Don't Mess Up a Good Thing

  

No, my title's not referring to the old song by Fontella Bass and Bobby McClure (though I'm old enough to remember it). This is one of those columns that started out using one idea and ended up with another. 

  

What I had intended to talk about today was the way we writers sometimes create a late draft of a story or novel and then, during the rewriting process, manage to edit it over and over again, to the point where our changes might be making it worse instead of better. (The trick, obviously, is to learn how to know when your story's as good as it can be . . . and then stop. It's not a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." It's a case of "If it's fixed, don't keep tinkering with it.")

BUT, in the process of putting together that post about authors changing their stories for the worse, I got to thinking instead about the way some publishers have begun doing just that: changing the original works of authors like Mark Twain, Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and others--usually to conform to certain current views and standards.) And while researching that, I stumbled by accident onto what might be the craziest example I've ever seen of Messing Up a Good Thing. It involves not a short story or a novel but a movie I saw in the mid-60s, one that later became a classic. In fact, it introduced the film subgenre known as the Spaghetti Western.

The movie was A Fistful of Dollars, a low-budget Italian production shot in Spain and starring a not-yet-famous actor named Clint Eastwood, who has said in interviews that he took the part mostly to get a paid vacation to Europe. In the story, a mysterious stranger rides into a Mexican town controlled by two ruthless criminal families and winds up pitting one against the other in order to steal money from both. As a result he "cleans up" the town and saves a number of its citizens (the few he hasn't shot), but that's just a byproduct; mostly, he's an antiheroic loner looking out for no one but himself. 

As things turned out, the resulting film defied all odds. Even though the Italian director spoke no English and the American lead actor spoke no Italian, the movie was a mega-hit, both in the U.S. and abroad, and about ten years later it was aired on network TV here in the States. But in their infinite wisdom, the executives at ABC decided to create and add a five-minute "prologue" to the movie, using a different director, different actors, etc., in order to explain the violence and address those pesky morality issues. In their minds, the protagonist needed a backstory that provided a good reason to justify the things he later did.

 

To my knowledge, this edited version was broadcast and seen only once, in 1975 (some say '77, but it was '75), and if you weren't old enough or unfortunate enough to see it firsthand, here's a summary of the prologue. It features a meeting between a prison warden, played by the great Harry Dean Stanton, and a poncho-clad, cigar-smoking inmate who's seen only from the rear. The faceless convict, who never says a word during the scene, is offered a pardon if he'll go to a town called San Miguel and get rid of its two notorious gangs in any way he can, and at the end of the meeting he's given his gun and a horse and sent away on his probably-suicidal assignment. 

The point is, the added scene is not only needless, it's poorly made and ridiculous in every way. Even seen from behind, the inmate is obviously a different actor from the story's hero, though there are two or three quick cutaway close-ups of Eastwood's squinting eyes, and there are other goofs as well: the convict's poncho is too long, his hat's too big, and he's given a horse and a long-barreled revolver although the real Eastwood is seen ten minutes later riding a mule and using a shorter-barreled revolver. All the scene did, besides making the director look dumb, is make the protagonist less mysterious and less appealing. One of the comments on the YouTube video says (and it's right) that this added prologue looked more like a skit from Saturday Night Live.

Anyhow, here's the video. which precedes the opening credits of the movie. Judge for yourself.

As for this kind of after-the-fact interference, I believe one of the networks did something similar when On Her Majesty's Secret Service first aired on TV years ago, and I 've heard about several other cases. And bookwise, there are of course the ongoing efforts to sanitize and censor published fictional works of deceased authors. Personally, I've experienced this type of destructive meddling only on a very small scale, when certain magazine editors removed things from or added things to my short-story manuscripts that wound up making them (in my opinion) less effective, but that is their right and those cases are rare. Most editors make things better, not worse. 

What do you think of all this? Can you remember instances of it, on either the screen or the page? If it's happened to you or to others you know, on any scale, please let me know in the comments section below.

Anyway, that's that. I apologize for getting sidetracked from my original mission--but I found this particular movie example fascinating. I do plan to do a column soon about overwriting-to-the-point-of-destroying an otherwise good story, because it's something I've done and I'm sure others have done also. But making a good story worse seems even more terrible when someone else steps in and does it for you.

Meanwhile, happy writing, reading, and viewing.

Have a great weekend!

The Author Is Not The Protagonist. Until She Is.

GPA Photo Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

 On the scifi side, I once had a newsletter serialized novel beta read before putting it out as a book. I wrote the thing in pieces over two years, intending it to be a novella I could release as a PDF for that author name's newsletter. Now betas are the poor man's editor. Usually, as with the Holland Bay books, it's a writer who gets the type of story I'm writing. Once in a while, though, you get one with an axe to grind. Like one had a tantrum because a book had too much American stuff in it. Like tea bags. (I asked a British friend and a Japanese writer. They found this hilarious and asked who steeped their tea anymore in a pandemic-era world. Answer: Not many.) On this novel, though, I have one planet patterning itself after present-day China without the military pretensions. The note I got back: You shouldn't impose your politics on the reader.

I kindly sent back a note stating that was how one corner of my fictional world did things. Other areas did not. Then I mentioned another planet being a libertarian paradise. Same comment. I less politely said, "You can't call me both, especially in the same chapter." I suspect my beta reader suffered from a delusion many readers do: The attitudes and opinions of the characters are those of the author, not the author getting into the heads of his or her creations.

Theodore Sturgeon called these people morons. I'll be a little more charitable and call them lazy. 

But I'm thinking moron.

Put simply, a writer's job is to create characters who live and breathe. Some of them have vices. I've written alcoholics. You can't go through life without knowing a few addicts. I've written cheaters. I've written thieves. I don't do racists well because I have to dumb myself down for them. That does not mean I'm an addict, a thief, or a cheater. But I not only have to write these people, I have to believably write them. 

One reviewer pointed out the corruption in both Holland Bay and The Dogs of Beaumont Heights. but when I wrote them, I didn't think of it as that. Oh, Deputy Chief Roberts, Linc, and Ralph Smithers are corrupt as hell. I just didn't think about that. I wrote them as the heroes in their own dramas. Smithers's world is crumbling and rage eats him alive from inside. Linc thinks it's his turn to be on top. Roberts believes he's been passed over for chief too many times.

One thing the Holland Bay books don't feature that I can't say about Nick Kepler or my scifi is there is no "me" in the story. While I'm not really an ex-cop turned insurance investigator or a wealthy heiress's runaway son, Nick Kepler and JT Austin are my conduits into those series. But the closest would be Jessica Branson in the Holland Bay books. While hers is the easiest head for me to inhabit, she is most definitely not me.

"Wait a minute. Didn't you just do two articles about basing characters on real people being bad?"

Yep. And I stand by those articles. Conan Doyle is clearly Watson, whom Holmes finds smarter than

CC 2009 Mark Coggins

Doyle wrote him. Lew Archer is Ross MacDonald, such a thin version of the author that he disappears if he turns sideways. Then there's that other Santa Teresa detective, Kinsey Millhonne. Sue Grafton once said Kinsey is "moi had I not gotten married."

Of course, it's dangerous for an author to project oneself into a story. As I said before, the characters' opinions and attitudes are not those. Some, like Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, can turn into what's known as a Mary Sue, an idealized version of the author. 

So the protag is not the author. Until he or she says they are. 

Then it gets interesting.

The Point of Description

So I took a pic of this last week during a birthday trip to the SouthWest:

For those of you not familiar with this particular formation, it is the famous Calico Hills, which form the heart of the box canyon exhibit known as Red Rocks Canyon. It’s administered by the Bureau of Land Management, not either the National Parks or Forest Service, and at a mere 15 minute drive from downtown Las Vegas, it’s one of the best kept secrets in the western hemisphere. And while there are for  many rock formations and trails worth your time at Red Rock, the Calico Hills themselves stand out for having served as the setting in countless movies. Lots of fake gun fights on those clay and sandstone hills.

Now, what I wrote above could be construed as a "description" of the Calico Hills, although it's light on physical description and heavy on associations (historical, bureaucratic, etc.). A physical description would of course have more details about what the subject matter looked like, etc., rather than who ran it, how close it is to Vegas, and so on.

Of course the requirements of good description arise from the needs of the story itself. If it's a think piece about the many iterations of the notion of "description," clinical and bureaucratic lend themselves well to it. If the writer of the piece is attempting to convey how just viewing the subject of the description  could move him to uncharacteristic tears, then obvious the esoteric, the mystical, the mythopoetic. Like this piece:

The walls of the cañon, 2,500 feet high, are of marble, of many beautiful colors, often polished below by the waves…. As this great bed forms a distinctive feature of the cañon, we call it Marble Cañon.

written in an attempt to convey the impact of this to readers back East:

The words, of course, are those of John Wesley Powell, the intrepid leader of the first government expedition to navigate the length of the Grand Canyon. The pics are mine.

As I have mulled the sheer utility of different types of opinion, how they work and why they frequently don't, I have found myself asking, now, more than ever, what is the point of description? And by point I mean, what is its role, what is its intent, what is the desired outcome of a literarily well described person place or thing?

How much do we as the readers need to know about the face of Bartleby, the Scrivener, in order to advance the plots of the stories in which he appears? The same can be (and shall be) asked of Gatsby's (in)famous East and West Egg? Arthur's Camelot? Kublai Khan's Xanadu?

The answers may surprise you. I intend to dig into several of these individual pieces of the Literary Canon (and others as well). If you have a famous literary character/setting you would like  seeing tossed in to the mix for a literary "check up," drop that name into the comments section below.

I'll also add my own "villains place," and we can pursue further discussion from there.

And that's it for me. 

As always, See you in two weeks!

Drums

  

I bought a drum kit the year before last.  I’ve always wanted one, and never took the plunge.  I should specify that this isn’t a full acoustic set, but an amplified electric, which takes up less space, and can be played through headsets, so you’re the only one who hears it, and you don’t drive everybody else nuts. 

I got strong-armed into taking up clarinet, for band, when I was thirteen or thereabouts, and mercifully got shut of it when I shipped off for boarding school a couple of years later – the clarinet didn’t follow.  That’s when I started listening to jazz, too, and fell for the more muscular woodwinds, alto and tenor sax, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane and Stan Getz.  Keyboard guys, McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans on piano, Jimmy Smith on the organ.  And always, the percussive, insistent drive of the drummers.

Joe Morello, behind the Brubeck quarter.  Sly, syncopated, disciplined.  Elvin Jones, the power behind Coltrane and his quartet, savage and propulsive, predatory, leaning into it, ever on the attack.  Bobby Moses, loose-limbed and mischievous, often in counterpoint or reflection, his drum fills an echo and a riff off Gary Burton’s blur of mallet strokes on vibes – and aren’t vibes themselves considered a percussion instrument?

The word timpani derives from the Greek, to hit, and drums are hit with sticks, mallets, brushes, or bare hands.  There’s something clearly elemental about drums, every culture has them, and they’re clearly physical, badda-boom.

They make noise.  They’re fun. 

Not too long ago, I got turned on to a drum documentary, Count Me In (in fact, it’s what inspired me to finally buy myself my own drum set).  It’s hugely entertaining, if only for the enthusiasm and high spirits of everybody involved in making it, but it interleaves a lot of archival footage, so you get Joe Morello and Elvin Jones, along with Art Blakey, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, and Max Roach – and then you get Ringo Starr and Ginger Baker and Charlie Watts and Keith Moon and John Bonham, among others, for show and tell about influences and so forth.  It’s mesmerizing.  There’s a terrific moment with Emily Dolan Davies where she talks about how physically cathartic it is, how liberating, to just smash the skins.  And there you have it.  It’s the animal, atavistic energy.  Yes, there’s a Zen to it.  Yes, technique comes with practice, just like anything.  But the BAM BAM BAM.  It’s primal, and boy, is it satisfying!

I don’t take a break from my desk and sit down at the drums to be contemplative, in other words.  I don’t use it to work out my aggressions, either.  I do it to get lost, in rhythm, in patterns, in sound.  I like the tom-toms better than the snare, for one thing, and you can change the sound mix, and customize your kit, marimbas and cowbells.  I’ll never have the frontal attack of Elvin Jones, or the crisp delivery of Joe Morello, or for sheer exuberance, Jeff Porcaro’s half-time shuffle on Rosanna, but I play along.  And in truth, it can be relaxing or strenuous, depending on whether you’re at the top of your lungs, in your headsets.

Count Me In is available on Netflix

Dave Brubeck Quartet, live, Take Five

     (Joe Morello)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw

Coltrane, My Favorite Things

     (Elvin Jones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqpriUFsMQQ&list=RDmWEvjzbTLR4&index=8

Toto, Rosanna

     (Jeff Porcaro)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmOLtTGvsbM

Story Mining

I don’t often write about the genesis of my stories because I often don’t know or don’t remember much about how they came to be. My stories don’t exist, and then they do.

On the other hand, “Denim Mining” (scheduled for publication in the May/June issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine), has a distinct, three-part path from concept to finished story.

THE BEGINNING

In early 2019, I read several articles about the value of vintage blue jeans—especially Levi’s—and how collectors scour abandoned farms and mines looking for denim treasure. Particularly significant finds can be worth several thousand dollars, as CNN reports in an October 13, 2022, article about a pair of 19th century Levi’s found in a mine shaft that sold for $87,000. Silver mines in Arizona, California, and Nevada seem to be particularly good locations to find vintage Levi’s. I printed hardcopies of some of the articles and made a few notes about a possible story, and stuck everything into a file folder.

Not long after that, I read some articles about silver mining in Texas, and was fascinated to learn that Franciscan friars discovered and operated several silver mines near El Paso, Texas, around 1860, concealing the mines when they feared they would lose control of them to the Jesuits, and that several silver mines operated in Texas well into the 1950s and sporadically since then. Of particular interest was Jim Bowie’s lost silver mine near Menard, Texas, which legend says may contain a billion dollars’ worth of silver.

So, I began writing a story about two men—one an assistant professor of Texas history who believes he has identified the locations of several abandoned and forgotten Texas silver mines—who go in search of vintage denim.

THE MIDDLE

Around this time, Bouchercon announced the theme of the 2019 anthology, Denim, Diamonds and Death. So, I wondered what might happen if my denim-mining duo stumbled upon a cache of diamonds in one of the silver mines. I made more notes and wrote more bits and pieces of a story, and then...nothing. I returned to the story repeatedly, well past the deadline for the Bouchercon anthology. I figured out how the diamonds came to be in the mine, and I sort of knew what I wanted to happen, but the story wasn’t progressing. It had no ending.

THE END

I rarely discuss stories-in-progress with other writers, but mid-summer 2020, I posted something here about having a few stories that had hit brick walls. Fellow SleuthSayer Leigh Lundin offered to look at one of them, and I took him up on his offer. He read what I had written and made several suggestions—an important one having to do with weapons of the past—that broke down the wall and allowed me to bring “Denim Mining” to a satisfying conclusion.

One interesting note is how I structured this story. Most of my stories are linear, with one event happening after the other. “Denim Mining,” though, alternates between the past and the present. The scenes from the past tell the story of how the diamonds wound up in the mine while the scenes in the present tell the story of how the diamonds are discovered. In a sense, “Denim Mining” is two separate stories woven together, but what happens in the past clearly impacts what happens in the present.

For those of you who like to track these kinds of stats: “Denim Mining” was submitted to AHMM on 8/20/20, accepted 7/29/21, and will be published in the May/June 2023 issue.

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Released yesterday: More Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties (Down & Out Books), the sequel to last year’s Groovy Gumshoes. This rollicking romp through the sixties features stories by Michael Chandos, Wil A. Emerson, Jeff Esterholm, John M. Floyd, Nils Gilbertson, Wendy Harrison, Dave H. Hendrickson, gay toltl kinman, Lynn Maples, Jarrett Mazza, John McFetridge, Robert Petyo, Graham Powell, Bev Vincent, Joseph S. Walker, Stacy Woodson. If you haven’t already read the first volume, why not order both?

A literary guide to family values

Playwrights see their job as delving into the most fraught and tragic aspects of life.

Ever since Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, they have mostly achieved this by focusing on the epicenter of human experience.

The family.

In modern times, we have Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neil and Arthur Miller, to name a few. 

Their dominant subjects could have been war, politics, farming, urban development, ballet, the internal combustion engine, snack foods – but what did they focus on?  The family. That oft paraphrased quote from Willy Sutton applies here.  If you want drama, go to where it’s most plentiful. 

One of my favorite cartoon captions reads, “I’ve decided to run for office so I can spend less time with my family.” 

I think everything that’s ever been written about families is true.  The bonds, the love, the mutual support, the enrichment, home cooking and tag football.  It’s also the crucible of selfishness, brutality, oppression, rape, sadism and deprivation.  The best and the worst. 

Politicians who campaign on the first, neglect to point out the second, for good reasons. 

But this contributes to a norm within the general culture that declares the family as the highest achievable constituent of the social order, when in fact, it’s often the most degraded.  The finest playwrights in history have pointed this out, though you won’t ever find a passage from Eugene O’Neil in the State of the Union Address.

Despite its shortcomings, few would argue that a healthy, love-filled traditional family is a priceless thing.

The harm is in denigrating other forms of intimate arrangements, or classifying them as sup-par.  Military units in combat zones, successful athletic teams, long-surviving rock bands and AA meetings know this not to be true.  As do countless same-sex families and collections of vagabonds who fall in together and never leave.  Often these groupings are bulwarks against what was missing in the traditional family, and those involved are generally grateful for it.

Photo: My Knopf family, circa 1890s. Great grandfather lower right,
great-great grandfather next to him. Clearly a fun-loving bunch of folks.

Blood is indeed thicker than water, but often diluted into thin gruel. 

Even so, conventional family is nearly irresistible in great part because of biological imperatives.  Winston Churchill was utterly neglected by his parents, but never once expressed a single word of criticism.  This is why abused children often want to be returned to their family perpetrators, and cops chasing escaped prisoners first check the addresses of their moms and dads.   So it takes some mighty forces to cleave these attachments, thus the power of countless novels and plays. 

And yet, who but our biographers and creative writers will date the launch of a successful life to the moment their heroes left home?  Huck Finn’s real father was nothing if not an evil scoundrel, from whom Huck escapes into a relationship with a surrogate father not even of the same race, and certainly not social standing, even for a hardscrabble white kid like Huck.  Huck also flees from other, wealthier family structures that threaten his freedom and personal sense of self.  Which family values was Mark Twain celebrating here?

A completely unscientific examination of the family lives of mystery novel protagonists would reveal a litany of sadness and disfunction that would make Freud hang up his cigar and examination couch. 

Most are alcoholics or recovering alcoholics, few are not divorced with estranged children, usually daughters.  Parents are rarely mentioned, unless they’re abusive, in nursing homes or dead at a young age.  Siblings are usually no good, or too good, cousins get the hero in trouble with the mob, or worse, a fair percentage have been the victims of a serial killer or an unsolved disappearance. Can an uncle be anything other than a flaming screwball or picaresque bon vivant?  

Mystery writers are no different from playwrights. 

They go to where the best material is just sitting there waiting for exploitation.

Literature postulates that our blood relatives get the first claim on our hearts, but that title is revocable, even if persistently haunting our moods and dreams.  Like inherited wealth, it can assure generations of comfort and security, or be squandered by the reckless, cruel, vindictive and ungrateful.

Koalas and Crime Scenes

During my late-night-I-just-cannot-sleep internet wanderings I stumbled upon a surprising fact: koalas have fingerprints.

Well, that changed everything. I went from cannot-sleep to must-not-sleep. My childhood stuffy was a koala so I have a special attachment to these adorably cute fur-balls and, although my stuffy is long gone, this exactly how I picture her.

Armed with my trusty computer, I started grilling the internet for information. Here is how that conversation went:

Why do koalas have fingerprints?

The answer appeared to be, ‘back up a bit, Mary, because we first need to ask why do any animals - including humans - have fingerprints?’ “what would make fingerprints useful from an evolutionary standpoint?…while fingerprints may not build friction on their own, they may help maintain grip by working in conjunction with sweat glands… And fingerprints may also provide crucial sensitivity in our fingertips.”

So why are koalas the only non-primate with fingerprints?

“Koalas are famously picky eaters who seek out eucalyptus leaves of a specific age… koala fingerprints must have originated as an adaptation to this task…the friction and sensitivity fingerprints afford may help them simultaneously hang onto trees and do the delicate work of picking particular leaves and discarding others—but hopefully not near a crime scene.” 

This led me to an intriguing question: can koala prints mess up a crime scene?

“Oddly enough, the fingerprints of koalas are nearly identical to human beings, and even under a microscope, they are basically impossible to tell apart. The shape, size and ridge patterns are bizarrely identical, even moreso than the similarities between primate and human fingerprints. However, while human beings have “dermal ridges” on their entire fingers and across their palms, koalas only have fingerprints on the tips of their fingers, where the majority of their gripping force occurs.”

A visual on that: 

I simply couldn’t believe that they can be mistaken for human even on close inspection. But the internet continued relentlessly on this path:

“The loopy whirling ridges on koala fingers can not be distinguished from humans, even after a detailed microscope analysis. Koala fingerprints resemblance is even closer than the fingerprints of close human relatives such as chimps and gorillas.”

I remained unrepentantly sceptical and searched till I found this from Chantel Tattoli, a freelance journalist researching fingerprinting.

“In her research, she came across media reports of koala prints fooling Australian crime scene investigators. However, a NSW fingerprint expert told her the reports had been exaggerated.

"Anybody who is really a specialist in fingerprints can read the difference," Tattoli said.”

Since this is the only mention I found of koala fingerprints not being able to fool experts, I was sceptical of this as well.

What about primates? Their fingerprints aren’t as close to human as koalas, but are they similar?

“Gathering dust in police files is a dossier containing the fingerprints of the most unlikely criminal gang - half a dozen chimpanzees and a pair of orang-utans.

Their dabs were taken during police raids at the Ape House at London Zoo and at Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire. The operation, by fingerprint experts from Hertfordshire police, took place in 1975 at a time when there was growing concern over unsolved crimes. It concluded that chimp dabs looked exactly the same as ours, but did not link them to any specific offence.”

My late night conversations with the internet led to another conversation with my imagination - and hopefully yours as well: is there anything useful in this for a mystery writer? Maybe fingerprints at a crime scene of a koala or even a primate that baffle investigators? More believable if they’re partials? The problem is why would a koala be at a crime scene in the first place, because they’re law-abiding and not prone to fits of murderous rage? This character analysis comes from a close relationship with my childhood stuffy. Let’s assume the koala is innocent. Please. Maybe if the story is set in Australia or in a zoo, koala fingerprints could be found at the crime scene.

What Is Up With That, Anyway?

A personal Saturday Night Live favorite is "What Up with That?" The sketch features Kenan Thompson as a flamboyant BET talk show host unable to stick to his already out-there format. This loveable pile of silliness is becoming vintage, having appeared not once but twelve times since 2009. On paper, the skit shouldn't have worked even once. On stage, it keeps me grinning, and this can teach something about writing funny stuff.

Yes, twelve times. No one can wear out a successful skit like SNL. If an idea catches fire, each next outing--and they'll come often--clings to the original set-up. "What Up with That" is no exception--with a sub-exception I'll get back to later. 

The "What Up with That" formula goes like so:

1. A hype man announcer (various cast members) introduces host Diondre Cole (Thompson) and three celebrity guests. The hype man says we'll tackle the events of the day...with soul.
2. Diondre breaks into the rousing theme song and keeps at it, crowding the camera and immediately undercutting any sense we'll be tackling serious topics. His house band includes a Kenny G knock-off (Giuseppe, played by Fred Armisen), back-up singers Pippa and Poppy (various cast members), and a beat boy forever busting the Running Man (Vance, played by Jason Sudeikis).  
3. Diondre finally remembers to start the show. It doesn't take. He loses focus and relaunches the theme, ever more in gospel style. 
4. An exhausted but beaming Diondre gets around to his guests. Legit celebrities, too. The third guest, until 2021 anyway, is invariably Lindsay Buckingham (Bill Hader). The bit goes that Buckingham has been booked, bumped, and re-booked on every show for twelve years--only again and again to get bumped for time. 
5. No sooner does Guest #1 start plugging their stuff than the house drummer lures Diondre back into yet more theme song. Diondre brings out random freaky associates, including disco flutists and Europop acts and a sexed-up banjo player. The big number devolves into a mini-carnival.
6. Predictably, Diondre runs out of time before getting back to his guests. Buckingham goes through the stages of irritation to good sport acceptance of yet another bumping. 
7. The show closes to--wait for it--Deondre and his whole shebang grooving on the theme music.

Summarizing this gleeful mess doesn't do it justice. Here are a few prime examples:

• 2009, where Deondre got his break. 
• 2012, the "education edition."
• 2021, the Halloween edition.

SNL almost didn't run that first "What Up with That." Not everyone likes their humor this over the top. Hell, Diondre sails over any top and up past the stratosphere. Some folks may laugh, and some folks may change the channel. Diondre's lesson one for humor writers: Funny to me may not be funny to you. Accept that and plow toward your north star.

Which Thompson did. The skit was his idea, and he sold it to the SNL doubters. Thompson saw something the writers missed. Thompson saw Diondre would pop if only the actor fully committed. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Thompson explained how he understood Diondre Cole and what must've been his failed preacher backstory. Some part of Diondre might really want to talk issues. He won't because he just can't. He's there to put on his kind of extravaganza. The lesson here is, if you're going to go there on a character, go all the way. A half-hearted Diondre flops royally. 

Thompson has the skills to bring Diondre alive. He still needs a weird world to thrive inside. Smartly, the template surrounds him with complementary characters. The band's tireless groove echoes his endearing obsessions. The volume and ridiculousness of his walk-ons suggest his entourage is a non-stop spectacle. For a counterpoint, the guests are usually name actors or public figures playing themselves--and playing it straight. Their bewilderment of Diondre hogging the air time grounds the silliness.

I mentioned a sub-exception earlier. This skit did wear thin as SNL went to the "What Up with That" well a ton. I've never gotten tired of it, though, to include just now rewatching on YouTube. What keeps me laughing isn't that Diondre wastes the entire show rehashing his theme. It's how Diondre wastes it, how he can't help but be egged into it. Diondre can't stop, won't stop, and even has those walk-on interruptions ready off-stage to amp up the party. 

And look, I've run out of word count. 

We'll wrap with my main humor takeaway. I spent 700 words parsing through comic dynamics--and I did not make you laugh. Nothing kills humor like explanation. "What Up with That" never bothers to explain itself. The skit doubles and triples down on the premise, constantly asking but never answering the very question Diondre's spectacle presents: What is up with that, anyway?

The Best Website about Best Books

I’ll bet the last time you wanted to get some suggestions for a product you planned to buy, you hopped online and searched for something like: “Best vacuum cleaners for people with pets,” “Best sugar-free bacon,” “Best electric cars,” or “Best reciprocating saws.” Don’t laugh: these are actual searches I’ve performed in recent months. If you’re an English speaker, when you’re doing this kind of search it just seems natural to stick the word “best” at the beginning of the sentence. Each time, the web rewarded me with not one but multiple pages offering capsule reviews of products I might want to consider. The quality of those reviews (and the writing) was all over the map, but at least they highlighted a lot of different brands and items that I would never have known about.

You could do the same with books, but I suspect many people interested in finding books to read a) browse a bookstore or library, b) ask friends and fellow book club members, c) mine book reviews, or d) pop over to a certain gigantic online retailer and look at the books that site’s faceless recommendation engine suggested for them.

A new site called Shepherd.com skips the recommendation engine in favor of recommendations by creators of fiction and nonfiction alike. Shepherd often (but not always) employs the same “best” nomenclature that came naturally to me when I was thinking of making that ill-advised bacon-and-Sawzall run with my dog. More than 7,000 writers have already contributed lists to Shepherd on such topics as “Best books about the Battle of the Bulge,” “Best books about the Dalai Lama,” and “the best mysteries that let you explore major cities of Italy.” Shepherd currently has more than 20,000 nonfiction and 16,000 fiction titles in its system, and is growing daily.

I first learned about the site when its creator, Ben Fox, contacted my wife to contribute a list on one of her areas of expertise, “Best books about the Manhattan Project.” Ben is an American entrepreneur who lives with his young family in Portugal. He’s a data geek and voracious reader. How voracious? When I asked, he sent me a spreadsheet listing the number the books he’s read since 2010, categorized by fun books and serious books, and converted to percentages. In this way, I learned that his most recent high-water reading year was 2020, during which he consumed 193 books, 94 percent of them for pleasure. Sure, Covid lockdowns in Europe no doubt had something to do with his pace, but his personal book consumption has hit triple-digit territory for the last 13 years!

He started the website by focusing on nonfiction titles because, he says, people actively search on Google for nonfiction topics. He has since branched out into fiction, with an emphasis on genre fiction.

The format is simple. Authors recommend five books by other authors on a topic that is germane to their expertise. At the top of that list, they’re allowed to include a sixth book—one of their own that aligns with the topic—and their bio, links to their socials, and their website. As each list enters Shepherd’s system, authors and books begin cross-pollinating. My wife’s books were recommended by other authors, and eventually there’s a rich well of recommendations that readers can investigate: “Oh, Denise wrote that book about WWII that I was interested in. But now I see that other writers have recommended her book on Thanksgiving. I gotta check that out.” The more people in the system, the deeper that interconnectivity becomes. As each writer contributes a list of five books, Ben contacts the authors of those five books and asks if they would consider contributing a list as well.

My wife and I were early adopters, so we routinely get emails from writers asking us if Shepherd is some kind of scam, to which I always respond no. The one catch is that Shepherd doesn’t pay authors for these capsule reviews. That’s a turnoff for many, but if you’ve ever launched a book, you know that publishers often encourage you to write reams of blog posts, articles, Q&As, and op-eds for news organizations and other websites. These are almost always written for zero payment, for sites that are often of dubious quality. Writers do it because we gotta promote, gotta promote, gotta promote.

In Shepherd’s case, at least the site is helping sell books. Ben proved this to me once in a Zoom call in which he shared his screen and showed us how he could track just how many clicks on a book title had resulted in a sale. Right now the site gets about 14,000 visitors a day, about 400,000 a month in good months. The goal is to hit 1 million a month in 2023. The site supports itself on ads and affiliate link payments from that online behemoth retailer I referred to earlier, and Bookshop.org. If a book of yours sells, you and Shepherd both make money.

Currently any author of a book can submit a list. But there are some rules. You do have to contact them first and pitch the idea. (See the author site here.) If you’re writing a book series, you can only promote the first one in your series. You have to stick to Shepherd’s format and guidelines, which they’ll help you do.

Ben believes that when it comes to books, a recommendation from a human—especially an author—carries more weight than a rec generated by an algorithm. Can’t say I disagree.

***

How two pages look on the site:

A topic page linking to numerous author lists...

A single author page...

***

See you in three weeks!




Joe

josephdagnese.com

A Hospital is No Place for Sick People

My husband was in the hospital a couple of weeks ago for a few days - and while it was very scary, he is back home now, and doing better than he has for a long time.  I spent most of the time there with him (which is why I didn't comment on everyone's posts, my apologies), because God knows everyone in a hospital needs an advocate to listen to what everyone's saying and to write it down.  When you're undergoing treatments and changes in medications and constant barrage of doctors, nurses, and physical therapists, it's easy to lose track of what's going on unless someone will take notes.  That's me!

But there were quiet times, like when he was asleep and there weren't any nurses around, and my mystery mind went into high gear with a few ideas, such as what crimes can be committed in a hospital with witnesses able to come in at any moment? Not to mention cameras and all this machinery that beeps and bings if you so much as look at it? And medication that is carefully rationed and doled out? 

As a visitor / family member, I came to the conclusion that it's hard.  Oh, there are some things that are possible. For example, a hospital is not a "fine and private place", and family, visitors, and God knows who are always wandering the halls.  So who knows what they could pick up in other rooms under the guise of "recognizing" someone and popping in to say hello?  Especially in a rural area, where everyone knows everyone else, and it would be natural to see how old Mrs. Warmbly is doing.  The staff (who are rarely local) doesn't necessarily know that Mrs. Warmbly is the most hated woman in town.  That opens up a whole vista of plot twists, doesn't it?  

Now if you're medical personnel, a lot is possible.  Most nurses, orderlies, etc., are the greatest people on earth, and doctors are not only mostly fantastic (if unintelligible because they will use long medical terms for everything and expect you to understand it) but simply don't have the time to do much evil, even if they were so inclined.  

And yet it does happen.  There's a certain amount of drug addiction in the medical profession, because there's a lot of access.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak...  There have been cases of abuse, usually when the patient is mentally and physically incapacitated.  

And there are some cases where you wonder why it isn't done more often.  There was a man across the hall from my husband's room who spent most of his time screaming at the nurses and staff.  He wasn't going to take those meds.  He wasn't going to drink that stuff - "If I do that I'll piss all over the bed!" And when the nurse suggested a Depends, he went into a web of profanity that could have sopped up a quart of anything.  He didn't like the food, he didn't want to go for a walk, he wasn't going to do therapy, he wanted, he didn't, he wouldn't....  I learned just about everything about this man except why he thought being a complete jerk would get him what he wanted.  And how the medical staff kept from killing him...

And, of course, there's a lot of mysteries and thrillers set in hospitals.  The first one I ever read was Robin Cook's Coma, which still scares the hell out of me.  It was also made into a movie, starring Genevieve Bujold, and directed by Michael Crichton, who wrote (among other things) The Andromeda Strain.  Oh, and I really wouldn't recommend checking into a hospital after watching Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital.

Or even 1971's The Hospital, written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, and a cast-against-type Barnard Hughes.  Razor sharp script, gallows-humor farce, and yes, it's over the top, but what else would you expect from the author of Network and Altered States?  

BTW, I love all three of those movies.  Peter Finch was unforgettable in Network, and Altered States was the debut of William Hurt and Drew Barrymore.  BTW, Paddy Chayefsky hated the way Ken Russell filmed his complex dialog, having the actors say their lines while making coffee, eating, walking from room to room - but I loved it.  It was one of the first times that I saw "real people" talking in the movies.

Also, when it comes to movies, you can say what you like, but whenever you want something that will drown you in words, music, and delirium without drugs, watch a Ken Russell movie.  Over the top?  Hell yes.  Fantastic?  Very often, yes:  Altered States, Women in Love, The Devils, The Music Lovers (which outed Richard Chamberlain long before he ever outed himself), Tommy...  

And, speaking of over the top, let's not forget Robert Altman's M.A.S.H., the ultimate black comedy anti-war movie - that undoubtedly couldn't be made in this day and age for all kinds of reasons - which ended up being one of the most beloved TV shows in history (11 seasons, and the finale is still the most highly rated show EVER).  BTW, Altman despised the TV series, calling it "the antithesis of what we were trying to do" with the movie.  (Wikipedia)

Besides being one hell of a comedy, M.A.S.H. was a groundbreaker.  From the loudspeaker announcements (which often broke through the 4th wall), to the theme song Suicide is Painless (read the lyrics some time), and vignettes that verge on the blasphemous (the Last Supper for Painless' suicide) - it's quite a ride.  If you haven't seen it for a while, take it out for a spin.  It's good.  And it's 1970 summed up in one movie.

BTW - M.A.S.H., Network, and The Hospital all won Oscars for Best Screenplay.

Here's What Happened

Please welcome a special guest.  Kaye George is an award-winning  writer.  As you will see below she writes novels in two very different series: one is cozy, the other not so much historical as pre-historical.  She has also published more than fifty short stories.

 — Robert Lopresti

 Here’s What Happened

by Kaye George

Writers live a little and die a little routinely. We’re used to it. I hope. Well, we’re not born used to it. We have to get that way.

When we first start sending queries out to agents, we die a little as each rejection rolls in. Facing rejection, no matter what kind, stings. Rejection when no one likes what you cooked, what you planned to see on TV, how you wear your hair. A lot of effort, toil and trouble, is rejected by an agent or publisher.

An occasional rave rejection (I loved this, but…) gives us a little boost. And when I say “we” I mean “me.” Those are my experiences.

Most mystery writers struggle to place the first book. They are (I was) always looking for advice, the magic formula. How in the heck do you DO it? How do you get someone’s attention and get published, so everyone can read your deathless prose? Your flawless gems of literature, pearls of wisdom? Your Great American Novel? (Make sure you don’t ever use clichés.)

Here’s what happened (well, no, not The Great American Novel, if that’s what you’re thinking)—I had an idea. A brilliant one, of course. A writer with an ancient Roman main character (or maybe Greek, I forget which) said his work was popular, because “the further back you go, the better.” I thought, Hey! I can go back way further than that.

I put aside my Great American Novel, the mystery I’d been working on for 15-20 years, and changed direction.

My love of fossil hunting, fostered by a friend’s family in junior high who took me with them on a couple of trips (I found a beautiful trilobite once!), morphed into an interest in ancient peoples. At about the time I read the above quote, scientists were working on the genome of a Neanderthal whose tiny scrap of DNA had been acquired. Eventually, the whole thing was sequenced. Then new discoveries about these ancient relatives were being published almost weekly and I devoured all of them. One of them was red-headed and freckled! Imagine that!

The next step, since I’d been writing and writing, and collecting all those rejections, was to write a Neanderthal mystery. Tons of research was involved, and many hours of writing, rewriting, getting feedback on what worked and what didn’t—mostly what didn’t. But eventually, after over a year of hard labor, I had a novel I was proud of, so I started to shoot it out. More than one agent broke my heart, telling me how much they loved it and how they weren’t going to take it. “Better than Jean Auel,” one of them said, “but I don’t know how to sell it.”

At the time, I was envisioning this project as a Harry Potter sort of phenomenon, young adult crossover. Instant best seller. Worldwide success. Sell it to Scholastic!! I wanted to reply to those who didn’t know what to do with it. Scholastic published Harry Potter. Surely they’ll want this.  

After a year of querying and over 100 rejections, I was so disheartened, I decided to do the things everyone had told me NOT to do. I was angry. I wrote a character who was TSTL (too stupid to live), an inept detective with a funny name, Imogene Duckworthy. I put her in a single-wide, living with her obese mother, and gave her a child out of wedlock. I would show them. NO ONE would like this mystery!

She made every blunder, did everything wrong, and still solved crimes. I had so much fun breaking all the rules. To be honest, I’m not sure what I expected, but it was not an acceptance. I would get this out of my system, then go back to writing real mysteries.

You can guess what happened next, since I’ve written all this build up.  It was the first novel of mine accepted for publication. Huh? People liked it.

There’s no formula for mystery-writing, no matter what they say. There is no rule that cannot be broken. It remains one of my most popular series, three books were published and a fourth, Stroke, is coming soon. They have been consistently selling for over 10 years. The Neanderthal one, Death in the Time of Ice, sold too, eventually, and two more in that series, to Untreed Reads—the same people bringing out the fourth Imogene Duckworthy on April 11. They are an awesome outfit.

Here’s the thing. New writers, I have no advice for you. You can follow the rules and have great success, or great failure. You can break all the rules and the same things might happen.

All I know is, this planet is a strange place. Good luck to all of us.

Three More Great Books

In early January, I shared three books I'd recently read and loved. Now I'm back with three more books I've read since then. I highly recommend them all.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano 

The main character is a crime writer single mom who's overheard in a coffee shop talking with her agent about her novel-in-progress. The woman who overhears her misunderstands all the talk about murder and thinks Finlay is a hitwoman. She tries to hire Finlay to murder her husband. Finlay has no desire to commit murder, but she does need money ...

This 2021 novel is well crafted with great characters, voice, and humor. It's surprising and refreshing. One twist after another. It also has a great first line: "It's a widely known fact that most moms are ready to kill someone by eight thirty A.M. on any given morning." (I would have deleted the A.M., but that's a copy-editing quibble.) 

This is the first book in a so-far three-book series. If you like audio books, the reader, Angela Dawe, is marvelous.

A Bad Day for Sunshine by Darynda Jones

Single mom Sunshine Vicram has just moved to her hometown in New Mexico with her teenage daughter, Auri, and she's starting her new job as sheriff. On her first day at work, a teenager goes missing--the one friend her daughter had in town. And the story is off and running.

The story is told from Sunshine's and Auri's perspectives, and while it deals with heavy issues, the book has a lot of humor built in. The town is full of quirky characters and some dark ones too. The book has a great voice and likeable characters, and the writing is heartfelt at times too. This novel came out in 2020, and there have been two more in the series since then. 

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

I'll start by saying this isn't a crime novel; it's fantasy (though there is crime in it). Those of you who know me know I mostly read crime, so I figure it's a good idea to point that out at the start. This story stars seventeen-year-old Charlie, who becomes a caretaker to an ailing older neighbor and the man's elderly dog, Radar. Charlie eventually learns that a locked shed in the man's backyard hides a spiral stairway (shown on the cover) that leads to another world--a magical world--beneath the earth. In that world, known as Empis, evil forces have taken control. When Charlie takes Radar to the other world to try to save the dog's life, he finds himself on a hero's journey to save not only Radar but all the people of Empis--and ultimately himself. Charlie ends up living a fairy tale.

I haven't read a lot by King. I saw too many TV commercials about his books in the '80s that looked way too scary for me. But the few of his books (his non-horror books) I've read have been up my alley. And this book (published last year) is magnificent. I was quite surprised to read recently that King doesn't plot his books in advance, because this book is really well plotted with story and word-choice details built in from the very beginning that pay off as the book proceeds. (He must be a hell of a reviser.) The book has amazing world building and a whole lot of other great stuff: characters, story, suspense, and writing. It's long (more than 600 pages long; the audio book goes for 24 hours), but I didn't mind because I loved it--the story, the kid, and (surprise surprise), the dog. If you check it out, I hope you'll feel the same.

Happy reading!

And if you're looking for something to read other than these three great books, I hope you'll check out my short story "Beauty and the Beyotch," which is a current finalist for the Agatha Award. It's available on my website. You can read it by clicking here. 

What Makes You A Writer?

Some writers say you're not a real writer unless you write every day. I heard this view espoused by Walter Mosley at NoirCon in 2022. I hope his admirers realize that writing every day will never make you write like Walter Mosley. The divine spark can't be codified or taught. And speaking of the divine spark, many think it doesn't count unless you'd keep writing even if you knew nobody would ever see your work, unless you experience withdrawal symptoms whenever you try to stop. My fellow SleuthSayer Steve Liskow has described having this experience. Not me. Divine spark, yes. Withdrawal, no. If I was absolutely sure no one would ever see it? I don't think so. Writing is meant to give me a voice, not a tree falling in the forest.

An unpublished writer is in limbo. To many, you're a real writer, ie an author, only when you're published. They even have a variety of rules about where you're published and how and what you earn from your writing. There's an insidious doubt in many writers' hearts that even if you think you're a writer—and have the blood, sweat, tears, and hundreds of thousands of words to prove it—you're not a writer unless others think you're a writer. As King Lear said, that way madness lies. Not that that stops us.

In 2007, I wrote the following in a blog post titled "Pre-Published Writers and the Glass Slipper":

Back at Halloween, I went to visit my granddaughters and found the 3-year-old decked out in full regalia as a Disney Cinderella. Young Cinderella reenacted the fairy tale over and over all afternoon, kicking off her transparent shoe (“Oh, no! I’ve lost my glass slipper!”) and trying it on again. There wasn’t any prince in her version of the story, and she was in no hurry to get to the happy ending. Instead, before trying to fit the shoe on her foot, she would slip something into it— a sock, a plastic spoon, a finger puppet—leaving no room for her foot. “Oh, no!” she would moan. “I’m not Cinderella!”

I’m reminded of how awful it sometimes felt to be a writer who had not succeeded in finding a publisher for whom my manuscript was a perfect fit, especially in the twentieth century. That would be before I found the legendary Guppies, my first network of other writers who knew exactly how hard it is and that talent gets most of us nowhere without incredible persistence and that bit of luck that can’t be willed or forced.

Back in the 1970s, when I was writing and then trying to sell my first three mystery manuscripts, I remember being asked a cocktail party, “What do you do?” “I’m a writer,” I said. “What have you published?” my inquisitor asked. “Nothing yet,” I said. “I’m working on a novel.” The guy’s eyes glazed over and he drifted away.

Today, I’d have a lot to say to my younger self...I could offer helpful suggestions...“Don’t let anybody call you a wannabe,” I would say. “You’re pre-published. Keep writing, keep revising, and keep sending out. Your mantra is “talent, persistence, and luck.”

For many years, I kept a Peanuts cartoon pinned up on my bulletin board. It showed Charlie Brown lying on his back on top of Snoopy’s doghouse, reading a rejection letter. “Your novel stinks,” it says. “I’ve never read such a terrible piece of writing. Stop trying to be an author.” In the last frame, Charlie Brown says, “It’s probably a form rejection letter.” The trouble with writers is that we need the hide of an elephant, but many of us have the skin of a grape, and most of us lack Charlie Brown’s optimism. An agent or editor writes (as they do so frequently), “Not for me” or “I didn’t fall in love with this.” “Oh, no!” we moan, like Cinderella. “I’m not a writer!”

I’m a lot better writer than I was when I started sending the first version of my book to agents. I was impatient and had to learn from my mistakes. I’m also a much better writer than I was at the age of seven, when I first said, “I’m a writer.” Looking back, I can see it served me better to keep saying, “I’m a writer” and keep on writing than to get so discouraged I stop writing because any given agent or editor’s glass slipper doesn’t fit my manuscript. So here’s another mantra for those working hard to achieve first publication: “I’m a writer. I’m a writer. I’m a writer.”

Back to 2023: Since I wrote all of the above, my writing has continued to develop. I've found my, ahem, mature voice. Over time, I've given up completely on commercial success. I don't have to convince myself of anything. I don't care whose eyes glaze over when I say, "I don't have a new novel," or, "I'm writing short stories these days."

And as for marketing my work, two days ago (April Fools Day—coincidence?) I woke up in the morning from a dream in which I ranted at a blogger, "I don't care if I'm on NPR! Ten or twenty years ago I would have killed to be on NPR, but not at my age!" Hmm.

What makes you a writer?

The Chocolate Cherry Crime Wave

Cosette does not appear
in this article.

R.T. Lawton and others have written about Les Misérables. That great novel comprised a number of threads woven together and parted again to accommodate other stories. Think of this as a strand arising from Victor Hugo’s work. In this tale, think of me as Bishop Myriel, while my petite mother played one tough Inspector Javert. And Cosette… Okay, there’s no Cosette. Sorry.

My mother stood nearly five-foot-nothing (150cm, or, for the more worldly among us, about ⅝ of a Hobbit). Like Smaug, she breathed fire. She was fearsome. Mess with her, and she’d reach up and smack you in the kneecap. My 6’4 (193cm) father was usually a calming influence… usually.

I was wrapping up a lengthy, year-end consulting gig in Columbus, Ohio. That particular time I lived at a large, sprawling motel, not far from the Busch Beer Brewery, although lager has nothing to do with this incident.

Following six straight months of work, I mentioned to my parents my project was winding down and I was due for a break. My dad came up with an excuse to visit Ohio, and thus my folks offered to pick me up and tote me home for the Christmas holidays. I agreed.

The hotel staff and particularly the chambermaid, whom we’ll call ‘Val Jean’, had been kind and considerate of my cave, working around the clutter of work papers and my vampire hours.

After half a year’s occupancy, my hotel room had morphed. Computer discs and software listings covered tables and chests. A computerized chess board spread across a bench. Pairs of never-quite-dry swim trunks hung on the bathroom shower rod. And, next to the television sat an oversized box of chocolate cherries my mother had sent me.

No, er, Few cherries were harmed
in the making of this production.

I allowed myself one or two a day, but soon I noticed the chocolates box becoming lighter. While I gnoshed on the upper tray, cherry chocs were disappearing from the layer beneath. My legendary detective skills kicked in, locking in on The Case of the Disappearing Cherries.

I found it amusing: My unseen cleaning lady had a sweets addiction. Her weakness was entertaining, almost endearing. She had to know I knew. An odd relationship developed. I left the candy box in place, occasionally noting the declining numbers.

My project finished and the day came for my departure. My parents arranged to pick me up. As we were clearing out the room, I made the mistake of mentioning the mysterious Cherry Chocolate Bandit.

Carting clothes and computers down to their car took a few trips. Mom disappeared for several minutes. Upon my final return, my mother wore a look of self-satisfaction. My dad shook his head sadly.

“What?” I said.

Mom drew herself up to nearly Munchkin height. “I took care of the candy thief. I reported her to the front desk.”

“You what? Oh no. Why?”

She folded her arms, ready to bite someone in the ankle.

“I ordered those for my son, not a motel maid.”

“Mom, I don’t mind she ate a few chocolates. She dusted around expensive computers and hard drives. Books, my passport, even my wallet when I swam… nothing else was touched. I have to fix this.”

My father tried to explain to Mom management wouldn’t simply lecture the employèe. They would hear only the word ‘steal’ and be compelled to fire her. As Mom and Dad trailed behind, I jogged down to the front desk.

I’m pretty bad at lying and the manager surely knew it. Not wanting our Val Jean to lose her job, I explained I’d given her permission, rationalizing that in a way I had. In the corner of my eye, my mother appeared less righteous and more stricken.

The manager said she’d take care of it. I paid up and departed, uncertain what the manager meant.

My mother’s Irish temper cooled and my upset faded, but the incident cast a pall over the holiday. Hotel housekeeping is hard, grueling work. What if the woman lost her job days before Christmas?

Mom had a way of doing the right thing. Christmas Eve, a card appeared with a Mom note inside. She’d checked with the hotel management. ‘Val Jean’ still worked at the motel.

Abruptly, the holiday felt a whole lot less Misérable.