The Powers That Be

At the risk of sounding unAmerican, I have never been a big fan of comic books or graphic novels (with one notable exception). 

Superhero movies don't do much for me either.  In spite of that I think I have seen a dozen of them, and half of those were about Batman.  (Yes, I know he isn't a superhero.  But he is, of course, the World's Greatest Detective.)

I believe I have only seen one superhero movie in a theatre, and that was by accident.  The film I came to see broke so I agreed to see Superman II instead.  Didn't much care for it.

But a few years ago I was thinking about the public's love for such characters and an odd thought popped into my head: What if someone thought they had a super power?  Well, that might be interesting.

Of course, it would have to a pretty minor super power.  If you thought you could fly or become invisible you would soon be disillusioned.  After some thought I wrote this opening:

When Randolph was six years old, he discovered he could control gravity.   

Not completely, of course.  He couldn’t make things fall up, or even hover in the air.  But once something started to drop, he could influence its direction.

He figured this out one rainy day when his mother told him that, no, he couldn’t go outside, so he should find something to do and stop complaining or she’d give him something to complain about.

Randolph had sat by the window, looking into the street, and noticed a drop of rain poised on the glass.  It began to slip and he thought: Go to the left.

And it did, shimmying down to the far end of the pane.  So he could do that.

The rest of the story follows our hero (?) through his life.

Is Randolph delusional or does he really have a form of psychokinesis?  That is one question that lies at the heart of "The Lord of Falling Objects" in the July/August issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, on sale now.

The other question is of course: Why does this story belong in a magazine for crime fiction?  Read it and the pieces will, ahem, fall into place.

Law Class

I’ve been thinking lately about lawyer archetypes. (I don’t often sit around musing about Jungian psychology, but I needed to give a short talk on the legal profession, and one thing sort of led to another.) The topic comes up occasionally. An internet search leads you to a good CrimeReads article by Christopher Brown. The American Bar Association devoted an issue of their magazine to the topic in August 2016.

    Every occupation has its types: doctors, priests, teachers, and even assassins have predictable buckets for fiction and movies. I’m sure accountants and farmers have them, too. I just haven’t read enough books or seen those films. 

    For today’s conversation, I will identify five different types of lawyers. I focus primarily on criminal practitioners because that’s where I live, but I think the types are equally applicable to civil law.

            #1. The Crusader:

    When asked about a lawyer archetype, this is the one most commonly named.

Think Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The truth-seeking champion of the downtrodden speaking truth to power. She can be found seated at either counsel table in the courtroom. The Crusader may be the prosecutor seeking justice for a traumatized victim or a defense attorney fighting a lonely battle on behalf of a wrongfully accused social outcast. She might be a plaintiff’s attorney giving voice to a powerless litigant suing a giant corporation with a team of deep-rug lawyers.

    The Crusader doesn’t have to be good at the job. This type is based on passion, not talent. Although she will have to find a legal nugget somewhere. Nobody wants to watch/read the story where the true believer gets steamrolled by the mighty empire unless there is a twist.

            #2 The Shark:  

    Maybe getting runover enough times has led to cynicism. The Shark sacrificed early zeal for the pursuit of wealth. Perhaps the idealism never existed to begin with. The Shark has learned the courthouse’s back passages and traverses them for his own enrichment. A reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee.

    Sharks represent the profession devoid of any nobility. Maybe they are skeptical about whether anything like justice exists, or perhaps the Shark has just become detached, substituting the luxuries purchased through success for any moral examination.

    Perhaps you’ve seen the Shark’s billboard on your morning commute. They can usually be found near the emergency room entrance to the hospital.

            #3 The Sleazy Drunkard:

    Abandon hope all ye who enter here. The Sharks or The Crusaders might journey down a path leading to Sleazy Drunkard. Drugs or alcohol might serve as the balm for a Crusader who must confront frequent disillusionment as the system disappoints and ultimately crushes him (and his clients). Alternatively, the absence of a moral compass might lead to unrestrained hedonism. The lawyer’s downward spiral leads to professional lapses—the decline may be marked by the diminished quality of the Drunkard’s scotch.

    To be fair, perhaps the archetype should have a slash, Sleazy/Drunkard. This attorney might still dream of nobility through an alcohol fog or, alternatively, have substance abuse as but one of a collection of issues, the others more sinister.

    Sleazy/Drunkard stories might be about redemption. Think Paul Newman’s Frank Galvin in The Verdict. (There are more recent examples, but that’s where my mind went.) The Crusader who tumbled is resurrected. Alternatively, the story might make the Sleazy/Drunkard the villain. Clients come to an attorney’s office needing help. That need makes them vulnerable and subject to exploitation. Every courthouse I’ve ever worked in has rumors about lawyers who took in-kind payments for their services. Characters who prey upon the weak in their hour of distress make first-rate villains. 

            #4 The Buffoon:

    My final categories get a bit muddled. The Buffoon could easily be subdivided into several distinct buckets. I think that they arise from our shared understanding of courts. We know the tropes of a courtroom. The lawyer who runs afoul of those established practices can generate either
laughter or cringes.

    J. Cheever Loophole, played by Groucho Marx, might mock the theater of the
courtroom with an over-the-top portrayal. John Gibbons, the public defender in My Cousin Vinny, might set up Joe Pesci through his ineptitude. We know what they’re doing or failing to do because we have learned through books and movies what to expect from a courtroom.

    The Buffoon might also just be very bad at his job. There is an element of talent, experience, and instinct in a successful attorney, just as in any other profession. A case in the hands of a Buffoon might produce an unjust outcome. The story might, therefore, set the stage for vigilante action to balance the scales. Every revenge story is about righting an unpunished wrong.

            #5 The Pettifogger

    This type takes the conversation in a different direction. To this point, the types have been more about degrees of cynicism toward the criminal justice system. The Pettifogger may fall anywhere along the scale. This is a classification based on tactics.

    By etymology, the Pettifogger may seem synonymous with the Shark, the Drunkard, or the Buffoon, depending on where the emphasis lies. A combination of “petty” (small) and “fogger,” an obsolete Dutch expression for a cheater. (You might think of an English profanity that sounds something like it.)  A pettifogger became a “small cheat,” a substandard practitioner of law. One who handles only small cases or employs questionable methods, according to the website Lexico.

    Instead, I’ve seen the name employed and use it here to describe the attorney who makes every question a struggle, every point a battleground. To illustrate, consider the following exchange.

            Lawyer #1: “Tell the Court your name.”

            Pettifogger: “May I take the witness on voir dire?”

            Judge: “Briefly.”

            Pettifogger: “How do you know your name?”

            Witness: “My parents called me that.”

            Pettifogger: “Objection, hearsay. No personal knowledge of the fact.”

            And with that, the bloodletting begins.

    I’ll hasten to add that there is a place for focusing on the details in court. Witnesses may want to describe with broad strokes and attention to the specifics is how inconsistencies may be reconciled and conflicts resolved. Reasonable doubt is created in the details. Excessive focus on every detail, perhaps using the pain of court to deter seeking an appropriate legal remedy, creates the world where “lawyer” becomes a pejorative.    

    We’ve split the lawyering world into five classes. You might find other categories as you look across the expanse of fiction. We might also think about how these categories affect fiction. That will have to be a topic for another day.  

    Until next time. 

Lois McMaster Bujold, Queen of Genre-Bending Fiction

My apologies to readers for getting this post up late. I could blame either my granddaughter's high school graduation this weekend or the fact that the keyboard on my big computer died and the replacement we rushed in wouldn't "recognize" my iMac (hmmph!), but instead I'll hope none of you got up too early this morning.

Some of my favorite authors don't live on the crime fiction shelves in bookstores and libraries. This doesn't mean they don't write crime fiction. Lois McMaster Bujold, a brilliant writer however you categorize her, writes novels and novellas in which the structures of mystery, thriller, and suspense are embedded in science fiction or fantasy. While she's at it, she creates characters that not only leap off the page but burrow into our hearts and builds worlds rich in history, politics, sociology, and theology as well as physical environment. She's funny, clever, and compassionate, and oy, can she create a crisis.

She's the author of several series, but her masterwork is the Vorkosigan Saga, which has won three of her four Hugo and two Locus awards for best novel, a Hugo for best series, and both the Hugo and Nebula for best novella plus a ton of nominations, not to mention winning all three awards for best novel in an unrelated fantasy series and a Hugo for best fantasy series.

The Vorkosigans are one of those families that you fall in love with and wish would adopt you and take you home with them. Home is the planet Barrayar, a lost colony of Earth that endured a prolonged Time of Isolation from the rest of the galaxy, during which it developed an aristocratic warrior caste called the Vor, who have rigid notions of honor and a backward attitude toward the role of women. This ends when their wormhole is rediscovered by way of invasion from the planet Cetaganda. The Cetagandans were definitely human until they did some very sophisticated tinkering with their genetic material. The citizens of Komarr unwisely let them through and got conquered by Barrayar in revenge after they repelled the Cetagandans. Komarr is rich in wormholes and thus a gateway to the rest of the galaxy, which has space travel and a lot of up-to-date technology, including uterine replicators, which will radically change the lot of women on Barrayar by freeing them from "body births." Komarr is a planet that thrives on commerce, opening the way to stories about financial intrigue on a grand scale as well as political and sociological intrigue. Another prominent planet is Beta Colony, egalitarian, advanced in science and not at all military-minded, and offering to its citizens and visitors all sorts of freedoms, including sexual exploration. Old Earth plays a role, and there's also a planet devoted to corruption, chicanery, and the art of the deal. In other words, it's a huge canvas, and Bujold and her readers have a wonderful time with it.

But the real draw is the Vorkosigan family. They're brilliant, funny, and superb at inspiring loyalty, making friends, and doing the unexpected. The first two books feature Cordelia Naismith from Beta Colony, captain of a scientific team hoping to claim an uninhabited planet, and Aral Vorkosigan, commanding a Barrayaran military team bent on the same mission. He takes her prisoner, but she quickly figures out that the reason he's alone is that his crew has mutinied. Thrown into survival mode together, they make a good team. Not surprising they start to like each other...

The protagonist of most of the series is the couple's son, Miles Vorkosigan. Born stunted and with brittle bones thanks to an assassination attempt involving poison gas during Cordelia's pregnancy, he has a hard time not only being fragile in a military culture but looking like a mutant on a planet that has a horror of mutants in the aftermath of the nuclear attacks by the Cetagandans a generation earlier. But Miles is not only the smartest person in the room, the space ship, or the planet at any time, he's also the most determined, and he proves it in an infinite variety of ingenious ways. He has the brain of a genius, the soul of a hero, and the heart of a romantic. His friends refer to him as a "hyperactive little git." A Civil Campaign, my favorite book, is space opera + comedy of manners. There's a moment I love after he's made an egregious, public, and deeply embarrassing faux pas in his courtship of the woman he wants to marry. To no one’s surprise, she never wants to speak to him again. My favorite bit is when his mother suggests a remedy.

"The—the kindest word I can come up with for it is blunder—was yours. You owe the apology. Make it. I realize you don't do abject very well, but I suggest you exert yourself."
Abject.
He went back inside Vorkosigan House to his study, where he sat himself down to attempt, through a dozen drafts, the best damned abject anybody'd ever seen.

While still in his teens, Miles accidentally finds himself in command of a mercenary space fleet and invents a persona to fit. At one point, he plays the role of the fictitious Admiral Naismith and not one but two imaginary clones. Eventually, he finds a job for which he's even better suited: Imperial Auditor for the Emperor of Barrayar, ie an investigator with unlimited powers who's been picked precisely because he's a loose cannon, but one Emperor Gregor has known his whole life and trusts completely.

I started with Shards of Honor and Barrayar, the two Cordelia books, and they pulled me in just fine. For thriller and mystery lovers who want to meet Miles right away, I'd recommend starting with Komarr, which is space opera + political thriller and Bujold writing at the height of her powers. It starts with what appears to be a routine crash that damages the solar mirror essential to the domed cities of the planet with its unbreathable air. The plot thickens into one in which bumbling terrorist conspirators and kidnappers whose plans have gone awry may unleash enormous powers of destruction. It's a perfect job for Imperial Auditor Vorkosigan. An abusive marriage and a moving love story of great complexity are seamlessly tailored into the interstices of the political plot. Its sequel is A Civil Campaign, which has more politics and sociology, including some issues that have come more into the open in our own world since Bujold wrote it, more brilliant characterization, and a feast of laugh out loud moments.

The Aftermath

This will be my last post on the Edgar and/or my Edgar story. I promise.

Okay, so I've been wondering why "The Road to Hana"? I've read the other nominated stories and they were all great, so why mine? I can't say that my style of writing was literary or exemplary, because in my mind, the way I write is like me telling stories in a bar to friends over drinks. Or maybe like swapping stories with fellow cops (in a bar over drinks) after a raid or large operation. Seeing who can tell the best ones based on what happened during that raid or operation.

I've thought about it a lot because I would like to duplicate whatever it was that I did. The problem is that I can only come up with the possibility that the story resonated for some reason with the reader. I can't tell you how many people came up to me before and after the Edgars to say they have been on that road and the story made them feel it all over again, plus the few who said they could feel the road in the story even though they had not driven that road themselves. If that's the case, then I'm screwed for coming up with another story which resonates with the reader to that same degree. How to come up with a story situation which has the same impact, or resonates with the reader? I am working on it though, cuz Michael Bracken has already challenged me to meet him as a Nominee at the Edgar Awards Banquet next year. Talk about pressure.

Now, on to other items in the aftermath.

About two days after we flew home, I received an e-mail from Hiroyuki of the Hayakawa Publishing Corporation, Tokyo.  They were interested in publishing my Edgar story in their Mystery Magazine, June 25th issue. I have no idea if this is a new thing, or if they have been doing this for some time with the Edgar Best Short Story. Their contracts for reprint rights are very, very simple and they pay more than U.S. editors tend to pay. I don't read Japanese, but do plan on getting a copy or two of that issue for my personal library.

You see, I once thought I was published internationally when I sold a story to Swimming Kangaroo where the editor was named Dindy. But then the check came from Texas and that took care of that. I think we got to keep an eye on that Texas contingency.

Just to keep me humble, the woman sitting across the aisle from me on the 4-hour airplane ride from LaGuardia to Denver coughed on me all the way back. She wore no mask. Yes, I know the airline companies claim that their air circulation systems screen out all the germs and viruses, but those little fellas didn't make it direct to the filtration units. First off, they crossed the aisle to me.

A few days later, the severe head cold hit with a vengeance. Kiti finally dragged me to one of those little mobile huts in the shopping mall parking lot and we both got the lower side of our brain swabbed for Covid. Four days later, the results were negative, but I was still coughing and blowing. Almost healed now. I think I'll live.

I still have to write a story good enough to get nominated in 2023. May have to ask that Naked Singing Cowboy, whose photo I showed you in last month's post, how he keeps from catching cold in that cold, damp weather they have in Times Square and Central Park. Especially if I'm planning to go back there again. What a way to make a living.

---

What Makes an Author a Hero? Paying it Forward

 I love that term, Pay it Forward.  It speaks of giving selflessly, but also of planning for a future.  

Really, we're talking about Hope.  When you pay it forward, you are believing in Hope.  Hope that the world will continue to be a good place in future - or at least, a good enough place for you to invest some time NOW helping others who will be around later.  In our case, helping them to continue the literary tradition.

Recently, I got an almost tearful email from a former student who has been picked up by a traditional publisher.  Her book comes out this month.  I couldn't be more thrilled.

She has been generous in her thanks to me for serving as a mentor and cheering squad, and that got me thinking about the people who influenced me in my publishing travels.

I've had maybe a dozen students do really well as writers, in my 30 years of teaching the craft.  Each email telling me of one's success does something to my heart. This is why we teach!  What joy I am given by a student's success.  

But it also does a very curious thing for me.  It reminds me of my own first successes, and the people who helped me on my way.

It's lonely out there, on that author journey.  You basically have to travel it yourself (writing for hundreds of hours, alone at a keyboard.)  Writing, as we all know, is a solitary exercise.  Unless you co-write a book, no one else will have the same investment in it.

It's a journey, no question.  But along the way, you may come across some seasoned travelers who give you the benefit of their experience.  Generous people who take the time to encourage you, when there is no tangible benefit to themselves.  

I started writing for money in my 20s. As I look back on a thirty-five year writing career it suddenly struck me that few of my mentors or people who encouraged me are still alive.  And thus the circle has completed.  They mentored me.  I mentor others younger than me, who will go on to support the next generation of writers, when I am long past.  

God Bless all those who mentor and encourage writers.  You are important and appreciated long after the fact.

A few of mine:

Marilyn Laycock:  Marilyn was a columnist for her local paper.  She died last year, after serving as an older sister to me for almost forty years.  It was she who encouraged me to 'go pro' and take college writing courses in 1986 and 7.  Marilyn told me where to send my first essay (it got published) and provided all the 'Attagirls' I needed in those early years. She sponsored me for membership in the Mississauga Writer's Guild, and introduced me to well-published fiction authors there who would be instrumental in encouraging my fiction career.

Michael Crawley:  The head of the Mississauga Writer's Guild was Michael Crawley, a professional veteran fiction author of horror, erotica, and other genres, under several pen names.  Michael saw potential in me, took me under his wing, and made it his job to see that I tried writing and publishing in several genres, some of which I don't admit to these days :)  Michael died several years ago, but is still fresh in my mind - he lives on in a way I don't think he ever would have anticipated.  

And finally, one who is still alive:

Linwood Barclay:  Sometimes a simple act of kindness can make all the difference.  After some early humour column publications, I brazenly wrote to Linwood Barclay, who was then editor of the Life section of the Toronto Star (Canada's biggest newspaper,) asking if he would consider publishing one of my pieces.  This was completely unsolicited.  I marvel that I had the guts.  But here's the thing:  Linwood wrote back.  This was before email.  So he actually *wrote* back.  He told me the piece was definitely funny, I had talent, but the Star didn't take freelance.  Why didn't I try my local paper?  So I did.  They took it.  They took more.  I got syndicated.  And that launched a humour career of columns, standup and comedic fiction that has spanned thirty years.

One simple act of kindness that has lasted a career.  He didn't have to do it. Most wouldn't have.  It took a bit of effort on his part.  And I have never forgotten it.

 How about you?  Are there people who made all the difference to you as a newby writer?

Linwood Barclay in Conversation with Melodie Campbell, Burlington Public Library, May 19, 2022

The Sound Of Music

Music can be a powerful motivator for a writer. Years ago, I heard Annie Lennox's cover of Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down." The image of a dead man lying at the side of a highway as semis (or "lorries," as Young puts it in his lyrics) at sunrise crystalized a series of unconnected scenes. Years later, after putting it on the shelf and dusting it off again, that project became Holland Bay.

Of course, you hope a song exploding in your brain like that pays off sooner. Holland Bay took so long to write that I spun up an entire trilogy and adjacent arcs of novellas by the time I sent it to Down & Out Books. In fact, I had no idea I would be getting back into science fiction when I started.

In the early days, when I wrote about PI Nick Kepler, I wanted a series of prompts to keep short stories flowing. In my misspent youth, I had an obsession with, along with Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, heavy metal gods Deep Purple. I decided I wanted a short story named for a song title from each of their (ever-growing) list of studio albums. That was a start. But "Hush," which spawned a short story about hush money, became "Just Like Suicide," as the hush money involved a murder made to look like suicide. The obscure "Chasing Shadows" involved a witch and a graveyard (the former making a return appearance in the novel Bad Religion) became "Full Moon Boogie," another obscure song by a later iteration of the Jeff Beck Group. So music led to music. But some were obvious.

Deep Purple's second hit, an instrumental called "Wring That Neck," has a title that calls to mind chickens meeting an untimely demise before ending up in a bucket with eleven herbs and spices. Nick Kepler was a creature of Cleveland and its suburbs. However, I had lived briefly in what I now dub Amish Mafia territory, specifically Holmes County, Ohio, where my parents spent their final years. I remember I was culture shocked being fifty miles from anywhere. So Nick went looking for a Romeo and Juliet couple who run off to more rural than rural Ohio. It ends a bit better than Willy Shakes' tragic tale, but Nick is a fish out of water, even slipping in chicken poop at one point. He is less than charitable to his client after that.

Then there's "Flight of the Rat," written about two years after 9/11. Many of us struggled to deal with that event without hitting the reader over the head with it. The song, from Purple's In Rock album, gave me an obvious title. Nick chases a bail jumper into Cleveland's Hopkins Airport on 9/11 and gets away with things he would not be able to do twenty-four hours later. That one, I played the source song over and over while writing it.

Lately, one song came up on Tidal, my streaming service of choice. "Last Plane Out" by one-off band Toy Matinee has shown up several times on Daily Discovery. While inspired by Yes, UK, and, to some extent, Asia, the band featured Guy Pratt, aka Roger Waters' replacement in Pink Floyd. The song, however, has more in common with Radiohead and Coldplay but doesn't take itself nearly as seriously. "Last Plane Out" begins with the line "Welcome to Sodom. How we wish you were here." It goes on to tell the tale of someone living in a land of decadence and vice but hoping for a seat on the titular last plane out. Edge of the apocalypse stuff.

The song is quite catchy, but the lyrics suggest the second season of Jack Ryan, as Ryan and Greer seek to navigate a fictionalized Venezuela. Currently, I'm pondering either going with a thriller and accessing my inner Lee Child or making this a second outing for my science fiction space spy Eric Yuwono, who may return to the land of sin and vice already in a pending novel. "Welcome to Sodom," the Biblical land of violent hedonism, seems an irresistible jumping off point for either a present-day character or a futuristic spy finding himself on a planet about to implode under the weight of its own over-indulgence.

These aren't the only examples. Our own Brian Thornton edited two anthologies inspired by the music of Steely Dan while the same publisher just released one based on Warren Zevon's. (How can you not do crime fiction with a title like Lawyers, Guns, and Money?) And music is all through Stephen King's books, quoted, as themes, and even in the meta fiction. (The Dark Half's main character wrote a literary novel called Purple Haze that may or may not have had an intrusion by his violent dead twin pseudonym, but clearly channeled Hendrix in its tone.)

And why wouldn't music weave its way through our writing? Some writers listen to specific music to set the mood for a scene. Others want a wall of sound to keep the world out so they can concentrate. And sometimes, it just helps you think.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

 Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

         -John Hughes, Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

As regular readers of my turn in this blog rotation (both of them!*rimshot*) will no doubt recall, my day gig for the past twenty-five or so years has been teaching history at the secondary level. For the past twenty years I have taught solely at the middle school level (and in the same school, no less). 

What's more, I have loved nearly every minute of it.

As of this time last week, I had every intention of coming back to this same position in this same school and teaching 8th grade history for the eighteenth consecutive year. The only changes would be a shift in the era taught (from Ancient and Medieval World History to American History, 1790-1920), and a one-year move to teaching part-time as a single-year concession to some on-going health problems (both my own and those of a close family member). 

In short I'd be teaching American History (my MA is in 19th century American History) three periods per day, rather than Ancient and Medieval World History five periods per day. At least, that was the plan. And it has been a long-standing precedent in both my building and my district that this sort of part-time schedule is a morning gig, wrapping up around Noon or shortly thereafter, leaving my afternoons free to take care of myself and my family.

And then last Thursday happened.

At 8:58 AM I received an email from my vice-principal informing me that not only would I not be teaching in the morning, but I wouldn't be teaching 8th grade. My building administration had scheduled me to teach three 7th grade classes from 11:19 to 3:20 every day.

What's more, my administrators had made this radical change to my on-going schedule without once doing me the courtesy of consulting me about it. That is just not done. 

In fact I had filled out the required end-of-school-year wish-list for the coming year and made it clear that I was only interested in continuing to teach 8th grade Social Studies. Early in my career I had taught multiple subject areas and grade levels in different classrooms over the course of school day. This went on for the first several years of my teaching career-just paying my dues, nothing more, nothing less. As I gained seniority within my subject area and within my building, that changed. 

I don't need to tell anyone who has a family member either attending or working in the public school system during the COVID-19 pandemic that the past three years have been some of the most stressful for all concerned in the history of public education. And that stress has taken a toll on my health. Hence my taking a partial leave in the first place.

To say that working a mid-day schedule would do nothing to support my attempts to address my on-going health concerns is an understatement. In point of fact, it would cripple them. As for teaching 7th grade, that too was a minefield.

My district recently changed the 7th grade curriculum to one provided by an education nonprofit. To call it "history" is to misname it. It's barely social studies. Without getting too deep into the weeds on this, I'm a trained historian, published in my field, and cannot, in good conscience, agree to teach this curriculum. Period.

So there are two nonstarters.

Which meant I was suddenly faced with a choice: "What do I do about it?"

I briefly considered reaching out my to building admin to ask why they had done this, and whether there was wiggle room to change it up to something more palatable, something that would work better for me and my needs. I did not consider this option for long.

After all, when I first began to consider taking a partial leave of absence for the coming year, I immediately consulted with my building administration, as a matter of professional courtesy. This was three months ago. When I decided on this course of action two months ago, I also immediately notified my bosses. I was able to confirm this shift in my work assignment had been in place for at least a month by the time I received my career-changing email last Thursday.

That begs the question: why did my bosses not afford me a similar courtesy? I would think at the very least my twenty years' working in this building merited an in-person conversation as soon as the decision had been made, and not simply announced in an email several weeks later.

Draw your own conclusions as to what these actions on the part of my building admin say about my value as an educator within a building I've called my professional home for two decades. I know I certainly did.

So I did the smart thing. I went home and talked it over with the wisest, brightest, kindest person I know. My wife. (Yes, she's all of the above and more, and NO you CAN'T have her. She's all MINE!).

My wife expressed concern for my health (as she had before many times) and for what toll the stress of this new schedule and struggling with this new curriculum might take on me. Her proposed solution was an astonishing combination of love, compassion, empathy, and concern for my well-being.

She suggested I simply expand my leave for next year to a full-time leave. She made the case that we could afford it, and all she asked in return was that I honor my obligations to address my chronic health issues, help my family, and one other thing.

I have to finish my current novel, outline and write another one, and write and publish a yet-to-be-determined number of short stories and novellas.

What writer in his right mind (no cracks, now!) would not take that deal?

So that's what I did. 

The next day I informed my principal (a wonderful lady, new to our building this year, but someone whom I very much enjoy and toward who I have not one shred of ill will). Her dismay at my decision frankly surprised me.

I mean, no one talked to me about this. Literally for weeks.

So when she started bartering, trying to keep me on-staff at least part-time, I had to stop her. After all, I didn't do what I did as the first move in a series of negotiating ploys trying to "get what I wanted."

I made a decision. An informed one. And truth be told, as I explained to my principal just last Friday, they did my a favor. Their scheduling me to teach afternoon 7th grade classes forced me to take a good hard look at my plan to work part-time in my building and try to address my health concerns piecemeal.

The realization that I have the option (thanks, again, I hasten to add, to the loving support of the World's Best Wife) to step back and focus on my own needs full-time for at least the next twelve months has been incredibly freeing for me.

And I am beyond grateful. Thanks all over again, honey. I love you more than words can wield the matter.

So that's it. For at least the next year it's get healthier and write, write, write!

See you in two weeks!

An Antic Disposition

  

Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet are probably the best-known of Shakespeare’s plays, and at least the most quoted – if not misquoted, for that matter.  Romeo & Juliet is performed often, by both professional and amateur companies, because it’s pretty straightforward.  Hamlet is trickier, or has the more troublesome reputation.  The prince, too, is one of those parts any name brand Shakespearean actor is pretty much obligated to take on early, like Lear, later in life. 

Olivier’s is the one most people know; his 1948 picture is usually cited as a classic.  I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks he kind of missed the point.  Kenneth Branagh took a stab at it, but you have the unworthy suspicion Branagh is trying to knock Olivier off his perch.  I saw Richard Burton do it on stage, but unfortunately everybody in the cast was acting in a different play from everybody else – and surprisingly, the most effective performance was Alfred Drake, playing Claudius as mildly puzzled.  I don’t have a problem with Zeffirelli’s version, Mel Gibson, but they cut the play even more severely than Olivier does.  For my money, the most engaging production is the 1980 BBC Shakespeare: Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, Patrick Stewart as Claudius.  It’s the full original text, with a runtime of three and a half hours, and it’s unapologetically played as a political thriller.

Hamlet, notoriously, is open to interpretation.  The melancholy Dane, the guy who doubts himself, and hesitates.  Olivier takes for his epigraph a line from early in the play, “Oft it chances in particular men,… carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,…” and then leaves out the rogue and peasant slave soliloquy entirely.  To my mind, this has it completely backwards.  A recent production I just saw, by the Upstart Crows here in Santa Fe, edits out that same speech Olivier chooses as emblematic, but includes all of the rogue and peasant slave speech, which I think is key to the play.  “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?  What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have?”  Hamlet, we can agree, is clearly a revenge plot.  Claudius has usurped both his brother’s throne and his marriage bed.  The prince is prompted, his word, by heaven and hell.    

It’s a misreading to suggest Hamlet can’t make up his mind.  He thinks Claudius is a rat from the get-go, and he’s furious with his mother, “to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets,” but he’s choking on his own resentment.  Even after the Ghost shows up, he second-guesses himself: “the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.”  The real sticking point, though, is that Claudius “popp’d in between the election and my hopes.”  Hamlet wants to be king himself, and Claudius cheated him.  In order to swing this - regicide, and a coup – Hamlet needs Claudius seen to be guilty, to be “justly served.”

If you read the whole play, front to back, or if you see a production that’s the whole thing, more or less, you notice the political machinations.  It’s not something read into the text, or grafted onto it.  It’s organic.  Watching the BBC Jacobi, or the Branagh movie (Jacobi as Claudius, all the more sinister for seeming reluctant), or the Upstart Crows, which left very little out, and moved like a rocket, with no wasted motion whatsoever, the political dimension is front and center.  Once the kid realizes he’s got a solid alibi to go after his uncle, he’s only waiting on opportunity.  But he himself understands he can’t be regarded as some cranky-pants teenager with a grudge; he has to be seen as responsible, not as settling a score, but righting a wrong.  He charges Horatio, as he’s dying, to report his cause accurately.  “Absent thee from felicity a while.”  This isn’t chump change.  The obligation is everything left to history.  How the story is told, after Hamlet leaves the stage.  He didn’t kill the guy because he screwed his mom; he killed an illegitimate king. 

There’s a terrific poem by Constantine Cavafy.  The premise is that Horatio has a dog in the fight.  After the events in question, Horatio becomes a court favorite, and if he maintains the narrative, it discredits Claudius, creates a legend around Hamlet, and legitimizes Fortinbras as heir to Denmark.  Cavafy’s an astute critic, if a bit cynical.  

What is the story, exactly?  The son of a dear father, murdered.  “A little more than kin, and less than kind,” the prince says, when Claudius calls him his cousin and his son, in the opening scene at court.  We know something’s amiss.  The question is whether Hamlet’s nuts.  The play is how he justifies crazy. 

Suppose, then, that Hamlet might be a classic example of the unreliable narrator.  He’s completely transparent, his thoughts spilling over, unpacking his heart with words, but is he trustworthy?  The rest is silence.

Miles of Files

I started my writing career long before personal computers were anything more than a plot device in science fiction stories. Despite making the transition from a manual typewriter to an IBM Selectric and from there to a series of ever more powerful PCs and then to a series of ever more powerful Macintoshes, my record-keeping system has remained almost entirely manual.

The file folder and tracking
system I used for “Disposable
Women,” currently
shortlisted for a Shamus.

I’m uncertain if this is ironic or pathetic, given that for most everything else in my life I’m a heavy user of computers and computer programs, but I think it may be the result of long-established habit and the knowledge that if I did convert to a more sophisticated system I wouldn’t be satisfied with a spread sheet or two for new work. I would want to build a sophisticated database that includes everything I’ve ever written and includes every possible bit of information about each story.

I would want to know at the click of a few keys which is my shortest story and which my longest, which had the most submissions before acceptance, which has been reprinted most often, my sales/rejections ratio with Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, how many times I submitted to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine before I received an acceptance, and so much more.

The time it would take to input all of that information, and the time I would later spend using the data to create charts and graphs and all manner of interesting reports, would consume a significant amount of time and eliminate what little writing time I have these days.

These six filing
cabinets may soon be
joined by a seventh.

For now, I remain with the tried-and-true: Every finished story gets a file folder, and into it goes a hardcopy of the story and a cover sheet where I track submissions, rejections, and other important information such as the dates I returned the signed contract, copy edits, and page proofs, and the story’s publication date. Also in the folder goes a copy of the signed contract, copies of important research, and a copy of the published version.

This file folder travels through a series of file drawers: awaiting submission; under submission; accepted, not paid for; paid for, not published; published, not paid for; and so on until the folder moves into its final home after the story has been published.

There are six of these filing cabinets in my second office, containing everything I’ve had published since my first sale back in the mid-1970s. In my first office—the one where I do much of my writing—are three file drawers containing the work under submission or awaiting submission, as well as several bookshelves filled with my novels and short story collections, anthologies I’ve edited, and many books and magazines containing something I’ve written (short stories mostly, but essays and non-fiction as well).

A 5.25" floppy disk
containing an early
version of the novel published
as All White Girls.

Hard copies of finished manuscripts take up a great deal of space—hence the six filing cabinets—but I can still read every one of them. Many of the earliest stories were written on typewriters, so hard copies are the only versions that exist, and the on-going evolution of computer science has left me with 5.25” floppy disks, 3.5” diskettes, and Zip drives for which I no longer have appropriate drives. Even if I had appropriate drives, many of the files were created with WordStar and I no longer have a program that will allow me to open the WordStar files and save them as Word documents. Luckily, I so rarely need to access the oldest files that it is easier to retype anything I might need.

Temple and I have reached the age where retirement is in her foreseeable future (writers don’t retire, so it isn’t in my future), and we’ve discussed downsizing to a smaller home with less upkeep. The biggest obstacle, though, is my antiquated record-keeping system—a system I started using long before personal computers stopped being a science fiction plot device and became a reality.

My story “Disposable Women,” published in Tough (July 19, 2021), has been shortlisted for a Shamus Award.

“Sit. Stay. Die.” A story I co-authored with Sandra Murphy was published in the July/August Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. This is our fifth collaboration and my second consecutive appearance in EQMM.

---

Xena, The Heroine/Villain

 by Steve Liskow

When Ernie, our 13-year-old Maine Coon, died a year ago after a long battle with kidney disease, Barb and I agreed he would be our last cat. We've been together for almost 38 years and shared space with at least one cat for 36 of them, so we may have been kidding ourselves.

Two months ago, one of our neighbors had far too many cats because her tom has fathered half the cats in our condo complex. She offered us a small tuxedo girl. We agreed to meet her, but that was all. Then we said we'd pet her, but nothing else. Then I held her for a minute. You see where this is going, don't you? She snuggled under my chin and purred.

Well, we decided she could visit our place on Monday for an hour or two and see if she was comfortable. She was. We arranged another visit on Thursday for a longer period of time to check things out more thoroughly. So thoroughly that she hasn't left yet. That was six weeks ago.

I've said before that animals, especially cats, inspire great human characters, and Xena exemplifies that even more than Ernie and Jewel did.

Like most cats, she's probably somewhere on the spectrum. She isn't really a lap cat, but she likes to cuddle. That and her sense of humor make her a great sidekick. But she still refuses to differentiate between our recliner and her scratching post, and she plays rough. She's made friends with the plant mister and fears nothing except the hair dryer. This makes her a great villain, too. She's smarter and faster than we are and can move from room to room--or floor to counter--so quickly we don't have time to say, "Xena, NO! Oh, never mind."

She's very social. She met Barb and me with no hesitation and explored our place with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old in Toys R Us. Unfortunately, her social skills extend to other cats, too. At 18 months, she's already birthed two litters. When she's in heat (which seems to be more frequently than your average porn star), she announces her needs loudly enough so most of the complex can hear her. Two of her former boyfriends have taken to hanging out on our front steps. Every well-developed character needs a weakness, and that's hers. 

Living with several other cats, she had to fight her way to the food. For the first two weeks in our place, she emptied her dish so quckly she spent the next hour crying with a stomach ache. Now, she's figured out that there's no competition and she can slow down. Sometimes. She still sticks her head in the can while I'm trying to spoon food into her dish. 

Today, she will meet her veterinarian for the first time. She's had none of her shots yet and we want to make sure she's as healthy as she seems. She's the smallest cat we've ever had, especially apparent because our last two cats were a Himalayan and a Maine Coon, and we don't expect her to get much bigger at 18 months. 

But she already likes to curl up on my left foot while I type, so she'll probably become another writing partner and character inspiration. The female leads in both my Connecticut and Detroit series have cats already, and maybe there's room for another tuxedo.

The 7 Lives of Léa

7½ months or more ago, Rob and I wrote about an unusual English manor mystery, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Much of the surrealism comes from what we’re not told. We’re given damned little in framing and a backstory.

Compared to the British title, The 7 Deaths… both Rob and I prefer the American variation, The 7½ Deaths. The novel left an impression– Four years after publication, I’m still yakking about it. But this isn’t about that.

The 7 Lives…

When NetFlix presented a French miniseries, The 7 Lives of Léa, based on the novel, Les 7 vies de Léo Belami by Nataël Trapp, I couldn’t help comparing. Like 7½ Deaths, each day the protagonist in 7 Lives finds herself jumping from one body to another, trying to learn what is happening, trying to figure out who killed Ismael, a nearly forgotten boy thirty years earlier.

Think of it as a French episode of The Twilight Zone.

Raïka Hazanavicius as Léa

Conceptual Issues

Hard sci-fi proudly embraces the physics of its world, whether real-life or a well-defined fictional model, the science in science fiction. Time travel novels and films may or may not succeed in the redefined reality of their new world. Laws of physics disallow a traveller meeting a past or future version of himself. A traveller must be careful not to alter his ancestral line that might preclude his own birth… while sometimes trying to disrupt the lineage of an adversary.

The average time travel story earns perhaps a C. I’ll award Léa a B-/C+, reasonable for the tale in question. It doesn’t pretend to be more than it is.

The 7 Lives of Léa follows a recent pattern of recasting male leads as female. Some reimagining works better than others. Without having read the book, I felt comfortable with a heroine instead of a hero. And indeed, the story zeroes in on unsung heroism.

The multi-generation actors of 7 Lives seemed to have been cast while wearing blindfolds. Virtually no teenage character resembles its much older adult version, which made it trickier to track the plot.

Léa manages to squeak past a couple of incestuous make-out close calls. Perhaps the funnest part, so to speak, occurres when she lands in the body of Pye (Pierre-Yves), the town’s rich kid, who’s not only popular but a snobbish bully. Léa alters the timeline to make a clumsy fool of him (with the result of making him somewhat endearing), but hooks him up with Jennifer, the school’s picked-on homely girl. Time travel should be built for anti-bullying alone.

Although a suspected murder is involved, The 7 Lives of Léa isn’t truly crime fiction, but it is an enjoyable journey into an imagination Rod Serling would have been proud of.

Plots and Characters

  

Two often-asked questions, at writers' meetings and writers' conferences, and sometimes even at readings and signings:

(1) When authors think up a story, should they start with a plot or with a character? 

(2) Which of these (plot or character) is more important to the story?

There are, as you probably know, no correct answers to these. Writers' processes are different and their opinions are different, and whatever works, works. But since this is my topic today and I don't want to end it here, please consider a couple of examples.

Plot first

Anytime the subject of plot vs. character comes up, I think of "The Choking Doberman." I don't know who dreamed up the story, or when, but it's been around a long time. Here it is, as close as I can remember it, in a nutshell:

A lady comes home from the supermarket with a sackful of food, opens her front door, and finds her pet Doberman choking in the entranceway. She drops her bag, picks up the gasping dog, and rushes him to the veterinarian's office. The vet tells her, "We'll take care of him--go home and I'll call you later." She drives back home and is picking up her dropped groceries when the phone rings. It's the vet. He says, "Get out of the house! You're in great danger--get out right now!" So she does. Terrified, she runs to the next-door neighbor's house, and watches through the neighbor's window as several patrol cars screech to a stop in front of her house. Half a dozen policemen hop out with guns drawn and run inside. Several minutes later the veterinarian arrives also, and when he gets out of his car the lady hurries up to him and says, "What on earth is happening?" He tells her that when he examined her dog he found a severed human finger lodged in the dog's throat--that's why he was choking. Assuming the dog might've surprised an intruder, the vet called the police and, sure enough, the cops found a man hiding in one of her closets and clutching his bloody hand. 

Question: Is this fine, illuminating, life-changing literature? Of course not. But it damn sure is memorable. I think I first heard the story told in high school, and I remember it to this day.

In the Doberman story, the plot--the story--is everything. It's all that matters. The characters--the woman, the vet, the neighbor, the policemen--aren't all that important. They're there only to make the story happen. I've heard this mentioned as a good example of genre fiction as opposed to "literary."

Character first

On the other side of the aisle is "Big Two-Hearted River," by Ernest Hemingway. I can't remember it in detail, but here's a quick summary:

After the war, a man goes back home and visits his old fishing spot. He hikes to the river, sits around, smokes, makes camp for the night, and goes to bed. The next morning he cooks breakfast, finds grasshoppers to use for bait, and goes fishing. He catches a few trout and loses a few and finally stops. 

And that's it. I don't mean to in any way demean the story; it's well written and certainly well known. But nothing really happens in the story. I suppose there's symbolism here--the river could probably represent life, flowing steadily past him, and the battle between him and the fish he tries to catch is an insignificant struggle when compared to the fighting he did in the war. But there's no plot at all. The character is everything. This story would fall more on the literary-fiction end of the scale, as opposed to genre fiction. 

A clarification (I hope)

Please be aware, I don't think the plot/character issue is the deciding factor in whether a story's categorized as literary or genre. I think it's more a case of whether the viewpoint character undergoes a change in the course of the story. If that happens--if he or she becomes a different person by the time the end rolls around--it's literary fiction. If the character remains pretty much the same at the end (think James Bond or Nancy Drew or Indiana Jones), it's genre fiction. There are other things to consider as well, like entertainment vs. enlightenment, and the sophistication and beauty of the language, etc., but I believe the man thing is the extent to which the POV character experiences a change in the way he or she looks at life. And it's not always the main character--it's the viewpoint character. Atticus Finch and Shane and Jay Gatsby aren't the ones who undergo this kind of emotional change; Scout and Bobby Starrett and Nick Carraway are. They're the people who are in a position to observe what happens and learn the most from it. It is for this reason that I believe some genre stories like Westerns and mysteries and science fiction can also qualify as literary fiction. (My opinion only.)

NOTE: I recall seeing much of this plot vs. character debate years ago in a book called 20 Master Plots by Ronald Tobias. Or at I think that was it. If I'm wrong it wouldn't be the first time. (Maybe the second.)

So, which should come first? Plot or character?

That depends on the author. Almost all my writer friends tell me they come up with the character(s) first and only then do they worry about giving those characters something to do, which is the plot. I do it the other way around. I always come up with the plot first, and only then create the people (and try hard to make them interesting) who will act out the story.

One thing to bear in mind is that your characters don't have to be any less interesting if you come up with the plot first. I even think the characters can turn out better when they're tailored to meet the requirements of the storyline.

Which is more important to the story?

That varies as well, depending on who you ask. Personally, I probably prefer plot-driven stories to character-driven stories because I think entertainment is the one most important thing I can try to deliver to readers. If they somehow happen to be enlightened or educated as a result of the story, that's icing on the cake, but if they're entertained--if it's a good story--I feel I've done what I set out to do. On the other hand, I know many writers, and readers too, who always prefer strong characters over a strong plot.

Stephen King once said, in his essay collection Secret Windows, "All my life as a writer I have been committed to the idea that in fiction the story value holds dominance over every other facet of the writer's craft; characterization, theme, mood, none of those things is anything if the story is dull. And if the story does hold you, all else can be forgiven."

As for literary fiction vs. genre fiction, which always seems to go hand-in-hand with discussions of character vs. plot, the best definition I've heard of those terms comes also from Stephen King, in a taped interview I saw years ago. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something like "Literary fiction is about extraordinary people doing ordinary things, and genre fiction is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things."

I think we can all agree that the very best stories and novels and movies have great characters AND great plots--they're not mutually exclusive. That's why Lonesome Dove and To Kill a Mockingbird and The Silence of the Lambs and The Godfather will be around forever. The rest of us writers should be so lucky.

Your turn . . .

If you write stories, which do you come up with first? Always the characters? Always the plot? Sometimes a mix of the two? And which do you think is more important to the story? Let me know, in the comments section.

See you again on July 2nd.