or ammunition.”  Because God knows that owning a gun matters more than the health and safety of anyone around the person, even if they are so freaking dangerous the whole town avoids them and a judge has declared them a threat to themselves and others.  This one FAILED, thank God.

HB 1217 which seeks to ban transgender girls from participating in high school sports, and would require student athletes to fill out a form each year, proving biological sex from a birth certificate.  NOT ONLY PASSED BUT SIGNED BY THE GOVERNOR, SO...

(KELO)

4 - Speaking of the Transgender Culture Wars, Here's My Take:

As many of you know, I once worked for Medical Genetics at Emory University, where, among other tests, we did sex tests on newborns. One of my regular jobs was to sort out the chromosomes (from a photo taken on an electron microscope) to determine what the sex of a baby or child was, because the physical genitalia were anything from unclear to deformed to nonexistent. 

IMPORTANT NOTE:  One out of every thousand children is born with "indeterminate genitalia". 

The doctors, nurses, and parents literally could not tell, looking at the baby/child, what sex it was. In the past - and apparently it still happens today - they would simply assign "sex" according to their own preference - and a lot of times they were wrong:

Two examples of wrong assignment are Mokgadi Caster Semenya, a South African runner, who was assigned female at birth (b. 1991), but has either XXY or XY chromosomes, and Foekje Dillema (1926-2007), a Dutch runner, who was assigned female at birth, but after her death was determined to be a "mosaic", or a "46XX/46XY woman."  Both were raised as girls.  So which, my dear culture warriors, should everyone go by - what was/is on her birth certificate, or the genetics?  Or is it her own damn business?

SECOND IMPORTANT NOTE:  Conservatives (?) keep trying to say that sex chromosome abnormalities are very rare.  WRONG.  Actually, sex chromosome abnormalities are the most common there are because they are rarely lethal (unlike many other chromosomal abnormalities).  And the variations of genetic results can range from the normal XX or XY to XXX, XYY, XXY, as well as mosaics, and many many more. Nature is not "always right" or "always perfect".

For example: "Klinefelter syndrome has been reported to be between 1 in 500 and 1 in 1000 male births." (That's XXY or XXXY or a mosaic.) "In severe cases, they have relatively high-pitched voices, asexual to feminine body contours as well as breast enlargement, and comparatively little facial and body hair. They are sterile or nearly so, and their testes and prostate gland are small. As a result, they produce relatively small amounts of testosterone. The feminizing effects of this hormonal imbalance can be significantly diminished if Klinefelter syndrome boys are regularly given testosterone from the age of puberty on." These are very apt to be confused as girls at birth, unless sex tested, which may or may not happen. And they may very well "feel" that they are girls.  And without a lot of testosterone, they will be girls.  (Palomar Article)

And then there's the Guevedoces, a classic study which I read for the first time back on the job at Emory, about a community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls, are raised as girls, and only grow penises at puberty, at which time they become male.  Yes, you read that right.

"When you are conceived you normally have a pair of X chromosomes if you are to become a girl and a set of XY chromosomes if you are destined to be male. For the first weeks of life in womb you are neither, though in both sexes nipples start to grow.

Then, around eight weeks after conception, the sex hormones kick in. If you're genetically male the Y chromosome instructs your gonads to become testicles and sends testosterone to a structure called the tubercle, where it is converted into a more potent hormone called dihydro-testosterone This in turn transforms the tubercle into a penis. If you're female and you don't make dihydro-testosterone then your tubercle becomes a clitoris.

When Imperato-McGinley investigated the Guevedoces she discovered the reason they don't have male genitalia when they are born is because they are deficient in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone.

This deficiency seems to be a genetic condition, quite common in this part of the Dominican Republic, but vanishingly rare elsewhere. So the boys, despite having an XY chromosome, appear female when they are born. At puberty, like other boys, they get a second surge of testosterone. This time the body does respond and they sprout muscles, testes and a penis."

(BBC) 

BTW - it doesn't just happen in the Dominican Republic; it's also been found in Papua New Guinea and Turkey.  And probably elsewhere, just not reported.  Or believed.  

The Language of Thieves

My pal Carolyn first noticed this story in Psyche.  It’s popped up in some other places, and eventually made it into CrimeReads, so it hasn’t been flying under the radar.

Martin Puchner is a linguist who teaches at Harvard, and his book The Language of Thieves is a about a slang going back to the Middle Ages, called Rotwelsch.  It borrows from Yiddish and Romany, but it mostly seems to be German in origin.  It’s a language of the road, of tinkers and other itinerants, people who were mistrusted by folk who lived in housen: Gypsies and Jews, hoboes and fugitives.

The secrets of Rotwelsch make for a fascinating history, but there’s another thread, which is the determined effort to stamp it out.  The first part is that it’s regarded as a criminal argot, and the second is that it’s tainted with Jewishness.  You won’t be surprised that the Nazis have a cameo.  The point is that clannishness (and hiding in plain view) is protective coloration.

Here are the links.  (I bought the book.)

https://psyche.co/ideas/how-a-secret-european-language-made-a-rabbit-and-survived

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/the-story-of-rotwelsch-6890538

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/12/professor-shares-his-familys-secret-language/

https://crimereads.com/on-rotwelsch-the-central-european-language-of-beggars-travelers-and-thieves/

 

Saying yes when you want to say NO!

I'm a person who has trouble saying no, at least in professional situations. In private, no problem:

"Want to come visit?" No! Why would I do that? I love being home.

"Want to try this meal made of foods you've never heard of before?" No! Perhaps you've mistaken me for an adventurous person.

"Want to go to a club?" (This was back in my twenties.) Oh God, do I have to? I mean, I know I should. I'm not meeting single men sitting at home with a book, but I like sitting at home with a book. So ... no. (Actually, back then the answer probably would have been "sure," in a frak-why-did-I-answer-the-phone tone. Then, as the minutes would tick closer and closer to the time to head out, my introverted side would say, "What the heck were you thinking? You're not going anywhere." And I'd cancel.)

But for professional matters, no is much harder for me. When you just start out as an author, you'd do anything to be invited to be on a panel or to edit an anthology or write a story for one, or any number of things like that. So whenever opportunities come, I feel like I have to jump at every one. You never know when the offers will stop coming. 

But time is finite. So is energy. Often something has to give. Sometimes you just have to say no. 

I have said yes to too many things lately, so I've started saying no (and feeling really bad about it). The thing I'm saying no to today is writing this blog. I don't mean I'm leaving SleuthSayers. I'm talking about today's entry. It was going to be about coincidences, but I just don't have the time it would take to craft the kind of column I would want it to be. The mere thought of trying to fit it into my schedule is exhausting. That blog is going to have to wait for another day.

For those of you out there struggling with the feeling that you have to say yes to everything, I hear you. The struggle is real. It's okay, though, to say no at times, to put yourself, your sanity, your need for sleep and less stress, first. 

So there is no blog on coincidences today. Instead there's emotional support for those who need it. If you want to say no, just do it. And if you need backup, tell 'em: Barb said it's okay. 

Because it is.

Revisiting Early Work

Does a novel I wrote at age 28 count as juvenilia? It certainly does by the definition in Collins English Dictionary: "works of...literature...produced in youth...before the ...author...has formed a mature style."

I recently dug out the unpublished manuscript of my first mystery novel, A Friendly Glass of Poison, which I started writing more than fifty years ago, to mine it for material for a short story. It had been gathering dust on a shelf since I withdrew it from a respected agent who failed to sell it in three years of trying.

I finished Poison and wrote two more mysteries in the early 1970s, all marketed unsuccessfully by the same agent, still well known today. Here are the Edgar Best Novel nominees from 1970 to 1974 as examples of good mysteries at that time.

1970
• Dick Francis, Forfeit
• Chester Himes, Blind Man with a Pistol
• Shaun Herron, Miro
• Peter Dickinson, The Old English Peep Show
• Emma Lathen, When in Greece
• Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Where the Dark Streets Go
1971
• Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, The Laughing Policeman
• Pat Stadley, Autumn of a Hunter
• Margaret Millar, Beyond this Point Are Monsters
• Patricia Moyes, Many Deadly Returns
• Donald E. Westlake, The Hot Rock
• Shaun Herron, The Hound and the Fox and the Harper
1972
• Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal
• P. D. James, Shroud for a Nightingale
• G. F. Newman, Sir, You Bastard
• Tony Hillerman, The Fly on the Wall
• Arthur Wise, Who Killed Enoch Powell?
1973
• Warren Kiefer, The Lingala Code
• Martin Cruz Smith, Canto for a Gypsy
• John Ball, Five Pieces of Jade
• Hugh C. Rae, The Shooting Gallery
• Ngaio Marsh, Tied Up in Tinsel
1974
• Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead
• Francis Clifford, Amigo, Amigo
• P. D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
• Jean Stubbs, Dear Laura
• Victor Canning, The Rainbird Pattern

I was reading Moyes and Marsh. I eventually read Dick Francis, Emma Lathen, Sjöwall & Wahlöö, Millar, Westlake, and Ball, and Peter Dickinson and PD James became great favorites. But when I wrote my novels, I hadn't yet met most of these authors. I had recently read my way through all of Agatha Christie, and I structured my mysteries as Christie did many of hers: by beginning with a passage from the POV of each of the characters who would become murderer, victim, and suspects before proceeding to the murder. I had read Dorothy L Sayers, Josephine Tey, and Margery Allingham. But how do you model yourself on the greats when you don't yet have a voice?

The novel, as I read it over at age 76, is embarrassingly clichéd and overwritten. The parts I thought were funny are painfully "humorous"--a word I don't mean as a compliment. It's quaintly typed in Courier with the italicized words (many, as the novel was set in France) underlined and page numbers added by hand. I did it on an old Royal manual typewriter, starting a new sheet each time I made a revision and making carbon copies on onionskin. I feel compassion for my younger self, who always wanted to be a writer. And I'm so glad that novel never got published!

Many years later, I was invited to submit a short story to a proposed anthology on the theme of bars, pubs, and taverns. All who know me know that my contemporary fiction is all about recovery from alcoholism. Many also know that I've been an alcoholism treatment professional for the past thirty-five years. That makes this theme a challenge.

My protagonist in the Bruce Kohler Mysteries is a recovering alcoholic. Readers met him in detox on the Bowery on Christmas Day in the first novel, Death Will Get You Sober. Four novels, a novella, and eight short stories later, he hasn't relapsed, and he never will. He has better things to do than hang out in bars or spend his time thinking about booze. A Bruce story was not the solution.

Then I remembered A Friendly Glass of Poison. Why not go back to an era when not only didn't anybody know about alcoholism (except a few drunks reading the Big Book in a few obscure church basements with complete anonymity), but I knew nothing about alcoholism? Why not set a story in my, ahem, mature voice in a medieval village in the South of France in 1962, in a bar called the Chat Gris that I'd already invented, and let everybody there get drunk and have a jolly good time--until someone gets poisoned? I found I could write such a story without a single pang of conscience. I called it "A Friendly Glass."

I hope the story works. I hope the structure will satisfy modern editors. I hope the redesigned motives are plausible to modern readers, though they still reflect the culture and values of the early 1960s. I had great fun writing it. I learned to be profoundly grateful that my first novel was published not when I was in my twenties and desperately wanted it, but in my sixties, when I was ready. I am even more grateful that since that first novel, and as I have gone on to write more novels and dozens of short stories, my craft and voice continue to mature.

Murder Books, Blogs, Bullets, Buffett

You’ve been hearing about Josh Pachter’s Jimmy Buffett anthology, The Great Filling Station Holdup, released mere days ago. SleuthSayers is represented by three of your favorites– John Floyd, Michael Bracken, and Leigh Lundin. But one blog scored four crime writers in the anthology’s lineup, Murder-Books.com . Since we’re modest to the extreme (ahem), we invited Murder-Books to introduce themselves within our hallowed pages.

Of their stories, I confess a favorite, M.E. Browning’s ‘Einstein Was a Surfer’. Its vengeance is proportional and appropriate. James Lincoln Warren pointed out I tend to write about justice. That and Micki’s lateral, trail-along-with-me storytelling technique no doubt color why I particularly enjoy her story. It’s also why she leads off today’s perp walk.

(Non-geeksters: In her story, Browning’s casual reference to a “man in the middle” might sound contrived, but MiM is an actual network hacking technique. The lady knoweth something whereof she speaks.)

— Leigh

And now, Murder-Books…

The Music Fits the Crime

Music has always played an important role in crime fiction — both in the lives of authors and the characters they create. Hieronymus Bosch, the eponymous detective of the Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly, enjoys jazz. Legendary blues guitarist and singer Robert “RL” Johnson inspired both author Walter Mosley and his character Soupspoon Wise in the novel RL’s Dream. Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes—a character with a penchant for German operas and a facility for playing the violin (a Stradivarius acquired at a pawnshop, no less). Alexia Gordon built an entire series around her classical musician protagonist in her Gethsemane Brown Mysteries. The list goes on.

The nexus between crime fiction and music isn’t surprising. Music, much like story, is built on a foundation of conflict. The dissonance and consonance of music is akin to the disruption and resolution of story. One never knows exactly when inspiration will strike or where it will take you.

M.E. Browning

Einstein Was a Surfer

[ music | lyrics ]

I was a Jimmy Buffett fan long before I lived in the Florida Keys. When I learned that Josh Pachter, author and editor extraordinaire, was rounding up a group of crime writers to submit stories to an anthology inspired by the songs of Jimmy Buffett, I knew I wanted to be included.

Each story in the anthology shares a title with one of Jimmy Buffett’s original songs and each song had to come from a different one of his seventeen albums. My first and second choices had already been claimed by two of my cohorts. So, I did what any self-respecting Parrothead would do. I flipped on Radio Margaritaville.

The first song that played on the radio, I heard in its entirety. The opening stanza refers to a photograph of Albert Einstein standing on the beach in Santa Barbara staring across the waves. I knew immediately this was the song for my story. Not only was I familiar with the photograph, but I’d spent fourteen of my twenty-two-year law enforcement career as a cop patrolling the streets of Santa Barbara. By the time Jimmy sang about the Channel Islands where I used to scuba dive, my mind was racing. When he mentioned surfing, well, I was all in. “Einstein Was A Surfer” comes from the 2013 album, Songs from St. Somewhere and is the song that inspired my short story of the same title. The somewhere is Santa Barbara, the song comes from the sea, and Einstein is a surfer. The rest? I hope you’ll read for yourself.

Lissa Marie Redmond

If I Could Just Get It On Paper

[ music | lyrics ]

I chose the song ‘If I could just get it on paper’ because it was vague and open to so many possibilities. Who hasn’t had an unexpected, wonderful night and wanted to remember every second of it?

I got the email about the anthology on Super Bowl weekend and a group of us had rented a house. Most of the guys were more worried about their football pools than who won the game and that got me to thinking. And we all know what happens when crime writers get to thinking.

The whole way home from the rental house my husband and I listened to music and I threw ideas at him. I know that out of every short story I’ve ever written, this one was the most fun to write. Jimmy Buffett is more than a musician. He’s a storyteller. And his stories inspire other stories. I can’t wait to read what his music inspired in all the other authors in this book.

Isabella Maldonado

Smart Woman (in a Real Short Skirt)

[ music | lyrics ]

I never use music to facilitate my writing because I’m too easily distracted by the lyrics, or even the melody if there are no lyrics. Each piece tells a story that sometimes conflicts with the one I’m trying to build. I do, however, listen to white noise while I write. Being at home with my family means loud noises and other distractions that I must tune out!

Regarding the anthology, I chose “Smart Woman (In a Real Short Skirt)” from the 1988 album, Hot Water. Buffett’s lyrics describe a man in search of his ideal woman: one possessed of both beauty and brains.

I decided to create a story about a man named Donovan Snell, a weapons smuggler based in Miami who laments that he cannot use a margarita shaker to blend his gorgeous girlfriend with his brainy female accountant to create the perfect woman. Snell’s hubris–and his contempt for the law–ultimately land him in very Hot Water indeed!

Bruce Robert Coffin

Incommunicado

[ music | lyrics ]

I chose the Jimmy Buffett song “Incommunicado” as the impetus for my short story of the same name largely because I fell in love with the references to mystery author John D. MacDonald, his famed character Travis McGee, and Cedar Key. Also mentioned in the lyrics is the Duke, John Wayne. How could I have chosen anything else?

While I do listen to music while writing, generally I stick to instrumental artists like Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, or the occasional symphony soundtrack. I’ve even been known to put Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Riviera Paradise on repeat. Basically, anything melodic, sans lyrics, works for me.

A Finny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bookstore

The Great Filling Station Holdup contains fiction by sixteen highly regarded mystery authors edited by Josh Pachter. Released on 22 February, the anthology represents the literary world's tribute to the musician's evolution.

If you love Jimmy’s music or crime fiction or both, you’ll love The Great Filling Station Holdup. Mix yourself a boat drink, ask Google Home to put on a buffet of Buffett tunes, kick back, and enjoy!