Embarking on a Series

I'm happy to have my friend Alan Orloff taking over my slot today. He's a great writer and a heck of a guy. Today he's talking about the benefits of writing a series. Welcome, Alan. And happy early Thanksgiving, everyone. I'll see you again in three weeks.

—Barb Goffman

 Embarking on a Series by Alan Orloff

Thanks to Barb and the rest of the SleuthSayers for being such gracious blog hosts! I can’t wait for the guest blogger banquet!

I hope that SANCTUARY MOTEL, my new suspense novel, is the first in a long, long series featuring Mess Hopkins (the do-gooder proprietor of a seen-better-days motel). But having a long-running series wasn’t always at the top of my writer wish list.

The first five (or maybe six) manuscripts I ever wrote were all designed to be standalone novels. A self-contained story. A beginning, a middle, and an end, for the plots and for the characters. Where characters can be killed off, because you don’t *need* them to populate a future story.

Now, my main characters can rest easy—their lives are protected. Even if something terrible happens to them, I’m pretty sure they’ll recover in time for the next adventure.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy writing standalones. As a writer, you’re free to explore different milieus, using different voices, creating different characters. You have plenty of freedom to follow your whims, not constrained by choices you made seven books ago that may no longer suit your needs.

But boy, isn’t there something comforting about revisiting old friends in familiar settings once a year? And because I’m very lazy, isn’t there something, uh, efficient, about not having to create an entire cast of characters and build a new world with every book? U betcha!

So, after a string of standalones, I decided to embark on a series.

Here are some (mostly pragmatic) things I considered as I mapped out my series:

Premise
I sought a premise that wasn’t too narrow—I wanted a basic set-up that could be used as a foundation on which to build stories. The idea for SANCTUARY MOTEL grew out of two thoughts. One, I saw a news report about a municipality converting abandoned motels and hotels into housing for the homeless (great idea!). I combined this with my love for quirky and run-down motels. (Trust me, I stayed in some doozies, back in the day! But that’s a different blog post.)

Weirdly, there just happened to be a couple of independent motels fitting this description that already existed in the City of Fairfax. I modeled the physical characteristics of the fictional Fairfax Manor Inn by mashing up those two (in my head) and adding a few embellishments.

Thus my idea was born and ready for further refinements. In the end, I think I succeeded. A motel that opens up its doors to those needing sanctuary (from a bad situation) gives me the foundational premise (and flexibility) I was looking for.

Setting
SANCTUARY MOTEL is set in the City of Fairfax, VA, an area I am quite familiar with. In many respects, it’s a typical big-city suburb (so many readers will identify with it), but my hometown knowledge can also take them on interesting side trips to places not widely known.

 (A quick aside: my only other “series” (two books, KILLER ROUTINE and DEADLY CAMPAIGN) was also set in Northern Virginia, and I even managed to include one of my favorite characters from those books (a bookie named Jimmy the Raisin) in my new series.)

Cast of Characters
I wanted to create a cast of characters that was varied enough to support many different storylines (most of which I haven’t even thought up yet!). In SANCTUARY MOTEL, I include the requisite sidekick, the requisite love interest, the requisite relatives (good and bad), the requisite work colleague, the requisite cop/old friend. But I also managed to introduce a host of other interesting folks: a wise street informant, the aforementioned Jimmy the Raisin, a vet who owns a nearby bagel place, a gruff security guy named Griff, a fortune-teller, and others. Some of these characters have relatively minor roles in this book, but they certainly might “come in handy” in future books.

Character Growth
In a novel, characters are supposed to grow or undergo some sort of transformative transformation (or something like that—I never took a formal creative writing class). But there’s more room for growth and character arcs over a number of books. While it might require a little more planning, I think it will ultimately prove more satisfying to see my characters grow meaningfully from book to book.

I’m working on the second novel in the series now, and already I’ve thanked my past-self several times for having the foresight to set things up in a way that lends itself to my current story. Now, if I could just tell my past-self to make a few different life decisions (like invest in Apple decades ago), I’d be driving a nicer car!

Okay, back to work. My series isn’t going to write itself. Isn’t that right, future-self?

Alan Orloff has published ten novels and more than forty-five short stories. His work has won an Anthony, an Agatha, a Derringer, and two ITW Thriller Awards. His latest novel is SANCTUARY MOTEL, from Level Best Books. He loves cake and arugula, but not together. Never together. He lives and writes in South Florida, where the examples of hijinks are endless. www.alanorloff.com

About SANCTUARY MOTEL

Mess Hopkins, proprietor of the seen-better-days Fairfax Manor Inn, never met a person in need who couldn’t use a helping hand—his helping hand. So he’s thrown open the doors of the motel to the homeless, victims of abuse, or anyone else who could benefit from a comfy bed with clean sheets and a roof overhead. This rankles his parents and uncle, who technically still own the place and are more concerned with profits than philanthropy.

When a mother and her teenage boy seek refuge from an abusive husband, Mess takes them in until they can get back on their feet. Shortly after arriving, the mom goes missing and some very bad people come sniffing around, searching for some money they claim belongs to them. Mess tries to pump the boy for helpful information, but he’s in full uncooperative teen mode—grunts, shrugs, and monosyllabic answers. From what he does learn, Mess can tell he’s not getting the straight scoop. It’s not long before the boy vanishes too. Abducted? Run away? Something worse? And who took the missing money? Mess, along with his friend Vell Jackson and local news reporter Lia Katsaros, take to the streets to locate the missing mother and son—and the elusive, abusive husband—before the kneecapping loansharks find them first.

Often wrong, rarely in doubt.

We’re living in the Information Age. I don’t know what they’ll call the next age, since we don’t yet have enough information to make the call, probably because it’s too hard to imagine anything more wonderful than our modern technology (in the archaic sense of the word – filling a person with wonder).

The computing ability of that little device in my pocket is powerful enough to deliver most of the world’s information in a matter of seconds, any time, day or night. I marvel at this, in the same way I marvel at giant aircraft that fly to Japan and the little handful of pills I take every night I’m told is keeping me alive. The pleasant female voice on my iPhone telling me how to get from Dublin to Killarney. I feel if you aren’t dazzled by these technical miracles, you aren’t paying attention. But still.

Hadron Collider

Is information the same as learning, and is learning the same as knowledge?

I’m what they call an Infomaniac, which is a common condition with writers, who want to know everything all the time. I obsessively absorb all the information I can grab, which is a lot, because I never know when it will come in handy. Though I’m beginning to think it’s too much.

One of the conclusions emerging from this gush of information is that much of it is inaccurate. While disinformation is rampant, most inaccuracies are unintentional, because the individual chronicler can only know so much, as is true with those who advise her, so she has to get some things wrong. Consequently, you have to take the things you learn with a grain of salt. A big, honking, room-sized boulder of salt.

A recent article in the New York Times by a learned scientist tells us we really shouldn’t expect science to have the right answers. Actually, quite the contrary. They’re often wrong, and the more conviction they display, the less reliable their assertions. I’ve known this for some time, having studied the history of science. Nearly every groundbreaking study and elegant theory is full of caveats, and put forth usually more as a proposition than an iron-clad, done deal. They will only know how close they got to a definitive answer over time, as additional research adds to the understanding, and the worthy process of challenges and counterarguments takes its course.

And the most wonderful thing to me, is that while science can often predict with 100% certainty what will happen from a set of organized interactions, they often don’t know why. Much of modern electronic wizardry is based on theories of quantum mechanics, which not a single physicist in history has fully understood. They can just guess and approximate, and hope that their children and grandchildren will get us closer to the truth.

(Quantum mechanics is so hard to understand that at least one theoretical physicist thinks his science has given up trying. I agree with him that this is foolish. What if Lewis and Clark had stopped in Kansas, telling each other, this is just too hard?)

So that’s the other leg of the stool. Information leads to learning, which may or may not yield reliable knowledge, which rarely serves up truth, in the absolute way we all understand the word.

Consequently, truth is likely the most revered and slipperiest word in the language. An advertising colleague of mine once said, in the midst of a very confusing and stressful period at work, “I know my name is Joan and I live in a house.” Like her, I know certain things to be true. I love my wife, my dog and my family. I love the places I live, and my friends. I was born in Philadelphia and if I root for the Phillies, they’ll likely lose in the playoffs. Everything else is up for grabs.

Everyday I read something that totally contradicts what we’ve always considered to be established fact. Coffee is bad for you? Nope. It’s great. Drink all you want. Red wine is great for your health? Nope. Even a little bit will shorten your life. Neanderthals were lumbering, inferior oafs. Nope. Their brains were bigger than ours and they could kick our asses with one foot tied behind their backs. Honey bees are disappearing? Nope. We’re lousy with them.

My goal, and intended default setting, is to be a skeptic, without becoming a cynic. To be open to everything, without believing anything prior to further examination. Trust but verify. As much as you can, and then still keep some skepticism in reserve.

As a young person, I was usually flush with passionate conviction. At his stage, when someone asks my opinion on something, anything, I usually say, “I’m not sure.”

To Bed, Too Bad

My parents used to quote a rhyme at bedtime, which I recently mentioned to a friend. Naturally, curiosity demanded yet another internet deep dive. Here are two main variations:

“Come, let’s to bed!” Said Sleepy-head. “Let’s stay awhile,” said Sloe. “Put on the pot,” Said Greedy Sot†, “We'll sup before we go.”

“To bed! To bed!” Said Sleepyhead. “Tarry awhile,” said Slow. “Put on the pan,” Said Greedy Nan; “We'll sup before we go.”

The nursery rhyme ‘To Bed, To Bed’ was first printed by Sir Henry Cole in 1843 in Traditional Nursery Songs of England with Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists. Seven decades later, a variation was republished in The Little Mother Goose in 1912.

“Okay,” you say, stifling a yawn worthy of Sleepyhead. “So what?”

In internet perambulations, I stumbled upon a homicidal version. It didn’t take much digging to trace this dastardly deadly document to an Australian poet, David Lewis Paget.

“Murder? What sick mind would do such a thing?” you wonder aloud.

Uh, me! Me! But my attempt will have to appear another time. Here now is David Paget’s take where “To bed, to bed,” means deathbed, never to arise again.

To Bed, To Bed (deadly version)

“To bed! To bed!” Said Sleepy-head. “Tarry awhile,” said Slow. “Put on the pan,” Said Greedy Nan. “We'll sup before we go.”

They sat at the kitchen table as The candle flickered low, And Greedy Nan put on the pan To indulge her sister, Slow, While Sleepy Weepy Annabelle Blotted her book with tears, And thought of her Beau from long ago Who she hadn’t seen for years.

“Why doesn’t Roger notice me, Why doesn’t Alan O’Dell? I’m wearing the dress cut low for me And I’ve hitched my skirt as well. I’ve a pretty turn to my ankle, so You’d think it would drive them wild.’ “But men are a mystery,” said Slow, “And Alan O’Dell’s a child.”

While over the pan stood Greedy Nan, Was cracking a turkey’s egg, A lump of yeast and a slice of beast And a single spider’s leg. With a wing of bat and an ounce of fat And a toe of frog for the spell, She needed to turn her sister off From her crush on Alan O’Dell.

For Greedy Nan was the eldest girl And would have to marry first, The other two would wait in the queue Or their fortunes be reversed, The omelette sizzled, and in the pan She added before they saw, A piece of some Devil’s Trumpet plant For the mating game meant war.

She sliced the omelette into half And she served them up a piece, “Didn’t you want?” said Annabelle But Slow enjoyed the feast. “I’m not that terribly hungry now I’ve cooked it up in the pan, I think I’ll just have a slice of bread,” Said the scheming Greedy Nan.

They finished up and they sat awhile, And they mused about their fate, “If Greedy Nan isn’t married soon, For us it will be too late.’ “I’ve set my sights on a country squire,” Said Nan, without a blink, Lured them away from her secret fire To confuse what they might think.

“The room is woozy, spinning around, I’d better get me to bed,” Said Annabelle, while Slow with a frown Saw Dwarves dancing in her head. But Greedy Nan was cleaning the pan To clear all signs of the spell, Her back was turned to her sisters, spurned For the sake of Alan O’Dell.

And when he came in the morning Greedy Nan was sat by the door, While Annabelle and her sister Slow Were lying dead on the floor, “I didn’t mean it to kill them all, It was only a simple spell,” But as they cuffed and led her away He frowned, did Alan O’Dell.

^† Sot in this case means fool. Some readers may have been confused by the term, because another, more modern variation uses the phrase Greedy Gut.

The Storia Story

It's my great pleasure today to feature a guest post by my friend Josh Pachter. He's practically a regular here at SleuthSayers lately anyway, but in case you don't know, Josh was the 2020 recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement, and after fifty-five years of selling short fiction to EQMM, AHMM, and elsewhere, his first novel Dutch Threat was published this September. He's also the editor of some twenty anthologies, including six (so far!) books of stories inspired by the songs of singer/songwriters and the films of the Marx Brothers, most recently Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Beatles. Welcome back, Josh!

— John Floyd

The Storia Story

by Josh Pachter

There's a new market for short genre fiction in town, and since I've been involved with it from pretty close to the beginning my buddy John Floyd has asked me to drop by today and tell you about it. 

On July 24 of this year, I got the following out-of-the-blue email from someone named Todd Gallet.

    Reaching out to see if you might be interested/available for a paid collaboration on our new immersive reading app launching this fall. Storia's vision is to transform reading into a fun, immersive and entertaining routine with a fresh new format for the Gen-Z audience. With a mix of reading, 2D/3D animation, audio, and tactile experiences, we're reinventing the way the mobile generation reads. We are looking to partner with a writer like yourself on an original short story (~2-3K words) for the app. Our story categories include SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, Action/Adventure, and Mystery.

    I'd love to schedule a brief intro call to discuss the project in more detail. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks!

I Googled Todd, of course, and learned that he's an actor out in La-La Land, and Googling "Storia" brought up a bare-bones placeholder web page, nothing more. The pitch was intriguing, but I thought it had a whiff of scam to it, so I cautiously replied to Todd's email requesting more information and cut-and-pasted it to the Short Mystery Fiction Society's listserv, asking if anyone else had gotten the same email I'd received. 

Several of us had (John, Stacy Woodson, and Bill McCormick), while some others I would have expected to have been contacted hadn't been (such as Michael Bracken and Rob Lopresti).

Todd wrote back promptly and answered my questions satisfactorily, and I wound up having a couple of enjoyable FaceTime conversations with him. Before sending him any of my fiction, though, I asked to see the contract he intended to ask contributors to sign. He sent it, I read through it carefully and wrote back to say that I thought it was one-sided in favor of Storia, and asked for about a dozen changes . . . all of which were promptly made. 

John, Stacy, Bill, and I met several times via Zoom--with Bill calling in from his temporary home in Latvia!--and given the revised contract we agreed that it would be worth giving Storia a try.

All four of us have now sold Todd's company one to three stories, and we were all paid the promised amount remarkably quickly. The Storia app doesn't launch until December, so we haven't yet seen the final product, but some brief animation samples that were subsequently posted to the website and some character sketches John received suggest that the quality is going to be solid and that we'll wind up happy with the way our work has been treated.

With all that backstory in place, let me tell you now what Storia is looking for and what they're offering. 

As Todd said in his original email, they're buying genre fiction that runs between two and three thousand words (although the website now suggests that they'll consider stories up to four thousand words.). As we went back and forth by email and FaceTime, I learned that a successful story will begin and end with action that can be animated, and that there'll be animatable moments every couple to four hundred words. Stories can be written in first or third person, past or present tense. Including dialogue is fine, but less talking and more action is better than more talking and less action. 

For an original story, the company is paying a flat fee of a thousand dollars, no royalties, and what they want in return is a permanent exclusive license to use the story in their app. The authors retain the right to include the story in collections of their own short fiction, and it can be reprinted in a year's-best collection, but otherwise Storia owns both the story and its characters for the life of the app.

For reprints, the fee is seven hundred and fifty dollars, and the license runs for ten years on the story and three years on the characters. 

For both originals and reprints, all rights revert to the author if Storia goes under.

A permanent license for an original and ten years for a reprint are lengthy terms, and that might well turn some writers off. On the other hand, I know that I've sold more than a hundred short crime stories over the last fifty years, and only once have I ever been paid a thousand bucks for a single story . . . while I've sold many stories, especially to anthologies in recent years, for a twenty-five-dollar advance against royalties that never materialized. And I don't think I've ever written a story that paid me anything close to seven hundred and fifty dollars in reprint rights over any given ten-year period.

One cautionary note: since Storia buys not only the rights to your story but also to its characters, I recommend against sending them a series story unless you change the names of the characters first.

Also, be aware that the company may ask for revisions--generally to punch up the action scenes--and may ask you to submit the story with the dialogue presented in basic script format.

FLOYD (puzzled)

You mean like this?

PACHTER (patiently)

Exactly, John. (he points to the screen) Just like I'm showing you here.

Go to storia.io for more information and a look at some of the company's early character designs and animation samples. You'll also find links for both writers and animators to submit their work (and, if you look closely, thumbnail headshots of John, Stacy--and Michael Bracken, who apparently has now connected with them, after all!) and a "Request Access" button that'll put you in line for early access to a limited amount of free content when the app launches in (if all goes according to plan) December.

Storia seems very interested in building ongoing relationships with writers, and Todd has reached out to me several times to ask me to submit more stories, and most recently he asked if I'd be interested in adapting existing public-domain fiction for the Storia platform.

It remains to be seen whether or not the market will welcome another attempt at presenting short fiction via a smartphone app--anyone remember Great Jones Street?--but at a thousand dollars a story paid in actual money and not just vague promises, this is a bandwagon the Sayers of the Sleuth might well consider jumping on.

How do you do it?

 Keep getting asked how do I manage to write one or two novels a year, plus some short stories.

There's nothing to brag about, it's a little inspiration and a lot of determination, long hours at the computer. It helps, as I've gotten older, how I've become less social. I rarely travel (only family emergencies since the pandemic). 

Again, I'm not bragging but I managed to write two novels this year.

When I was younger, I struggled to write a novel in a year, primarily because I worked full time and wrote a lot more short stories. With the decline of short story markets, I write fewer short stories and seem to have a higher rejection level. Such is life.

It helps spending less time on social media, although I'm sure those writers who invest the time help their career. My problem is getting distracted on You Tube and twitter and facebook and I wind up wasting time watching mindless videos.

I am blessed with a helluva imagination, which my children learned early when I read books to them. When I read the same book to them later, they said, "That's the way it goes." I'd forgotten what I'd made up reading those boring-ass baby books to my toddlers. They grew up telling their friends, "Watch out. Daddy makes up stuff."

I live in different worlds – New Orleans of the early 1950s, the early 1900s, the 1980's, 1990's. I recently took a jaunt through 1935 with Hardscrabble Private Eye. My mind floats in and out of those worlds as I image stories and scenes and play to catch up and get the information in note form to follow up when I have time.

A writing frenzy. A rollercoaster life I'm happy to ride.

Don't seem to have time to congratulate my writer friends on their achievements, publications and awards. I'm pulling for all of you and wish everyone long and prosperous careers and happy to see you guys progressing through your careers writing better and better stuff all the time.

Have to get back to work. Just thought of a cool twist in the story I'm writing.

Tree in Covington, Louisiana

That's all for now,

  www.oneildenoux.com 

What's the Problem with Young Men?

In case you haven't noticed, there have been a heck of a lot of stories over the last year about the Crisis With Young Men and the Crisis of Masculinity in almost every news outlet.

And there is a crisis. Men do 90%+ of the mass shootings. They're lonely and isolated, and are falling behind at higher education. More women go to college and university now than men do.

MY NOTE: Although, whenever people go hog wild on that one, I remind them that a large chunk of that is in the health care field, where an RN, an LPN, a PA, radiologist, various technical jobs, etc., all require a college degree of one kind or another, and most of them are considered "female" jobs. (Probably because they involve nurturing and icky stuff and are considered "subordinant" jobs.) Also, there are still a lot more blue-collar jobs that can pay well (plumbing, construction, electricians, factory work) that are still primarily male preserves. So I don't think women are actually pushing men out of slots in colleges, although I could be wrong.

Also, they complain that most young men are single, and deciding to stay that way. Well, people have been having fits about that since the dawn of time. The general assumption throughout history has been that women want to get married, and men don't, and have to be lured / tricked / seduced into it. See Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well", most 1950s rom-coms (especially the Doris Day/Rock Hudson ones), most Westerns (it's always the "real" men, like Shane or whoever John Wayne's playing, who are never married). Also innumerable movies and plays (Rosemary and Howard in "Picnic", Vida Sherwin in "Main Street", who marries the obviously gay man, because he's the only one who will have her) where women chase after even the least eligible bachelor and beg him to marry them. So since women need and want so desperately to get married, why don't they settle and take whatever they can get? Marriage will fix everything! Even that guy!

No, it won't.

And as for what men's roles actually are - our American ideas of what masculinity is and how it looks (how do I break this?) are not the historical or cultural norm.

"In the early 1940s, American society expected its men to adhere to specific characteristics that defined masculinity. In addition to courage and bravery, men strove to develop traits such as aggression, competition, stoicism, toughness, and independence in order to prove to others that they were truly masculine." (LINK)

For example, in China, for thousands of years the ideal man was a scholar (Chinese proverb: "Don't waste good iron for nails or good men for soldiers"). In Japan, in pre-Samurai days, a nobleman had keen cultural sensibilities and abilities (poet, perfumer, etc.), and this held true later when the warrior samurai came in. You might be able to kill with one blow of your sword, but you should also be able to write a damn good poem afterwards.

Think Cyrano de Bergerac (who actually existed). Also all those corseted, wigged, perfumed, high-heeled warriors of the world of Louis XIV, Frederick the Great of Prussia, the Napoleonic Wars, etc., and our own American Founding Fathers who read, wrote, thought, studied, and could kick some serious butt. Indeed, throughout almost all of history, in any culture, the hallmark of a true gentleman / nobleman / king was to be a scholar, AND a man of culture, AND a warrior.

Meanwhile, one of the screamingly obvious problems for young men today is loneliness.

Social circles have been shrinking for men and women, especially since the pandemic, but men struggle more. Thirty years ago, 55 percent of men reported having six or more close friends. By 2021, that share had slipped to 27 percent.

“Women form friendships with each other that are emotionally intimate, whereas men do not,” Levant said. Young women “may not be dating, but they have girlfriends they spend time with and gain emotional support from.”*

Aaron Karo and Matt Ritter, both in their early 40s, study the male “friendship recession” in their “Man of the Year” podcast. It arose out of an annual tradition of gathering at a steakhouse with several male friends, all close since elementary school.

“Guys are taught to prioritize career,” Karo said. “Also romantic relationships, although it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a very good job at that. Making friends and keeping friends seems to be a lower priority. And once guys get older, they suddenly realize they have no friends.”

The podcasters and their friends created the annual gathering as a way to keep their friendship alive. It spawned a year-round group chat and a “Man of the Year” trophy, awarded to the most deserving friend at the annual dinner.

“We treat friendship as a luxury, especially men,” Ritter said. “It’s a necessity.” (LINK)

AND IT IS.

Seriously, an historical reminder: throughout most of history, the primary love celebrated in letters and literature were friendships. Male friendships. Damon and Pythias. Montaigne and Etienne de la Boetie. Antonio and Bassanio (Merchant of Venice). Plato and Socrates. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Etc. Lord Nelson and Hardy. What happened to that?

Personally, I think the real problem with modern masculinity, and the lack of friendships, is (and has been for a long time) the American media: between war movies and Westerns, being "sensitive" in any way, enjoying the arts in any way, enjoying education and scholarship, having good friendships, etc. has been transformed into a form of a sign of weakness and/or homosexuality. (1956's "Tea and Sympathy" with Deborah Kerr sums it up beautifully.)

"What, are you gay or something?" is and has been for a very long time a major insult in the schoolyard, the streets, the prisons, and the family. And it works. It's a great way to turn a boy into a basement dwelling, introspective, mute computer drone with no idea of what comes next, and no idea of how to even try, because all the doors in their mind to friendship have been closed. When you're that lonely, that frightened, that isolated... bad things can happen.

It's not women and women's successes that are limiting men, it's other men, especially on social media, who tell boys and young men who / what they should be.  Whether it really is or not.

* I firmly believe that one of the reasons women live longer is that we generally have strong friendships in which we share our insecurities, health issues, laughter, etc.

Dancing The Jig

We are headed deep in the lexicographic woods today.  If that's not your jam you have my blessing to move on.

As I mentioned previously, at Bouchercon I was on a panel about librarians and we prepared a webpage of resources for our audience.  I wanted to included Google Ngram Viewer, which allows you to trace the use of a word or phrase over centuries.  

Here is what I wrote:

Google Ngram Viewer.  Search millions of books and journals for words and phrases. Great for writing historicals. When did the phrase “the jig is up” start appearing in print?  When did it become popular?

I picked that phrase as the first crime-fiction-related term that popped into my head.  But after the conference I decided to take a closer look at what Ngram came up with.  And the result surprised me.

So, do me a favor and think for a moment. What does the phrase "the jig is up" mean?  In what context do you expect to find it?  If you are ready we will proceed...

The earliest example Ngram could find was from The Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick. This was a comic novel written by the Canadian author Thomas Chandler Haliburton in the 1830s.  Oddly enough I have read the book and it isn't a struggle to get through.  

I became aware of the book when I was writing an essay about a different word: "slinky."

 But here is Mr. Haliburton on our phrase for the day:

The jig is up with Halifax and it's all their fault. If a man sits at his door and sees stray cattle in his field, a eatin up his crop...why I should say it sarves him right.

Fair enough.  But does that match the meaning  I asked you to fix in your head?

The next hit I found was a Dictionary of Americanisms from 1860.  That book says the phrase means "The game is up. It is all over for me." And that seems like a good fit with our Canadian friend.

But it isn't what the phrase means to me.  Here is what  a modern dictionary says about it: the scheme or deception is revealed or foiled. "the jig is up; you've had your last chance."

Exactly!  You might say that the modern meaning is a subset of the older one.  The phrase  used to mean something was over. Now it means something dishonest is over.  My example would have been something like:  "The jig is up, Bugsy.  We've called the cops."

So when did the change happened?  I suspected that, like so much criminal slang, we owe it to Prohibition. (For example, Donald E. Westlake  pointed out that "hardboiled dick" is a combination of World War I military slang with French-Canadian Prohibition jargon.)

Let's get on the trail and see what we can find out.

In 1877 in The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote about people despairing and saying "The jig is up." Definitely the old meaning.

In 1881 Sheridan Mack quoted a man talking about a woman who left him:  "The jig is up and I ain't the fella to squeal on her. Matilda is as gay as a peach and I ain't gonna get all spoony."

In "The Flag Paramount," written by O. Henry in 1902, a character uses the term to say a Latin American revolution is over.  Still the old meaning.

But eleven years later in "The Badge of Policeman O'Roon" the same author has a policeman use that phrase to lament that he is too drunk to go on duty. Has Henry shifted to  the modern meaning in that decade or is it a coincidence?

Next Ngram pulled up an article from The Moving Picture World (1916).  Describing the movie The Defective Detective the writer said that when  a policeman enters the room "the jig is up." Now we're getting it!

Next comes a 1923 article from a magazine with the unlikely name of The Lather.  1923. It turns out to be the publication of the Wood, Wire, and Metal Lathers Union. This is part five of "A Confession" by an "Ex-Under-cover Man" about his infiltration of factories. 

It reads like  the author had been reading (or writing for?) Black Mask.  When he spots a competitor spying on him he tells his assistants: "Shadow the boarding house until you see him leaving, then catch up with him and tell him the jig is up and you are next to him.  Scare him red-headed if you want to, but don't harm him in anyway."

It's clear that by now we have the modern meaning, but I can't resist one more source.  In 1929 Joseph K. London wrote an article for The Jeweler's Circular on new methods to foil a hold-up man.  One involved taking the fiend's photograph. When he sees the flash he knows "the jig is up.'"

What none of these examples does is help explain why the phrase exists at all.  Why isn't it "the jig is down?" Or, for that matter, "the hornpipe is rotund?"

As I said when I was discussing the word "slinky," etymology is a wonderful time-sucker.

Collateral Damage II

     In 1992, the McAllen police arrested Linda in a prostitution sting. By that time, she'd been living on the streets for four years. Linda went to court, took her conviction, and slowly began to clean up her life. She moved to a halfway house. Then Linda started taking classes to learn a trade. She received financial assistance from the Texas government to help finance her education. In 1996, Linda became a registered massage therapist. She worked in the field for the next quarter century, renewing her license every two years. 

    Then, in 2020, Texas took her license away.    

    Several weeks back, I began a conversation about the collateral consequences of crime. Citizens routinely think and hear about the effects of an offense on the crime victims. The earlier blog focused on the person convicted of a criminal offense. The topic seemed like something crime fiction writers might consider. Most collateral consequences are often not discussed as part of plea bargain negotiations. A defendant may not be aware. They accept a plea deal, serve the sentence, and, in their mind, pay the debt to society. Later, like Linda, unforeseen after-effects arise. Suppose, as a writer, that your goal is to craft a villain with sympathetic motivations. If you want a character whose outrage feels justified, the collateral consequences of crime might be a place to look. I hope to continue that conversation today. 

    (As in the earlier column, I focus almost exclusively on Texas law. That's my sandbox. The specifics of your jurisdiction may vary.)

    The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) is the state agency primarily responsible for overseeing businesses, trades, and occupations regulated by the state. Some jobs, such as plumbers, lawyers, police officers, EMS, doctors, pharmacists, and veterinarians, have separate regulating agencies. For many of the rest, the TDLR is the umbrella organization responsible for licensing within their occupations. 

    Some of the licensed trades in this state include air conditioning repair, auctioneers, barbers, electricians, massage therapists, mold remediators, notary publics, pawn shop employees, and tow truck operators. One state comptroller's report identified 774 occupation-related licenses overseen by 47 state agencies. 

    In Texas, a license holder's license shall be revoked if the conviction results in felony incarceration. It may be withdrawn, or a person may be denied the opportunity to obtain a license if the offense is directly related to the duties and responsibilities of the occupation or if the offense falls within the category of crimes that Texas has deemed especially bad. There is a list of these bad offenses in the Code of Criminal Procedure, Sec. 42A.054. Most practitioners call them the 3(g) offenses. (Section 3(g) was where one used to be able to find the list before the legislature renumbered everything, and 3(g) is easier to say than 42A.054. 

    The 3(g) list includes most of the crimes you'd think are bad, like murder and sexual assault. A few, like aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, are fact-specific.) 

    As with other states, Texas has different types of probation. Some were initially intended to enable the defendant to avoid the consequences of a criminal conviction upon successfully completing the supervision. Over time, many of those benefits have eroded. The TDLR may revoke, deny, or refuse to renew a license if the "non-conviction" activity renders the person unfit for the license. 

    In determining whether the conviction directly relates to an occupation, the statute lists four factors:

    1. The nature and seriousness of the crime.

    2. The relationship of the crime to the purposes for requiring a license. 

    3. The extent to which a license might offer an opportunity to engage in further        criminal activity. 

    4. The relationship of the crime to the ability or fitness to perform the duties of the     licensed occupation. 

    While items 2-4 draw some connection between the crime and the license, #1 is a giant loophole providing unfettered discretion to the overseeing agency. 

    Some licensing rules allow for the consideration of mitigating factors. Others in this state do not. We could discuss whether there should be zero tolerance for sex crimes in the legitimate massage business. As a society, we have become more attuned to issues of human trafficking and exploitation. We might debate whether we should consider the defendant's circumstances before denying a license. But those are topics for another day and a different blog. 

    Linda and others received their licenses because of an oversight by the regulatory agency. Then, at age 62, her income stream was pulled out from under her. The agency, alerted to the conviction, had no discretion. Bureaucracy may have crushed common sense. How might this defendant respond? It is easy for foresee anger and desperation. 

    Another reader might dismiss the concerns for Linda's livelihood. The saying goes, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." Linda, they might argue, should be grateful that she evaded the consequences for so long. 

    And in that debate, you may have created a complex villain. 

    (I would like to recognize Eric Dexheimer and his reporting in the Houston Chronicle for the specifics in this blog.)

    Until next time. 

    

How do I kill thee? Let me count the ways

• Do you know how to pierce the heart when you stab someone from behind?
• Know three commonplace items you can substitute for a silencer?
• Have a list of slow-acting poisons you can buy without a prescription?
• Have you ever discussed such things with friends over dinner at a restaurant?

You must be a mystery writer.

Mystery writers run neck and neck with murderers themselves in preoccupation with ways to kill. Unlike actual assassins, for whom discretion is both a tool of the trade and essential to staying alive, writers love to discuss these matters with their peers. Before the pandemic, when convivial dinners were the high point of monthly meetings of my local Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime chapters and I went to mystery cons all over the country, I looked forward to such discussions and participated with great relish. If they took place in public places, so much the better. It was great fun to imagine the party at the next table wondering what you were plotting, a real-life crime or just a story. I admit to a tad of vestigial adolescent exhibitionism, what I call a Look, Ma! element in keeping eavesdroppers guessing.

One of the most beloved figures in the mystery community is Texas pharmacist and toxicologist Luci Zahray, universally known as the Poison Lady. When I sat down to write this, I found a note in my files, Poison Lady—arsenic (Walmart story). I probably jotted it down as she spoke at a Malice Domestic a decade before. I remembered the gist of it but wanted to get it right, so I emailed her. The Poison Lady’s own words reflect how not only writers but mystery lovers in general think.

The year arsenic became illegal to sell in stores, I was walking through Walmart and they had a grocery cart full marked down to 50 cents a box. I naturally, as one does, started pushing the cart to checkout. Then I realized I didn't actually need that much arsenic or even have a good place to put it. So I picked out several, quite a few, boxes and bought them. I still don't need that much arsenic and don't have a good place to put it, but I sometimes regret not buying the whole cart full.

We’re equally interested in likely settings for murder and places to bury the body. For example, what's buried in the garden? My son recently told me that the sale of his in-laws’ house in New Jersey was held up because they discovered an oil burner buried in the backyard. I was charmed. An oil burner is dull, but what if there were a body in an oil burner? Even better—hold the oil burner.

Back in the Golden Age of mysteries, cleverness was valued more than it is today. John Dickson Carr was the king of the locked room puzzle, which depended on unexpected murder methods. Sherlock Holmes solved one case in which the lock was breached by a poisonous snake slithering through a pipe in the wall, if I remember correctly.

Roald Dahl’s short story, “A Lamb to the Slaughter” (1953), in which the murder weapon is a frozen leg of lamb, later cooked and served to the unwitting detective, is often cited as the best murder method in mystery fiction.

In Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café (1987)— the novel, on which the movie was based— Fannie Flagg rang a change on this. The murder was a simple skillet to the head. But the body disposal took place in the kitchen, and once again, the detective dined on the results.

Do we still relish ingenuity in the means of our fictional murders, or have we become so jaded that it doesn't matter any more?

To some extent, it varies according to subgenre. If it’s a cozy, the murder may be death by wedding cake or the victim stitched to death into a prize-winning quilt. If it’s Kellerman or Cornwell or their ilk, there’ll be a lot of gore, maybe torture described more lovingly than I want to read about. If it’s a technothriller, we’ll hear all about the gun and its accessories.

The best place to look for the far-out murder weapon these days is video. In shows like Midsomer Murders and Brokenwood, the giant cheese and unattended vat of wine are alive and well and killing people with enthusiasm. I get a kick out of watching and talking about these tricks. But in my own work, I like to knock the victim off quickly— bang on the head, push over the ramparts, car off the road— and get on with the story. For me, it’s not about the props. It’s always about the people.

October 7th

I listened to an interview with Rachel Maddow, host of the MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show on her research on the rise of antisemitism and she explained this:

When people tell you that a minority group are evil and they’re the reason things are bad, they are saying that some people among us are dangerous and these people shouldn’t be part of our democracy with rights to vote. We need someone to protect us from these people. So, its not just about telling us who to hate, it’s about undoing democracy and Maddow says we shouldn’t stand for it. It’s a powerful video.

This certainly fits with what we’ve seen with Anti-Asian hate and LGBTQ-hate – there are many narratives explaining why they’re ‘dangerous’ and shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone. Essentially, they shouldn’t be part of our democracy.

Now we’re seeing the rise of antisemitism and the same narrative holds. This topic is large, the events unfolding in the Middle East complicated and well beyond the scope of my small article. Further, I lack the expertise to talk about the history and lack the military expertise to talk about the war. I will write about only one thing: the October 7^th slaughter in Israel.

Over three thousand young people gathered to dance at the Supernova Sukkot in the desert, approximately 5 km from the Gaza Strip and near Kibbutz Re’im with a population of around 430.

The rave was billed as a celebration of "friends, love and infinite freedom” and attendees were prohibited from bringing weapons including guns and sharp objects. Sound like the kind of thing many young people we know, including our own children, would attend.

In the morning, Hamas came at the attendees from all directions, killing at least 260 people and abducting dozens as hostages. The massacre and hostage taking continued at nearby Kibbutz Re’im and in the end, over one thousand were slaughtered and hundreds taken hostage.

Hamas insurgents recorded their own deeds with GoPro cameras and that, combined with surveillance footage, has been aired to many including seasoned journalists who found the footage so gruesome that many had to leave.

"The worst part was the glee," Sabrina Maddeaux, a political columnist for the National Post, wrote in a piece published Monday, describing the apparent joy Hamas fighters took in their rampage across communities and at a music festival in southern Israel last month. Reporters described seeing images of burned babies and children, along with other indescribably graphic scenes.

There are still over 200 hostages in the hands of Hamas. We have seen a woman hostage naked and beaten on a truck paraded through Gaza. The terrorists have a baby who is 10 months old.

We have seen videos of people denying that these events happened and we’ve seen photos of the kidnapped torn down as ‘propaganda’. For those who wonder how people can deny the Holocaust, we’re seeing the denial in real time today.

There will also be people who may not deny these events but only want to talk about the ‘lead up’ to them and the war that followed them. There is no ‘lead up’ to justify this brutality, nor can you justify brutality by referring to any actions that followed it that were unknown at the time.

As Maddow said, this is identifying some minority as bad, dangerous and unfit to have democratic rights – human rights – whether it’s citizens of Israel or Jewish citizens of other countries.

On this Memorial Day 2023, when we honour those who fought for and preserved our democracy, I wanted to write a small article about the big events of October 7^th, 2023. In a democracy, all of us are equal, can vote and participate in the shaping our society and our world. If we exclude certain groups from these universal human rights whether it be those far away in Israel or Jewish citizens at home, we demolish the foundation of our democracy.

Don't Get All Twisted

Twist endings in short fiction aren’t mandatory. 

There. I said it. You hear the "gotta have a twist" advice now and again, and twists are wonderful when they’re pulled off. Repeat: when pulled off. This hype about twist endings probably doesn't serve us well as writers, particularly with folks getting started at short stories. If my starting principle mandates a twist as essential, then I risk forcing an awkward twist just to check that box. I'll bet that my editor friends here have turned down otherwise fine submissions because an attempted twist didn't hang straight. 

I should give my personal definition of twist. Two reasons. One, these things are subjective. You do you. And secondly, depending on your definition, the ending to my story in the November/December 2023 Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine may or may not pull a twist.

For me, a twist is a closing turn that surfaces from the narrative and inverts the expected path. Another operative word: surfaces. A twist that wasn't set up is no twist at all. It's new and probably intrusive facts. Take the classic Peanuts gag, Snoopy's "dark and stormy night" novel with sudden pirate ships and screaming maids. Attention-getting, but hardly organic. For a twist to work, the inversion path has been there since the opening passages, brewing, hiding in plain sight maybe, but definitely emerging from the story world and themes that have unfolded. 

By “inverts,” things wind up opposite from the characters’ goal, maybe ironically so. This is, of course, O. Henry territory.  In “The Gift of the Magi,” the husband sets aside his watch fetish and sells it to buy a brush for his wife’s glorious hair. Meanwhile, the wife is secretly selling those splendid locks to buy him a watch chain. It’s all very awkward on Christmas morn. His "The Last Leaf" does the trick much better, with a sacrificial--and sneakily set-up--turn that saves a depressed woman.

As another example, and one I’ve used here before, consider “The Cask of Amontillado.” Everyone knows what's on the line with Fortunato. The narrator, Montresor, has blathered about revenge and snuffing Fortunato since the first paragraph. How the murder attempt will go down, that’s Poe's dramatic question. So it’s no twist when Fortunato gets walled up and left to die. I'll argue his fate is parallelism. Montresor has also been locked in darkness of his own making. 

Poe’s twist is Montresor’s reaction when the deed is done. His fever breaks, if briefly, and he experiences lucid regret. Far from gleeful revenge, Montresor is trapped forever by guilt and self-loathing. It's a perfect ending because it comes from the story threads and ties them together, leaving no doubt as to Poe's meaning. 

It's easy to analyze. Twists are way harder to execute on the page. You know, surprise without being random or obvious. There are a million ways this can go horribly wrong. Confused story meanings, poor signaling, sudden pirate ships on the horizon.

It’s why I don’t fret over twist endings. My energy is better directed nailing down a big honking ending, a serious pay-off, something satisfying for the arc, something revelatory, and yes, a little unexpected. If that becomes an O. Henry-style twist, awesome. 

Inevitability as an ending is underrated. Inevitability is all around us: the rise of the sun, the change of the seasons, the span of our lives. Inevitability fits right at home in good fiction. Noir is stepped in the inevitable, that life is terrible and not getting any better. You do what you have to. Shutter Island jumps out, for my definition anyhow, not as a twist but as the inevitable reckoning of repressed personas. 

Many a great story plays with inevitability. We know how Frankenstein is going to end. We know Romeo and Juliet will commit suicide. Those stories are unravelings--and with masterful pay-offs that don't lapse into predictability. And is Montresor's guilt really a twist or the inevitable toll murder takes on the psyche? 

Often, I'm thinking more about caper rules. Under strict caper rules, the crew can't get away with the heist. They might have token loot, but mostly their win is to have navigated their foolishness and live to heist another day. Caper rules call for a spectacular fail at the very cusp of success, a surprising fail but seeded sleight-of-hand along the way. I use this construction a good bit--but I don't consider those turns as twists. Those are inevitabilities, what's bound to happen when people get in over their heads.  

“Know Thyself” is my twelfth story for AHMM. The piece does a few things well (I hope!), including an ending scene that stayed with me. I need such things to run a piece through my rewrite gauntlet. In "Know Thyself," my amateur sleuth has been obsessing over a Plexiglas horse statue theft pulled under her nose. Finally, after a one-woman crusade, she gets a lesson in what matters more, rules or justice, and also in what matters most: belonging and knowing your home. It's a low-key moment in a comic mystery, but it brought the story together.

That ending might be a twist. It might not. The point is, I'm not worried about it. Stories don't need a twist. Stories need a pay-off, a sparkling revelatory note that readers can carry with them.  

Scaling Mount TBR

CC 2.0 2007 Evan Bench

Last year, I read 104 books, including audio and advanced review copies. I could make that number more impressive with the number of manuscripts I've edited. That job, by the way, is usually great fun as I get to see something before everyone else. But I don't count that. After all, it's work. It's why I don't review anymore. And while editing can be a chore at times, it's not cramming in a book to write three paragraphs.

But I read 104 books in 2022. I did it while writing under two pen names, working a fulltime job, and taking care of an ailing wife. For 2023, it's likely, but not guaranteed, I'll make 105. It's unlikely I'll read nearly as much in 2024. Why?

One of the reasons I used the lockdown to learn speed reading was to get more books in. I always believed a writer should read widely and much. Every so often, I'll come up with a list I want to get through, and those often take years. One list in particular drove this year's reading: Stephen King.

Yes, I've read Holly, unexpectedly added Storm of the Century (a screenplay, but it should have been a novel), yet skipped Faithful. (If it's not the Reds or the Indians/Guardians, I'm really not interested in baseball books.)

But to get King's canon finished this year - Fifteen years is long enough - I had to read twenty-five pages at a sitting. Hard to do during the day. Back when working at the office was a regular thing, I had to deal with interruptions: The coworker who took an open book as, "Oh, cool, you're not doing anything" and the needy manager who already sent me a Teams message and an email. (Pro tip: IT guys probably get it after the first email. Use Teams to follow up. Even a gregarious one such as me doesn't want to people much while working.) You sometimes have to steal time outside of breaks. And my wife thinks 5 PM is a hard deadline to stop work.

But I read Holly in sips. And while I devoured Rick Rubin's The Creative Act (like The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, it's now an annual reread.), I'm going through Don Winslow's City of Dreams slowly. At 311 pages, I'd normally have this done in three or four days. I started it on Monday. The library already bugged me once I would need to return it or renew it.

So 2024 will probably see me read half as many books. But just as there are benefits to reading much and widely, there's a bonus to reading less and more slowly.

On some books, it cost me. I read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, which I loved. However, I also had the impression if I'd only read 10-15 pages in a sitting, maybe with fewer sittings, I'd have understood why that book made Harold Bloom's list from How to Read. (My problem with Bloom was how vocal he was about what he didn't like. It's like Star Wars fandom, only with classics and literary fiction. And I am so over Star Wars for that reason alone.) But I also don't remember much about A Midsummer Night's Dream. I can't remember the last crime fiction book I read, and it was only a month ago. And with editing, sometimes the manuscript blurs a little with whatever's on my end table at the moment. (Winslow is blurring with my current author, which actually put a smile on my face yesterday while working on it.)

But I sipped Holly. I'm sipping City of Dreams. By the time this publishes, I'll probably be into another Twain novel.

One thing that hasn't changed is audio. Audio imposes its own pace. And these days, I prefer audio to music in my headphones and in my car. My musical odyssey began with the Beatles, detoured into Deep Purple, and landed on jazz in recent years. I revisit the Beatles often, but good God, Purple has become fingernails on chalkboard to me. How many times can you listen to "Highway Star" before realizing you're a middle-aged man in a boring sedan? Detroit doesn't even build sedans anymore! So I listen to audio books. And I am an addict.

Audio has its own rotation: Non-fiction, fiction, banned book, and what I call “not Harold Bloom”. 2023 had spiritual books in it, which doubled the amount of ancient texts. (Side note: Those of your putting the holiest of your beliefs or apocryphal texts on audio need to hire better narrators. Some of them would have been more interesting if the guy didn't sound like he slept through it. It’s not reverent; it's just dull.) Ancient epics were the most fun. Star Trek’s Dominic Keating and the great Ian McKellan read The Iliad and The Odyssey respectively, and I found myself disappointed when both stories ended. Same with Beowulf, which I finished the night before writing this. The narrator was one I was unfamiliar with, but he was Irish, like translator Seamus Heaney. So even Heaney’s voice in an afterword came through.

I wondered if I was a freak of nature reading this many books. 104? 105? Once, getting to 100 was a badge of honor. But when it gets to be a chore, and you find yourself padding the list with a lot of filler, is it really useful or relaxing?

Reading should be in service to writing. It should also be relaxing (probably why I love audio so much.) When it becomes an obligation with no purpose or a time suck, then what's the point?

A Veterans' Day Speech Reposted

  Dear SleuthSayer faithful–it's that time of year again, with Veterans Day falling on a Saturday this year, I'm re-posting the following because, as always, it continues to be both timely and relevant. I look forward to a day when it may not actually be "timely."

Also, thanks all over again, to all of my fellow veterans, everywhere, for your service. And here we go:

In 2015 a former student reached out to me and asked that I serve as that year's featured speaker for her high school's Veteran's Day assembly. I have posted below the speech I gave on that day. I hope you will join me in thanking all of our veterans, living and dead, for their service to our country, and to the world.

I love this country. I am honored and humbled to have served her. I wish you all the best on this, a day of remembrance.

***************

Hello, and thank you for that warm welcome. While I’m at it, I’d like to thank Dr. _______, the staff, and the student body here at __________ High School for inviting me to speak to you today, on this occasion where we take time to honor our country’s veterans. My name is Brian Thornton, and I am a veteran. It has been my privilege to teach Ancient & Medieval World History at _______ Middle School, here in the ______ School District, for the past ________ years.

But before I began my career as a teacher, before my time in college training to be a teacher, before I moved to the Seattle area, before I got married and started a family, I lived a very different life, in very different locales, doing a very different job.

But more on that in a moment.

Now, I’m an historian, so I’d like to start off with a few words about the date on which we celebrate Veterans’ Day. It was only after my time in the military that I understood the significance of November 11th as the date we choose to honor our veterans. Far from being some random date on the calendar, November 11th was chosen for a very specific reason. Originally called “Armistice Day,” it marks the anniversary of the signing of the cease-fire agreement that effectively ended the First World War. Dubbed by turns “The Great War,” and “The War to End All Wars,”- this conflict resulted in the deaths of over 16 million people- only 9 million of them combatants- during its four years (1914-1918).

The First World War redrew national boundaries, toppled empires, wrecked a continent, and wiped an entire generation from the earth as surely as the swipe of an eraser removes ink from a whiteboard. By 1918 society had been so thoroughly rocked by the havoc this conflict wrought, that many people began to believe that they were witnessing the death throes of society itself- that civilization would literally cease to exist.

So the men who negotiated and signed this armistice (and they were all men. Human beings had yet to awaken to the importance of having the wisdom and experience of women at the table during negotiations like these), believed that with their actions, they were literally saving human civilization from eventual collapse and humanity itself from likely extinction.

And so they arranged for the cease-fire to go into effect on a symbolic date: literally at 11 o’clock in the morning, on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year- hence the phrase “at the 11th hour”- a phrase that we use to this very day, in describing disaster being averted at the “last minute.”

I cannot help but find it fitting that we choose such a date to pause and take note of the contributions made to this country by our veterans. After all, it is the most American of traditions to take a painful memory and to substitute a hopeful one for it.

And to speak of the contributions, the sacrifices, of our veterans, is to speak of hope. Hope is an aspirational emotion, born of a desire for something greater, something better. People motivated by hope can achieve incredible things. America itself was founded on hope. Countless millions have flocked to this country from every corner of the planet, motivated by hope- hope for something bigger, greater, deeper. And they hope to find what they’re seeking in America, a place that the great poet Bruce Springsteen has dubbed “The Land of Hope and Dreams.”

And over the past two-plus centuries our citizen soldiers have answered their country’s call time and again out of a sense of dedication to that country, and to that hope. Such loyalty, such patriotism makes of mere countries the greatest of nations.

And as the service of veterans has helped to transform America, so, too has it had a transformational effect on those who served.

I served as a quartermaster in the United States Navy from 1985 to 1989. A quartermaster’s job is to serve as principal navigator onboard ship, and as an expert cartographer (a “map maker”) on land.

During my time in the navy I visited every continent on the planet, with the exception of Antarctica. I lived and worked with thousands of different people, from a wide variety of ethnic, economic, and geographic backgrounds. I experienced places and cultures and sights and smells and tastes that I never knew existed. It was a far cry from my childhood growing up in Eastern Washington.

I cannot overstate the effect that serving my country during those four years had on me. My worldview was radically changed as a result of that experience, and while it was not an easy journey, I cannot stress enough how important my military service has been to me in the years since my discharge in 1989.

The military taught me so much. Patience, mostly. And more patience. And then….still more. Those of you with a veteran in your family, ask them about the phrase “Hurry up, and wait.” See what reaction you get.

In the navy I learned to get along with people with whom I had nothing in common, other than the shared experience of serving our country. The navy brought me into close contact with people I might never otherwise have gotten to know. One of the life skills I value most is the ability to work well with people you may not like very much. Another is the ability to get past initial differences and find things to admire in others, things you might not have noticed on first acquaintance. The navy taught me how to do both of these things, and so much more.

None of this should have come as much of a surprise to me. You see, when it came to the military, I had a reservoir of previously acquired knowledge to rely upon at home while I was growing up. My father flew Huey gunships in Vietnam. Two uncles served in the navy. One retired from the Coast Guard. My grandfather was a tail-gunner in both B-17s and B-29s, flying bombing sorties over both Germany and Japan during World War II. Much of my childhood was spent listening to stories, not only of battle, but of boredom, “unintelligent” leadership, pranks played, and fast friendships formed.

Once I had served my own hitch, I had my own stories to tell. Tales of bad food, long work days, freezing cold watches stood on piers in faraway places with hard-to-pronounce names. And the exploits of “my buddies,” guys I served with. Guys I’ll never forget, like them, love them, or hate them. My younger brother did his own hitch in the army, serving as crew chief onboard Chinook helicopters. And he in turn brought home his own stories.

I have a lot of veterans in my family, including ones like my cousin, Ronald Quigley, who never lived to tell their stories. You see, my cousin Ronnie died while serving as an artilleryman in Vietnam. You can find his name inscribed with those of the other honored dead from that war on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

I was three years old when he died. All I have left of him are some jumbled memories from his going-away party when he left for Vietnam.

And yet, my cousin, and those others whose lights were snuffed out too early, who never lived to tell their stories, the ones who, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, gave “the last, full measure of devotion” to this country, they deserve to be remembered. To be celebrated. To be honored.

And we, as a nation, have an obligation to keep their memory alive, to keep them from becoming just another name on just another war memorial. To help the citizens of this great nation remember the terrible cost incurred every time young people answer their country’s call to arms. To serve with honor, and to be transformed utterly by the experience.

And that leads me to the crux of this speech. Because, once you’ve lived it, once you’ve taken the oath, once you’ve stood the watches, and fought to stay awake, and been afraid, and laughed, and argued, and sweated, and ached, and bled, and loved and cried, all in the service of your country, like it or not, you’ve become a part of something larger than yourself. 

A fraternity. 

A family.

A group of women and men who have sworn to protect this nation. Who have made its continued existence their personal responsibility.

And it doesn’t change much once your hitch is up. Once you’ve done your bit, you’re a member for life. And for ever afterward.

That’s what being a veteran is.

***************

See you in two weeks!