The Good Old Days

Today is June 9, 2014. How did it get to be half a year so quickly. We just had Christmas last week, didn't we? No, that was Valen...no, my birthd...no, Mother's Day. Man time flies when you're having fun and even when you're not.
Never really thought I'd like to be a writer, particularly, but I always liked to write and always made perfect grades writing essays or stores for English classes. But I decided to be an X-ray technician when I was about 12. I started to X-ray School on Monday morning after I graduated from high school on Friday night.  I enjoyed my career of diagnostic x-ray and radiation therapy. But after kids were almost grown, I began writing mostly for myself. Eventually, I thought I'd write a book.

Guess I wrote about half of a novel before I realized I had no earthly idea how to write or complete a novel. My late husband, Elmer and I lived in Houston, think this was about 1980, and were fairly close to a library. So I got myself over there and checked out an armload of books to How To Write, mostly how to write a mystery. Oh, yes. Always knew it would be a mystery and it would be a female private eye book.

 The book was titled, April Anger and my main character was Jenny Gordon, P.I.
John D. MacDonald had books with color in the titles. This was just before Sue Grafton came out with "A is for Alibi." Someone else had numbers, don't remember who, but just thought months would be a good take. After I read Sue's Alibi and the "B is for Burglar" was on it's way, I still felt that months would be the way to go.

After studying the how-to books and following as many directions and tips as I could cram into my brain, I completed my first novel. This was written mostly in long-hand on a yellow legal size tablet, then transferred to print with my electric typewriter. If I'm not mistaken, I had managed to acquire an IBM Selectric.  Some of you may remember it had a print ball than danced around as you typed the words.

One of the Houston TV stations did a little news story about a writing conference held at Rice University. It was a two day event and I could stay at the University's Hotel college. The cost was something like $80. Right then I didn't have the extra money to attend. I was really upset but, I saved my money for a whole year and then registered for the Southwest Writing Conference. In the meantime I kept writing.

It was a great conference, featuring a number of editors and agents from New York. They held classes and gave great advice and the main thing you were networking. These editors and agents would pull your book or story from the slush pile once they got back to NY because they had met you in Houston.

I remember an agent from Avon paperback books telling us a story about going to conference after conference and aspiring writers asking for the secret to getting published. She said they wouldn't believe that you had to write well and write a different and intriguing story. We all nodded, more or less believing that it was true, that there had to be some magic formula or some magic answer to getting published.

Finally, she asked someone in our class to check to see if anyone was standing outside or around our door. Someone checked then she said, in a hushed voice, "I'm telling you all the secret. But you can't ever, ever let anyone know I told you because I'll get fired."

In a voice, barely above a whisper, she said, "When you sent your manuscript in to me, put the stamps on  upside down."  We laughed a bit and realized she'd been putting us on. "You'll never know how many envelopes full of manuscripts I got that year with upside down stamps on them." Of course, these were the days when you sent a full printed copy of your manuscript to an editor. But only after you sent a query letter and they responded yes, you may send your mss in to me.

At that time, there was another way, if you didn't have an agent to send your mss to an editor and that was to send it in cold 'over the transom'. In the very early days, an editor's room had a door with a small window that could be opened for air circulation. Supposedly someone could throw an mss over the transom into what was called a "slush pile." The slush pile continued but it came from the mail room and a pile of opened manuscripts were put on the editor's desk. Every so often the editor would go through that pile and for one reason or the other, interesting title or great first paragraph and
on this rarest of occasions the editor would find a manuscript they liked and would buy it. A few years after that an editor told me, she once had to buy a mss because it had too many coffee stains on it where she had placed her mug and she was too embarrassed to return it in that condition. Take that statement with a grain of salt. It could be true, I knew the editor fairly well and I could see her doing something like that.

I wound up attending the SW Writing Conference three years, they were held in August. An editor from Wichita Falls City Magazine greeted me and we discussed a short story I wanted to send to her.  In December, she called me and said she wanted to publish my story. In fact, it had already been published and she was sending me copies and a $100 check. I was thrilled to say the least. A couple of months later, another editor I had met published a humorous article in a little magazine that went out all over the country to be local businesses magazines. I got a check for $85 for that.  Neither of these were mysteries but they were publications. I was sure I was on my way.

Good thing I didn't quit my day job because I didn't sell anything else for five more years. I did have two mystery short stories published both in small subscription magazines. The first was in Detective Story Magazine and featured my private eye investigators, Jenny Gordon and C.J. Gunn, titled "Kiss or Kill." In fact, the story was chosen for the cover. I looked in my bookcase and found a copy of the magazine and hope I'll be able to put them at the end of this article.

The second story was published in Dark Starr, "A Friend To Remember." Also found that one in my bookcase. And guess what I had forgotten the story so I had to reread it.  Both stories were published in 1989.

Those all really are some of my good old days as an aspiring writer.

The Age of Stone Surgery

Kidney stones give whole new meaning to writer’s block.

I recently experienced kidney stone surgery. I say this calmly, rationally, as if kidney stones weren't nature’s way of reducing all of us to the level of bawling babies incapacitated with pain.

Literature on the subject appears to have been written by sociopaths who’ve never experienced kidney stones. Take for example this sentence, “Some flank discomfort can be anticipated.” That’s like Germans telling the British during the London Blitz, “Expect a little noise and dust.”

You may have noticed roughly half the human race features external plumbing. Normally, I’m satisfied with this arrangement, but at times like these, not so much.

Now knowledgeable in three techniques, I recognized a need for a bit more depth of the subject matter. Following is my tutorial on the topic.

Kidney Stone Owner's Manual

A kidney stone forms as a crystal, the small ones the size of basketballs. Stones can have many shapes, all of them jagged. One might look like a claw from hell or another might resemble a spiked iron ball from days of yore. Note the wide variety at right.

This is not accidental. Let us step through the history of stone surgery, beginning with a prehistoric account.

Percutaneous Nephrostolithotomy

Ogg and his common-law wife, Uma, lived in the fruitful plains of nowhere important. Ogg had been a good provider, but recently, he’d experienced horrible, sharp pains in his lower back that felt like he’d been clobbered by a stegosaurus tail.

Sometimes the hurt grew so excruciating, he passed out, once with his chin in a patty of dinosaur dung. These painful episodes made Ogg very cranky, much to Uma’s annoyance.

He figured this was nature’s way of telling him to slow down. Ogg decided to turn his attention to the arts.

Uma was a delicate flower, relatively speaking with curvaceous 136~124~136 proportions. Ogg decided to honor his beloved by carving a life-size statue, which ironically weighed about the same as Uma with comparable warmth.

He took up his stone chisel and began chipping away where Uma said it made her butt look big. Abruptly, pain struck. Ogg writhed, saying “Ook-ah, ook-ah,” which roughly translated means “@$*#%€! Holy crap this hurts.”

Uma, who’d give birth to triplets, Gog, Magog, and Agog, didn’t have patience with Ogg’s whinging and whining. She rolled her eyes and muttered about men acting like babies.

But something inside Ogg shifted. Wracked with blinding pain in the throes of the seizure, he inadvertently chipped off a feature of his wife’s sculpture she much prized. Infuriated, she picked up Ogg’s granite club and bashed him solidly on the brow, which not only removed his mind from the pain, but toppled him backward onto his sharp stone chisel.

Out popped a jagged, spiked sphere the size of a megalosaurus testicle. Such were often used as balls in caveman soccer, a very challenging game, especially while still attached to the megalosaurus.

“Oof,” said Ogg, with gratitude and relief. He picked up the spiked ball, hefted it, and muttered, “WTF?” which translates to “What the heck?”

Ogg instantly saw the possibilities and attached a chain to the stone ball and that to a heavy stick, creating the morning-star flail and inventing the phrase ‘my ball and chain.’ Now free of pain and armed with a dangerous weapon, he prowled the plains wiping out woolly mammoths and evangelizing the practice of neolithic stone chisel surgery, now part of urology health care plans everywhere.

Electro-mechanical Hydraulic/Pneumatic Lithotripsy

The next advance in technology moved from stone chisel surgery to deploying a piston that could physically batter stones into smaller pieces the size of baseballs. In practice, a hairy man in a hardhat and full body armor passes a full-sized jackhammer up the urethra where he chips away while humming Sixteen Tons, entertaining the patient and staff. That’s “patient and staff” as opposed to the “patient’s staff,” which is unlikely to ever work again and forever be a source of agony.

Ultrasonic Shockwave Lithotripsy

Bible school students learn the rousing spiritual ‘Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho’ and the accompanying story, which is considerably more bloodthirsty in the details. (“Listen, Josh, are you sure He said wipe out every man, woman, child, bunny rabbit, puppy and kitten? And babies? And Achan’s family too? You joshing, man?”)

The Israelites marched seven times around the walls, shouted and sang like Yoko Ono, blew their ram’s horn trumpets, and the walls came tumbling down. In urology terms, this is called extra-corporeal shock wave lithotripsy.

That’s how ultrasonic works: You make lots of noise until its volume and frequency crumbles the hard stuff inside your kidney or the building next door. In theory. Some stones it doesn’t work on and it can sure as hell leave your insides bruised and littered like the arena of a demolition derby.

Flexible Pyeloscopy Surgery

Sometime during the Middle Ages, Spanish Inquisitors stumbled upon non-invasive (so to speak) techniques where stones could be tackled by traveling up the ureter. The invention is credited to Bernardo Extirpator XXVIII, a hard-of-hearing and none-too-bright torturer, immortalized by the famous words of his cringing boss as Torquemada lost his cookies. “Pie-hole! Sweet Jesus in Heaven, I said pie-hole!”

One of the conventional techniques has traditionally been ureteroscopy. The procedure is commonly called ‘basketing’ in which doctors playfully insert into the urethra a xistera, similar to the racquet used to serve 180mph pelota balls in the game of jai alai, except the medical device is about the size of an ordinary laundry basket. This doesn’t give the procedure its name, but afterwards the screaming patient is carried out in a basket.

Rigid Ureteroscopic Lasering

Basket extraction fell out of favor with the advent of Star Wars technology. A ureteroscope, a long, thin peeping device the size of a 37-inch television is sent up the ureter to determine where the stones set up camp. Once located, surgeons call in the big gun, a holmium laser-blasting weapon affectionately called Battlestar Galactica. It vaporizes the stone and the rest of a patient’s resolve not to scream like a 3-year-old.

Note ureteroscopic lasering is not the same as ureteroscopic tasering, invented by Bubba Joe Hadcock when he sat on his newly acquired stun gun. It was subsequently discovered, thanks to his invention, Bubba Joe didn’t have nor ever will have kidney stones. Nor kidneys for that matter. A simple solution to a complex problem.

Clonal Lithography

In its simplest form, the patient’s body is amputated to stop the pain and a replacement grown. Medical technicians cryogenically freeze a patient whilst a clone is fabricated. Conversely for advance planners, a clone may be prepared beforehand and itself cryogenically preserved.

In an in-patient, minimally invasive procedure, the encephalon is transferred in toto to the brain-case of the new host. Patients have been known to immediately resume texting, shopping, complaining about The View, and other normal activities.

The Stent

“Out-patient,” I thought they said but it was “Out-of-your-freaking-mind-patient,” talking about the stent removal. See, at the time of stone removal, they put in a piece of tubing like 3-inch industrial wiring conduit. In the wretched days after blasting the kidney stone, a stent allows pieces to pass through. Sometimes medics issue patients strainers in case the spleen or forgotten medical instruments fall out.

So Dr. Steven Brooks and Nurse Wendy corner me in a room where I hold them at bay with an impromptu lion-tamer chair. It's a swivel chair with spastic casters that would make any self-respecting lion roar with laughter, but my crazed appearance gives them pause.

Dr. Steven Brooks and Nurse Wendy tell me 99% of tough, be-all-you-can-be men opt for out-patient removal of the stent and only a wussy 1% choose being knocked out for hospital removal. Psychology is at work here: As the army knows full well, at the root of male bravery is fear, fear of showing fear. Otherwise, 99% would sensibly choose to be knocked out and wake up the following month fully healed.

So I say okay and put down my improvised lion-tamer chair with its twitching casters. I eye a previously laid-out, sadistic device that looks like an automotive parts retrieval tool, a flexible shaft with a spring loaded handle at one end and a three-prong claw at the other. Silly me, I look at this thing and naïvely wonder how it will slide up.

I say naïvely, because I didn’t realize they would insert yet a terrifyingly larger tube sized to accommodate not merely our automotive parts extractor but a full-grown ferret. I look at the diameters and realize someone hasn’t done the math. A shop vac hose can’t possibly fit up an opening the size of a soda straw, and if it could, no one would ever again sip from that straw.

@$*#%€! Holy mother of …!

Afterwards, I asked them to just let me lie there a couple of weeks to recuperate as I write these last few words and my will and testament. I hope this technical dissertation helps my fellow layman and laywoman. Meanwhile, my bladder’s shrunk to the size of a pea… Whoops! Wrong word. Gotta go!

Where Will YOU Go Tomorrow?

One of the biggest things I get kidded about since I retired is how much I now enjoy staying at home. After a career at IBM and a four-year stint in the Air Force I've done more than my share of traveling (I still have enough Frequent Flyer miles in my account to circle the world a dozen times), and now, much to the dismay of my far-flung family members and the disbelief of my globetrotting friends, I am perfectly content to spend most of my time inside the bounds of my own zip code. I do attend the occasional Bouchercon and required booksignings and non-negotiable events like weddings and funerals, but--with the exception of those journeys and trips to visit my mother and our annual trek to see our oldest son and his family Up North--the only doors I darken are usually those in our own home.

Part of that is because I'm just tired of traveling. Airports are even more of a hassle than they used to be, I'm too tall to be comfortable in most plane seats and car seats, and with age I have become less tolerant of any disruption to my daily routine. Besides, I can go anywhere I want to go, anytime I want to go there, via books and movies--without having to put down my bowl of ice cream or change into more presentable attire.

I will admit this line of thinking is a little extreme, but I do sincerely enjoy kicking back in my recliner and losing myself in a mystery novel or an adventure movie. Or, for that matter, any other kind of novel or movie.

Ground control to Major Tom . . .

Over the past couple of months, my cinematic "trips" include Saving Mr. Banks, Catching Fire, Nebraska, Into the White, Dallas Buyers Club, Sands of the Kalahari, The Book Thief, Killer Joe, All Is Lost, Mountains of the Moon, Captain Phillips, the second seasons of Longmire and House of Cards, The Mist, The Narrow Margin, Odd Thomas, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (adapted from the Thurber short story). These I enjoyed; others were less than thrilling. One of the strangest things to happen lately was that a film I thought I would love (Monuments Men) was a disappointment, while one that I thought I would hate (Walter Mitty) was delightful in every way. I mean, George Clooney was in a ho-hum movie and Ben Stiller was in a good one? Hey, nobody was more surprised than I was.

On the novel side of the playground, I have recently read and enjoyed Sycamore Row (John Grisham), The Quest (Nelson DeMille), Destroyer Angel (Nevada Barr), Bull River (Robert Knott), The Abominable (Dan Simmons), Lost Echoes (Joe Lansdale), Doctor Sleep (Stephen King), Never Go Back (Lee Child), and all three books in the Divergent trilogy (Veronica Roth). I'm currently reading Missing You (Harlan Coben), and my yet-to-be-read stockpile includes The Maze Runner (James Dashner), Fate Is the Hunter (Ernest K. Gann), Mr. Mercedes (Stephen King), Feast Day of Fools (James Lee Burke), and The Last Kind Words Saloon (Larry McMurtry).

Kinsmen and Klansmen

I'm pleased to report that the novel I've read most recently--Greg Iles's Natchez Burning--and the novel I plan to read next--Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, which just won the Pulitzer Prize--were both written by authors from my home state of Mississippi. In fact, I consider Iles and Tartt to be two of the very best writers today, here or anyplace else. As I said, I've not yet started on Goldfinch, but I'll tell you, Natchez Burning was as suspenseful and well-written and satisfying as anything I've read in a long time. Members of the Ku Klux Klan are always ultravillainous, and in that book Iles serves up mystery and violence and justice in heaping helpings; Stephen King says, in a cover blurb, "Only a southern man could have written this book, and thank God Greg Iles was there to do the job." Speaking of traveling, that novel didn't require me to go far, even in literary miles: Natchez is less than two hours away. (As for The Goldfinch and the skyrocketing success of Donna Tartt, I'm seriously thinking about changing my last name to Floydd.)

Another intriguing point about Iles's and Tartt's two novels is that they are vastly different in terms of both style and subject matter. Natchez Burning, a fast read even at 800 pages, features nonstop action and packs the surprising consequences of a forty-year-old murder case into a time period of only a couple of days, while The Goldfinch is (said to be) literary to its core, an elegantly written and epic meaning-of-life story of love, sorrow, and obsession in the art world. Opposite poles. But one of the best things about the fascinating universe of writing and publishing, I think, is that both kinds of books and both kinds of authors can excel and succeed. Another is that the same reader can sometimes equally savor, or at least equally appreciate, commercial/popular/genre fiction as well as literary/depressing/mainstream fiction.

A French connection

A quick story. A little over a month ago, our second son was here at our house one night and mentioned that he and our daughter-in-law were planning to go to Paris for ten days, and asked if we'd keep their two kids (ages six and four) while they were gone. We happily agreed--extra time with grandchildren is something we love--and before he left to go home that night he noticed a novel I was currently reading, lying on our breakfast-room table. It was (coincidentally) Paris, by Edward Rutherford. We then talked a little about things I'd already learned from the book--facts about Notre Dame, Montmartre, the Louvre, the construction of the Eiffel Tower, etc.--and I offered to let him borrow it, to read and then take with him on their trip. He did, and said afterward that it added greatly to the experience of seeing the city. I know that my having read it made it more fun for me to watch the photos and movies they e-mailed to us during their time there, and the ones they showed us after returning home. It was as though I had made the trip also. 

A question to my fellow "travelers"

I'll close by asking you this: what novels have you read and enjoyed lately, and what's in your to-be-read stack or your Amazon wish list? And while we're on the subject, what recently-watched movies did you like, and what are some you might be looking forward to, either in your local theatre or in your Netflix queue? I'm always eager to find out about new destinations.

I also continue to make journeys to faraway places in the stories I'm writing. Most are set in locations I've visited in the past, but some are those that are just interesting to me, and that I've come to know better via books about them (and Google Maps).

For readers and writers, a person's imagination (like Walter Mitty's) can be an effective means of conveyance.

Who cares about the price of gas and airfare?

Assets and....

The underworld has its own food chain. Just like in nature, there are prey and there are predators. Prey can generally be considered as those having something the predator wants, plus this same prey appears to be weaker than the predator. Even amongst the predators there exists a hierarchy, with some being stronger than others. And, those that consider themselves to be predators are sometimes surprised to find their intended prey may have their own thoughts about who gets to survive. In any confrontation, victory usually goes to the stronger or more cunning competitor.

In this world of crime of crime and betrayal, both criminals and spies go after whatever is valuable to them. Criminals usually hunger after money or items of monetary value, while the spy, for his part, seeks a way to acquire specific information or secrets. The wild card in this game is a shadowy figure known as the informant, a minor predator in his own right.

To law enforcement and spies, the informant becomes an asset in their methods of targeting an individual or even an entire group. The informant is their way in, their connection or means to acquire that target. Because the individual or group tends to see the informant as one of their own, they trust him or her to some degree and the way is soon cleared for information and evidence to flow towards the assets's Handler and whatever agency the Handler works for.

Later ostracized and disclaimed by those he betrayed, and never trusted a hundred percent by those he works for, it is easy to wonder why anyone would become an informant. Turns out, everyone has his own reasons for flipping. here's a few which have come up over time, sometimes used in conjunction with various other reasons:

Fear
     ~of being charged with a crime (aka "working off a beef")
     ~of other criminal associates
     ~of being thought an informant (this sounds contradictory, but oddly enough they figure since they are
        already accused of this activity, they may as well really do it) * * * [see story at end]

Revenge or jealousy
     ~even family members, to include spouses, have turned on each other over petty disputes

Mercenary
     ~in it for the money, these are usually the most controllable

Ego
     ~looking for positive feedback they never got as a kid

Wannabe
     ~wants to be a cop (or spy), but can't or hasn't made the grade

James Bond Syndrome
     ~they fantasize and often exaggerate their knowledge of criminals or their own value to agency
     ~may set up to parallel their favorite movie or book scene
     ~ these are dangerous to their Handler and to themselves

Perverse
     ~may be trying to discover the identity of undercover agents or other informants
     ~may be trying to find out agency's targets, methods and how their equipment works
     ~may be trying to eliminate their competition
     ~ are sometimes sent by their organization to infiltrate your organization
     ~to spread disinformation

Repentance
     ~for past crimes, but this is seldom their only motivation for cooperating

Regardless of the reason(s) stated by an informant, a Handler should never completely trust that individual. The informant may have a hidden agenda, or he may later run into a tempting or coercive situation down the road, in which case he starts doing things the Handler knows nothing about until it's too late. That's when things go wrong and your asset becomes a liability.

Next time, we'll take a look at Handlers, rules and procedures, and how things can go bad in a heartbeat, even if the Handler did everything right. See ya on Fortnight Friday.
___________________________________________________________________

* * *  It was early summer and four of us agents were headed back to the office in my gov't vehicle. The windows were down for comfort and fresh air. In the backseat, between two agents sat a handcuffed gentleman of the streets whom we had just arrested. Let's say his street name was Bright Lights. For the previous fifteen minutes, we had been trying to convince Mr. Lights to flip over to our side. He claimed he couldn't do that because it would hurt his reputation on the streets. We finally gave up on the idea.

And then as we were passing a night club where several criminal lounged out front on a sidewalk in this tough part of the city, I suddenly slammed on the brakes. Our tires screeched loudly. All the lounging criminals turned in our direction to see what was happening. I then pointed my finger out the window in their general direction and screamed, "Is that him?"

Unprepared for the sudden stop, Lights was thrown forward in the back seat. Out of instant curiosity, he looked out of the rear passenger window to see what I was pointing at. He then quickly ducked back in the seat, realizing that all those gangsters standing in front of the night club had seen his face and probably recognized him. As I drove on, Lights decided that he may as well become an informant now to work off his beef, because everyone would already think he was one. His street rep wouldn't suffer any the worse.

Lights turned out to be a pretty good asset.

A Matter of Belief

There's been a lot of talk on-line about a movie called "God's Not Dead" in which an evil atheist professor forces his students to sign a declaration saying "God is Dead" to pass his class.  (Of course the Christian hero doesn't and wins the day.)  Well, contrary to certain ultra-fundamentalist myths, that doesn't happen.  No professor requires anyone to sign anything against their personal beliefs.  But we do often require them to learn things that don't necessarily agree with their beliefs and therein hangs a tale.
When I was teaching World and Asian history at university, I honestly developed a resentment towards certain types of the home-schooled.  There was the guy who, when I started talking about Charles Darwin, put down his pencil and refused to take a single note.  He didn't care that I wasn't teaching science but history. He didn't care that Social Darwinism was a major part of racism, militarism and WWI.  He wasn't going to learn about Darwin.  Period. Full-stop.

There was another who, when I asked for the connection between the Mexican Revolution and Karl Marx, wrote "Communism is a failed ideology".  (By the way, the correct answer is that Mexico claims that its revolution was the first Communist revolution, which it is.)  He wrote this for EVERY question about Communism, and I gave him a zero every time.  Communism was a huge problem for a number of people, by the way.  They just didn't want to have to learn about it, since, after all, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the Empire was destroyed, and Communism was dead.  (I'd remind them about China, and sometimes there would be a moment of silence followed by a long sigh as most of them picked their pencils back up.  But not all...)




There was always one person who, when I was teaching about Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, etc., had to explain to the class how Christianity was the only true religion.  Sometimes they would demand to know my beliefs, and I would say "I'm here to teach history, not proselytize", but they wouldn't get the hint. In fact, they usually decided that I must be an atheist, since I didn't let them preach to the class.  That or I was a Roman Catholic, and if you can see the logic to that, please explain it to me.

The connecting thread here is that these people all thought that learning ABOUT something was the same as believing IN it.  They really felt that if they learned about a political alternative, like socialism or communism, or a religious alternative, like Buddhism or Islam, they were (1) accepting it, (2) approving it, (3) in danger of becoming it.  Even though they had no problem hosing up all the info they could get about Nazis or serial killers.  Sometimes  they could take it if it was far enough in the past - I could talk paganism till the cows came home, and discuss Plato and Aristotle, Stoicism and Epicureanism.  Although they did get a little nervous when I'd point out the points in Platonism and Stoicism that had been adopted by early Christianity...

But, as I said, I developed a resentment.  I got so sick of trying to teach them that learning about something outside their comfort zone was not me trying to convert them, but was quite simply trying to get them to understand how the world got the way it is, today.  I had to teach them how to learn fearlessly.  And in the process, I realized how much the concept of learning about something = believing in something is a wonderful tool to control people. I don't know what these students were being taught at home, but I do know that if you scare people so they won't learn, you can tell them almost anything.  You have gotten them to put bars on their own minds, which only makes it harder to ever get them off.




Orwell got these statements straight from Jean Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract".  But you'd have to have taken notes in my class to know it.

The Harshest Critics

by Robert Lopresti

Even writers with a home on the range occasionally hear a discouraging word.  Besides the rejection slips and the bad reviews (if you are lucky enough to get reviewed) there are the kind and smiling souls who ask "Do you write under your own name (because I have never heard of you)?"

There may be some comfort in knowing that even the giants occasionally drink from the sour end of the punch bowl.  Here are a few genuine comments about the works of major authors, remarks which somehow never wound up as blurbs on their books.  I will list the names of the critics in the comments.

"Fit only for incineration."
	"As a plot, it's absolutely hopeless."
"A piece of tripe."
	"Pretty poor stuff."
"No action, no likable characters, no anything."
	"An appallingly bad book."
"That rotten book."
	"The experiment has obviously gone very much awry."
"I don't like any part of the Goddam thing."
	"It was nothing, and the same applies to most of the sixteen others since then."
"Just a naked grab for money"
	"Too Crude."
"This one doesn't satisfy me by a long shot."
	"A terrible book."
"Terribly bad."

So Long for Now

       Well, gang, this is my sign-off piece, at least for a while. Why? (I might hope you are asking.) Well, it’s sort of a short story rendered long.

       It all began last fall. In October I flew off to what has been my annual gig teaching a graduate course in the history of transportation at the University of Denver. Last year all went well until the flight home. I, like almost everyone else these days, refuse to check a bag. So when I approached my seat I threw my bag up into the overhead rack. As I did so something clicked -- more like snapped -- in my right shoulder. By the time we landed in D.C. my right arm was in such pain that I could hardly carry off my carry-on. 

       I immediately did what most of us do in such circumstances. I ignored the whole thing. Sure enough after a few weeks the pain lessened, but it didn't go away. So I exercised. Eventually I went to see my chiropractor. That helped but the pain still didn't go away. So a few weeks ago I threw in the towel and went to see a specialist who diagnosed a torn labrum in the shoulder and a rotator cup tear. To fix this I go under the knife on June 10 and, per my doctor, thereafter for perhaps as much as three to four months I will not be able to effectively use my right hand. And after that it will take physical therapy to bring the arm back. 

       So, there goes swimming, piloting the boat, playing the piano -- all for the rest of the summer. Hmm, anything else? Oh, yeah. Typing. 

       I’m a touch typist and I am used to pounding the keyboard at around 100 words per minute (probably the only useful skill that emerged with me from high school).  My writing is heavily dependent on that typing speed, and I always write at the keyboard.  So losing my right hand is going to put a severe crimp in things. Also, I am "write" handed, which sort of rules out reverting to the pen and paper that I otherwise left behind in the 1980s. It did occur to me that I could do some columns using only the left hand side of the keyboard -- a new take on “constrained writing.” A little research, however, shows how daunting that task would be.

       Herbert Spencer Zim, noted for works in the natural sciences arena, also produced one of the definitive treatises on frequencies of letter occurrences in the English language, Codes and Secret Writing. The bottom line from Zim is that, in descending order, the ten letters we most frequently use are ETAON RISHD. It is true that six of these are reachable in touch typing with the left hand, but think of the difficulties. True, a mystery writer could type “dead,” which is, I suppose, encouraging in its own way. But “death” would (because of that “h”) be beyond our reach. And thanks so much for that left-handed “q,” which can’t be used since it requires a right-handed “u.” (Unless, of course, you are writing about Qantas Airlines -- but forget about that, since you avoid the "u" but you still can’t reach the “n”.) Moreover the ten most common letter pairs according to Zim are TH HE AN RE ER IN ON AT ND ST. Of these only RE, ER, AT and ST are typed using the left hand. So, while one might fashion a dying clue typing with only the left hand (Queen did something a bit similar in a mystery the name of which will not be “spoiled” here), it’s simply not that feasible for a series of articles! 

       Okay, I know. I could probably hunt and peck my way through a few pieces, left handed but I suspect that I’m not going to be that up to it in the near term. So instead I am chucking all of this for a while. 

       How best to exit (at least for now)? Well, perhaps (and a tip of the old SleuthSayer hat to our resident list-maker John Floyd) with a list of some memorable final lines from the movies.  Here goes:

I think we should be leaving now. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. -- Pulp Fiction 

Let's just wait here awhile, see what happens. -- The Thing

Goodnight, you princes of Maine. You kings of New England. -- The Cider House Rules

Well, uh, hope you folks enjoyed yourselves. Catch ya further on down the trail. Say, friend - you got any more of that good sarsaparilla? -- The Big Lebowski

Some people say it's forgive and forget. Nah, I don't know. I say forget about forgivin' and just accept - and get the hell outta town. -- Grosse Point Blank

You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry: you will someday. -- American Beauty

They say they're going to repeal Prohibition. What will you do then? I think I'll have a drink.-- The Untouchables

Way back, way, way, way back, up high into the right field. That ball is still going. It's way back, high up in there. He did it. Hobbs did it. -- The Natural

I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner. Bye. -- The Silence of the Lambs

If not Arizona, then a land not too far away, where all parents are strong and wise and capable, and all children are happy and beloved. I don't know. Maybe it was Utah.  -- Raising Arizona

That'll do, pig. That'll do. -- Babe

I'm too old for this. -- Lethal Weapon

I'll be right here. -- E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

You met me at a very strange time of my life. -- The Fight Club

He’s still out there! -- Friday the Thirteenth

You're still here? It's over! Go home. Go! -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off

And here is your receipt. -- The Blues Brothers

You're Next.  Invasion of the Body Snatchers (a special one for Stephen Ross and Jim Winter who are brand new Tuesday SleuthSayers) 

         Any one of those (and several in tandem) could comprise a fine fare-thee-well today, but I will admit to a personal favorite. Although it actually appears at the beginning, not the end, of the film, for my taste it works just fine:

       And as Conklin said to Jason Bourne in one of those Berlin flashbacks:  See you on the other side.

Killing Your Darlings

Susan Rogers Cooper

You may have heard the instruction to beginning writers, 'Kill your darlings,' meaning if you like a phrase or passage too much, your readers won't react well to such self-indulgence. Today's famous author gives the words an entirely new meaning.

Susan Rogers Cooper is one-half fifth-generation Texan and half-Yankee, but the Texas side seems to be winning. She is the author of two dozen books: twelve books in the Milt Kovak series, ten in the E.J. Pugh series, and two books in the Kimmey Kruse series. Susan lives in the Austin area and is the grandmother of three precocious children.

And now, as promised…

Killing Your Darlings

by Susan Rogers Cooper

The year was 1983 and my family had just moved to Austin, Texas. I was still buzzing from my first fiction sale – a romance sold to a company called Listen to Love, romance novels on audio-cassette (it went belly-up within a year, although my $100 check did clear).

I saw an ad for story submissions to a prestigious local anthology and reworked a short story I'd already written. The submission criteria was several hundred words less than the story I'd written, so I went about dealing with that. In the story, my angst-ridden main character, going through a mid-life crisis, goes into her attic and finds a box from her teen years, full of Ricky Nelson 45s and other memorabilia of the artist, all based on my own pre-teen fixation with all things Ricky. I tore out the scene – mindlessly and with great aplomb. The story was submitted and bought and I was thrilled. One month later Rick Nelson died in a plane crash.

I'd always heard the expression “killing your darlings,” but I thought it was figurative, not literal. So this is my confession, such as it is. And, by the way, the prestigious local anthology – having been in business for over ten years before my submission – also went belly-up immediately after that year's publication, and I never got the fifty bucks I'd been promised.

In 1987, I decided to write a mystery, which I did, and sent it off to various over-the-transom houses. After the third devastating rejection, I decided on a new mental approach. Instead of “getting published,” my new goal would be to paper the downstairs half-bath with rejection letter wall paper. I only got part of one wall done. Since that time I've had close to thirty books published and, as of this writing, I've not killed anyone else – except on paper – no more publishing venues have gone belly-up on my behalf, and I've been able to tear down the half-finished wall paper in the downstairs bath.

It's the little things that make a career, right?

Secrets of the Girl Sleuth

Norwegian Nancy Drew

A few weeks ago for the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine web site, I wrote about the secret author of the Hardy Boys and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Last week, I picked up the theme with Nancy Drew, again for Ellery Queen. In preparation for the article, I came across mildly scandalous and salacious background notes. Warning: Adult themes ahead.

Passionate Predilections, Take 1

It seems to be a rule that Wikipedia and certain fan sites of well-known fictional characters carry a few (or many) paragraphs about implied homoerotic relationships: Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Nero Wolfe and Archie, Spenser and Hawk, Alex Cross and Sampson, and… the Hardy Boys. Some fans will inevitably read more than ‘bromance’ into such friendships, but it’s especially creepy in the case of the Hardys, who are brothers.

Nancy Drew’s not immune from such speculation. She hung out with Bess and George. It didn’t help that her friend ‘George’ was actually Georgia, wore short hair and was described as “an athletic tomboy” even though she dated at least two boys, Buck Rodman and later Burt Eddleton. But these implications were minor blips on the radar. Nancy may have had a more… sensual side.

Passionate Predilections, Take 2

In reading the first two novels in the Nancy Drew series (The Secret of the Old Clock and The Hidden Staircase, both published in 1930 and revised by Harriet Stratemeyer in 1959), I dipped into other articles. I noted in passing a comment a fan wrote that she blamed (or credited?) her passion for bondage on the young sleuth, noting that poor Nancy was constantly being tied up by one evildoer or another.

As I researched, I realized the remark about bondage wasn’t merely a comment in passing, but that several readers associated Nancy Drew with ropes and chains. Some said they didn’t recognize the feelings that infused them until becoming adults, but a few admitted an odd awareness back in their childhood. This isn’t a small aberration; readers can find fan fiction and art web sites on-line with these themes.

Laurie Long as Nancy Drew

At least one fan took matters a step farther. In Becoming Nancy Drew, artist Laurie Long physically transformed herself into the girl sleuth. She dyed her hair Nancy’s titian blonde, and for two years lived and worked as the girl detective, recreating scenes from the Nancy Drew novels, and writing a book in the process.

For any writer, the risk of releasing a story means the characters become a possession of the public, and the public will have its way with them.

Another Author Revealed

The Nancy Drew novels proved immensely popular, but books 8, 9, and 10 enjoyed a surge of popularity. Readers had no idea ‘Carolyn Keene’ was a pen name, a property of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and a change of authorship had occurred.

As mentioned in the Something is Going to Happen article, Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson wrote twenty-two of the first twenty-five Nancy Drew books, but she did not write numbers 8, 9, or 10. Those three were written by another author in the Stratemeyer stable who’d written other series books. They were written by a military man.

Within the Syndicate, that wasn’t unusual: Women authors wrote under male pseudonyms and vice versa. To be sure, #26 and #34 were also written by men, but readers reacted to something special and indefinable in numbers 8 through 10. The author here was a naval officer, historian, journalist, script-writer and novelist, Walter Karig. Besides stories under his own name, Karig wrote a total of nine books for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. His Password to Larkspur Lane became the first Nancy Drew movie, Nancy Drew: Detective in 1938.

Walter Karig might have continued to write Nancy Drew stories, but he made a mistake. The circumstances aren’t entirely clear but in 1935, Walter Karig revealed to the Library of Congress he’d written three of the Nancy Drew novels. Although this didn’t make the press, the revelation aroused the ire of the Syndicate who threatened legal action against him. As popular and brilliant as his work had been, Karig never again worked for the Stratemeyer Syndicate and Mildred Benson once more picked up her pen.

Walter Karig’s Nancy Drew novels include:

• #08 (1932, rev. 1968) Nancy's Mysterious Letter
• #09 (1933, rev. 1968) The Sign of the Twisted Candles
• #10 (1933, rev. 1966) The Password to Larkspur Lane

The Orphans

In digging into the Stratemeyer novels, I discovered that a lot, perhaps the majority, involved orphaned little heroes and heroines or at least motherless children. Thinking about it, I realized that much of children’s literature involves motherless children: Harry Potter, Tarzan, Dorothy of Oz, Little Orphan Annie, Pinocchio, Mowgli, Huck Finn, Scout Finch, Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger's pals, David Copperfield, Philip ‘Pip’ Pirrip, Peter Pan and all the Lost Boys… and that’s not delving into fairy tales– Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and so on.

A simple answer is that no mother would let these kids take on dangerous adventures as portrayed in the stories. But I suspect there’s something more, something deeper. Are young readers supposed to feel fortunate they still have parents? Or are authors toying with vicarious wish fulfillment? I haven’t come upon a satisfactory explanation.

Oddly, some articles blame Disney, but a quick glance at the list above demonstrates the phenomenon long preceded Bambi, Simba, Ariel, Belle, Princess Jasmine, and so on. The Disney brothers simply continued what had long existed.

So what’s the solution to this mystery? Help Nancy Drew solve it with your thoughts.

---

The 2014 Nancy Drew Convention runs 2-8 June in San Diego.

Retirement vs Reinventing Myself

by Elizabeth Zelvin

I've reached the age when those of my friends who have spent the past thirty or forty years pursuing one career--teaching, say, or working for the government--have reached retirement age. Some have to tighten their belts and make lifestyle changes to adjust to no longer drawing a regular paycheck. Others have been wise or lucky (or both) in their investments and have squirreled away enough nuts to do whatever they've always dreamed of doing, whether it's world travel or ziplining fighting for social justice or writing a novel. Some struggle with the challenge of unstructured time. Some sleep in and revel in blissful leisure. Some find they have decades rolling out before them. Others, sadly, have to pour their energy and resources into unexpected health problems.

Meanwhile, I'm as far from retirement as I've ever been. There seems to be no expiration date on what I do, though my life has a way of morphing into something different from year to year. I've reinvented myself several times already, and the recent paradigm shift in our culture, especially in the publishing industry, insures that I'll continue reinventing myself. When my first novel, Death Will Get You Sober, was accepted for publication by a major publisher more than seven years ago, I thought I'd reached the point of settling down. But that's not the way it happened. I now have a body of work as a mystery writer and singer/songwriter that I'm very proud of, along with my earlier work as a poet and mental health professional. In fact, I haven't been waiting for retirement to do the things I've dreamed of. I've been doing them all along. But my latest novel, VOYAGE OF STRANGERS, is a historical novel about what really happened when Columbus discovered America, and that's the beginning of yet another voyage into the unknown, involving research and telling stories that aren't anchored by crime, investigation, and solution.

VOYAGE OF STRANGERS tells a story that includes a number of crimes against humanity: the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the Inquisition, an auto da fe, rape, the genocide of the Taino. And I wrote it out of a passion to set the record straight that equals or exceeds my motivation as a mystery writer.

Each new manifestation of who I am and what I do has in some way built on the choices that I’ve made in the past. Without going into all the ideologies and isms I’ve traveled through, or the lifestyle choices and personal roles, I can say that the overall movement has been from writer to therapist to therapist and writer. Along the way, I got sidetracked into various publishing jobs in the mistaken belief that they would help me be a writer. Similarly, I’ve performed various functions as a social worker and administrator that did not exactly add up to being a therapist. But the heart of what I’ve wanted to do has remained the same.

I once heard writer SJ Rozan say the mystery (or crime fiction in general) is one of the great ur-stories in our culture. It is a story of righting wrongs and seeing justice done, and that is why we want to hear it over and over. If publishers and film and movie makers won’t give us good stories, we (the reading public, the media consumer) will take bad stories, so great is our hunger to see things made better, villains caught, safety restored, unfairness exposed and punished, and everything put back in place. We’d like law and order in real life, but too often we’re offered only a tarnished simulacrum. So we’ll take it however we can get it: in the stories we tell and hear.

Therapy is also about righting wrongs. It can’t enforce the law or get wrongdoers, in most cases, to acknowledge and correct their faults. Therapy doesn’t work that way. But to those hurt by the acts and deficiencies of others, it can provide corrective experiences. Those who’ve been rejected and abandoned can experience unconditional love. Those who have repeatedly chosen abusive partners can learn to select and sustain healthy relationships. Those who have internalized harsh parental criticism can come to accept and nurture themselves. It may not sound like an exact analogy for investigating, discovering whodunit, and putting the culprit in the slammer. But in a way, it’s close.

I’ve found that what I do as a therapist—listening—is a lot like what I do as a writer—being heard. EM Forster’s famous tag, “Only connect,” sums it up for me. In both roles, I am seeking the human connection. I am trying to make contact with another human being, whether it is the client who pours out his or her soul without knowing much about me beyond my capacity for empathy and compassion, or the reader to whom I pour out my own soul and the fruits of my imagination without knowing any more of him or her than their willingness to open my book.

Being a therapist, like being a writer—and a reader—is a way of opening the door to a secret garden. One of the greatest rewards in both is the closeup view I get of other people’s lives. Both legitimate my elephant’s-child curiosity about others’ innermost feelings, passions, and motivations. When I write fiction, I even get to make the other people up, so that I can explore all the possibilities my imagination can reach. At the same time, I make myself vulnerable to every reader who sees my work. That is both scary and exciting. Back in my poetry days, in a poem called “Secrets of the Therapeutic Relationship,” I wrote:

between therapist and client
more tender intimacies are shared
than if we two lay touching on a bed

The same is true of writers and their readers. These connections are profound. They are both pleasurable and innately valuable. They can't be outgrown. Aging, and the wisdom it confers, only improves them. And no Viagra needed.