They say you always remember the first one. That would be a girl named Rachel. She was followed by Carmen and then a few more after her, but I don't remember all the names now. Wasn't really my fault they kept coming back for more. I tried to stop it all with a simple push of a button, but evidently that part of my phone no longer worked because they just kept right on calling, even when I asked to be taken off their phone lists.
Finally, after the last time Rachel called, I hit the phone button labeled with the number 1 and I immediately got put on HOLD. A pleasant female voice, obviously pre-recorded but not by Rachel, informed me I was Caller #22 and thanked me for holding. There was no background music while I waited, but I wasn't worried because I quickly moved up in priority to Caller #17, got thanked again for holding, then jumped to #12, always very polite, and before I knew it I was in single digits and a real person came on the line. Never did figure out what happened to all the numbers I got to skip over. Maybe this was a big business outfit with lots of operators to handle all these important phone calls. My girl Rachel must really be something special to work at this place.
Just as I was ready to actually connect with Rachel on a personal one-to-one basis, some guy who must've been her boyfriend came on the line. I knew it wasn't her brother because this guy had an accent from India. Oh sure, he was pleasant enough and spoke good English, but still, he had that very distinctive accent. I quickly learned he was from Card Member Services and was offering to help me get a lower rate on my credit card. Hey, who wouldn't appreciate paying less money every month to those greedy credit card companies?
Unfortunately, I probably won't be getting that lower rate he offered. Seems I failed to meet his expectations. Not sure where I went wrong. Had to be something I said since he soon asked to speak to my wife so he could explain everything to her.
I will admit things went downhill after I broke out in a laugh, accused him of being a scam artist and informed him (thank you Rob Lopresti) that as long as he was talking with me, this was time he wasn't able to con someone else. He emphatically denied being such a person and then asked for my mother so he could talk to her. Sadly, I explained that he would have to travel to Texas where she was buried. It must have been a bad day at the office or maybe he was merely feeling frustrated with his job, because he moved on to the more colorful aspects of the English language. By now, my wife who was listening from the other room started laughing herself.
He and I continued, with me laughing and having a great time, while he became more colorful with his adjectives. I wonder if the FCC is aware of this type of conduct on our telephone airways? I fear such rough language could offend the ears of some of our more sensitive citizens. As he started to repeat his apparently limited vocabulary, I asked for a phone number so I could call him back. He promptly found some new words he hadn't yet used in our conversation. As the ten minute mark approached, I changed tack and politely inquired if he could hold on to the line for a few more minutes while I got someone to trace the call. The line went quiet. Then it died. Guess that means I may not hear from Rachel again.
But hey, Carmen called again as I was busy writing this, so those girls are still out there. I was sorry I didn't have time to speak with Carmen right then when she called. Wonder if she too has a boyfriend with one of them foreign accents?
The very next day, to my surprise, I got a call from another gentleman with an accent from India. This time, it was direct, without any pre-recorded voice and without being put on HOLD for a Caller Countdown. I quickly determined this caller was not Rachel's boyfriend from the previous day. Nope, this fellow sounded more like the same guy I always get when I call for support on my hail-damaged computer or wandering software. I will say this gentleman was very polite and had great patience with me, even though we had a bad connection (probably not his fault) and a slight problem understanding each other (this could have been my fault). I chalked the latter up to the fact that I was conversing in American English which I understood perfectly, whereas he was speaking some form of India English, no doubt derived from the King's English some decades after India dropped out of the bottom of the British Empire. In any case, there appeared to be a slight language barrier as he had to constantly repeat his directions. I do commend his patience in this trying endeavor. Of course, there is always the possibility that I could be a slow learner and therefore none of the blame should be laid at his doorstep. He was merely attempting to help me out.
He quickly explained that he was from Windows and that hackers may have gotten into my computer. I thanked him profusely for his awareness. He instructed me to go to my computer (several times) where he would then show me if I had a problem. He then inquired (several times) if I were in front of my computer. Next, (several times) I was instructed to sit at my computer. Then, stupid me, I had trouble understanding if I were supposed to be on the internet during this process, or not. We finally determined it was not. Hey, what did I know? I'd never been through this harrowing process before.
Now, I was supposed to hit the Windows key and the "R" key. In case you don't know, this brings up the RUN screen. Next is to type in "event log" at which time he would ask if I saw any error messages. Naturally, the screen will show some errors because sooner or later every computer gets an error message, but this was supposed to prove that my computer had been hacked and infected with a Trojan virus. At which point, the helpful "guy from Windows" would have me type in a certain website to clean out the virus. He was doing such a good job that I hated to disappoint him, so in the interests of congeniality, I said "good one," laughed to show we'd had a good time together and hung up.
Obviously, these two gentlemen from India have not read Rob Lopresti's 950 word short story, "Shanks Holds the Line." Rob mentioned this story in one of his previous blogs, plus editor Linda Landrigan posted the story on AHMM's blog site a few months back.
For more on this scam subject, feel free to Google "Card Member Services" and/or "Windows key and R."
Oh, and if Rachel calls be sure to say hi for me.
Postscript~ I just got a call from Emma. Evidently she is busier than Rachel because I started out at Caller #33 while on Hold. When a live voice, a nice black girl named Ashley with an American accent, came on I inquired why I never got to talk with Rachel or Carmen. She said, "Who?" I explained they were the names on the pre-recorded tapes that called me. I must have confused her because she went into a long rambling explanation before finally hanging up on me.
Oh Rachel, where art thou?
03 October 2014
02 October 2014
Anachronism Revisited
In May of last year I wrote an extensive post on what I deemed "Cosplay in Fiction." In that post I
promised to elaborate further on what constitutes "cosplay" in historical fiction in my next post.
I didn't.
And I'm still mulling how best to elaborate and wrap up that subject in a blog posting to appear in this space in the not-too-distant future.
In the mean-time I intend to explore a tangential line of thought, centering on examples of what works and what doesn't in the historical mystery author's quest to bring believable, engaging historical fiction to the modern reader. And I'm going to spread it out over a number of my upcoming blog posts.
You see, this year I have the great privilege of moderating an historical mystery fiction panel in November, at Bouchercon.
So as I've been turning over in my mind the questions I plan to put to some of the best historical mystery novelists around, my mind rolled back to the post linked above, and the question of anachronism in historical fiction.
And not surprisingly, I've got a few thoughts.
Not least of which is what works and what doesn't when attempting to evoke a certain time period. This is probably one of the most difficult aspects of the historical mystery juggling act: paint a picture of life in another era, likely with characters who speak a language other than English, and still make them seem natural and unaffected, all without diving so deep into period language that the modern reader does not get either lost or completely put off.
No mean feat.
I have some examples of what I think works, and what I think doesn't. And as always, I'm prepared to share.
As I said, I've been giving this sort of thing a lot of thought lately. Partly, as I said above, because of Bouchercon and partly because of my own on-going final pass through a long-percolating historical mystery novel of my own.
Let me state at this point that I have nothing but admiration for anyone who attempts this ludicrous balancing act– whether they fail or succeed. I for one have always found it a formidable challenge, and feel I've failed more times than I've succeeded. (Which is a large part of the reason that the final draft of my current book project is my third complete draft!).
And with that said, let's move on to what works, and what doesn't. This week's entry:
Slang!
I was reading a mystery novel a while back and a fairly innocuous turn of phrase knocked me completely out of the story- you know, that experience that is usually the last thing any author wants to foist upon their audience.
The phrase in question was "Don't get your knickers in a twist."
Now, the author of the book in question is British and, although I'm an American, I'm fairly
Anglophilic, and am comfortable with British slang expressions, so ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem for me.
The problem was two-fold: the setting, and the character speaking. It wasn't set in modern England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland. And the speaker wasn't a citizen of any of those countries.
The character in question was a citizen of ancient Rome, speaking to another citizen of that city, in
that city, circa 80 A.D.
Hello, Anachronism!
Now, I get what the writer in question was trying to do. Trying to portray ancient Romans talking casually with each other, in an intimate, familiar manner. No mean feat, seeing as they spoke Latin and not English.
At the very least wouldn't they have said something like, "Don't get your sublegaria* in a twist"?
I mean, the only way this character could have sounded more out of time would be if he had suggested to his comrade that he "slow your roll"!
The problem for me as a reader at this point was that, while I was and am willing to concede that Romans, like every other variety of human being since the dawn of time, had their own pet slang phrases and humorous sayings, I had a hard time believing that they used this particular one.
Further compounding the problem was the fact that the speech in this novel was so anachronistic that it pulled me right out of the story. And this was just the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the story I kept picturing these ancient Roman characters speaking with cockney accents. At any moment I expected them to break in rhyming slang!
This brought to mind an author who actually gets this sort of thing right. I have raved before about the writing of Philip Kerr, a British author of the Bernie Gunther series of novels, set in Nazi and post-war Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.
For my money Kerr gets Gunther just right: in some ways a morally compromised figure (as many
Germans who survived the first world war and the subsequent years-long party which was Weimar Germany of the 1920s were);former homicide detective and sometimes private investigator who has repeated dealings with the Nazis while never becoming one of them or buying in to what they were selling.
Gunther is truly a man of his time, believing, as many in Germany quietly did, that the Nazis were by turns keystone cops and murderous thugs. And even during his dealings with them he manages to chart a course that leaves him (for the most part) morally clean.
What helps Kerr really sell Gunther and the rest of his cast of period characters as believable avatars of the period in question is his ability to take German slang from that time and translate it into English, without it losing its period flavor.
For example, a pistol is a "lighter." A cigarette is a "nail" (for your coffin, obviously). When asked during a 2009 interview whether these slang words were genuine or of his own invention, Kerr said:
"The slang is not my own invention nor is it anything to do with the police. The words are often more literal translations of real German phrases instead of their English equivalents. It's as simple as that."
With all due respect, the man is being far too modest. It's not as simple as that. While it's true that Nazi Germany is a period of history which has passed down to us a wealth of first person narratives (much of it truly horrifying), the skill herein lies in the choice of these words, knowing which concepts fit into the dialogue without extensive explanation, seamlessly, if you will.
Imagine trying to do that with such freighted concepts as gleichschaltung (the notion of every aspect of a society fitting together and working like cogs in a machine, keeping that society moving and well-run) or the ever-popular schadenfreude (joy experienced as a result of witnessing the suffering of others).
Sometimes it's what you don't try to say that sells your story. The key is in knowing what works, and what doesn't.
Making your Roman citizen sound like a cockney cab driver? Not so much. Having your German detective light up a nail, or take a lighter away from a drunken member of the Hitler Youth? Perfect.
Next time, more of what works, and what doesn't in historical fiction!
 |
| Not THIS kind of cosplay |
I didn't.
And I'm still mulling how best to elaborate and wrap up that subject in a blog posting to appear in this space in the not-too-distant future.
In the mean-time I intend to explore a tangential line of thought, centering on examples of what works and what doesn't in the historical mystery author's quest to bring believable, engaging historical fiction to the modern reader. And I'm going to spread it out over a number of my upcoming blog posts.
You see, this year I have the great privilege of moderating an historical mystery fiction panel in November, at Bouchercon.
So as I've been turning over in my mind the questions I plan to put to some of the best historical mystery novelists around, my mind rolled back to the post linked above, and the question of anachronism in historical fiction.
And not surprisingly, I've got a few thoughts.
 |
| Not THIS type, either |
No mean feat.
 |
| And THIS? Just flat out disturbing.... |
As I said, I've been giving this sort of thing a lot of thought lately. Partly, as I said above, because of Bouchercon and partly because of my own on-going final pass through a long-percolating historical mystery novel of my own.
Let me state at this point that I have nothing but admiration for anyone who attempts this ludicrous balancing act– whether they fail or succeed. I for one have always found it a formidable challenge, and feel I've failed more times than I've succeeded. (Which is a large part of the reason that the final draft of my current book project is my third complete draft!).
And with that said, let's move on to what works, and what doesn't. This week's entry:
Slang!
I was reading a mystery novel a while back and a fairly innocuous turn of phrase knocked me completely out of the story- you know, that experience that is usually the last thing any author wants to foist upon their audience.
The phrase in question was "Don't get your knickers in a twist."
Now, the author of the book in question is British and, although I'm an American, I'm fairly
 |
| Not THIS type of anachronism |
The problem was two-fold: the setting, and the character speaking. It wasn't set in modern England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland. And the speaker wasn't a citizen of any of those countries.
The character in question was a citizen of ancient Rome, speaking to another citizen of that city, in
Hello, Anachronism!
Now, I get what the writer in question was trying to do. Trying to portray ancient Romans talking casually with each other, in an intimate, familiar manner. No mean feat, seeing as they spoke Latin and not English.
At the very least wouldn't they have said something like, "Don't get your sublegaria* in a twist"?
I mean, the only way this character could have sounded more out of time would be if he had suggested to his comrade that he "slow your roll"!
Further compounding the problem was the fact that the speech in this novel was so anachronistic that it pulled me right out of the story. And this was just the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the story I kept picturing these ancient Roman characters speaking with cockney accents. At any moment I expected them to break in rhyming slang!
This brought to mind an author who actually gets this sort of thing right. I have raved before about the writing of Philip Kerr, a British author of the Bernie Gunther series of novels, set in Nazi and post-war Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.
For my money Kerr gets Gunther just right: in some ways a morally compromised figure (as many
Gunther is truly a man of his time, believing, as many in Germany quietly did, that the Nazis were by turns keystone cops and murderous thugs. And even during his dealings with them he manages to chart a course that leaves him (for the most part) morally clean.
What helps Kerr really sell Gunther and the rest of his cast of period characters as believable avatars of the period in question is his ability to take German slang from that time and translate it into English, without it losing its period flavor.
For example, a pistol is a "lighter." A cigarette is a "nail" (for your coffin, obviously). When asked during a 2009 interview whether these slang words were genuine or of his own invention, Kerr said:
With all due respect, the man is being far too modest. It's not as simple as that. While it's true that Nazi Germany is a period of history which has passed down to us a wealth of first person narratives (much of it truly horrifying), the skill herein lies in the choice of these words, knowing which concepts fit into the dialogue without extensive explanation, seamlessly, if you will.
Imagine trying to do that with such freighted concepts as gleichschaltung (the notion of every aspect of a society fitting together and working like cogs in a machine, keeping that society moving and well-run) or the ever-popular schadenfreude (joy experienced as a result of witnessing the suffering of others).
Sometimes it's what you don't try to say that sells your story. The key is in knowing what works, and what doesn't.
Making your Roman citizen sound like a cockney cab driver? Not so much. Having your German detective light up a nail, or take a lighter away from a drunken member of the Hitler Youth? Perfect.
Next time, more of what works, and what doesn't in historical fiction!
01 October 2014
Virgins in the Volcano
Today I saw A Walk Among The Tombstones, the new movie based on one of Lawrence Block's novels about Matt Scudder. It was good, and you should go see it if you don't mind some blood and guts. Block called it "a thriller for grown-ups," and the New York Times called it "intelligent pulp" (I'm working from memory in both cases) which sort of captures it. It's grim, it has lots of suspense, and it doesn't force you to suspend disbelief to the point where you will strain yourself.
If I don't seem to be overflowing with enthusiasm, I guess I'm not. The fact is, I think private eye stories tend to work better on the page than the screen, because of their very investigatory nature. To make that work on the screen the B-level characters need to be deeply interesting. (This one picks up considerably when Scudder's young "associate," T.J. shows up).
But that's not actually my main point. It is almost always a depressing thing to see a movie made from one of your favorite books. Partly because it can't precisely match the film in your head, partly because Hollywood genuinely tends to do horrible things to good books. For example, A Walk Among The Tombstones is Citizen freaking Kane compared to the earlier movie about Matt Scudder, Eight Million Ways To Die (based on a much better novel, in my opinion).
Another example of that philosophy: someone supposedly told James M. Cain it was a shame what Hollywood did to his books. He replied: "They haven't done anything to them. They're right there on the shelf."
Here's my favorite example of what goes wrong between a book and a movie: Gregory MacDonald's award-winning Fletch. The book revolves around two crimes: a businessman who wants to hire someone to kill him, and a drug ring. These separate events have precisely one point in common: the apparent homeless man who the businessman picks to commit the murder is actually an undercover reporter investigating the drug ring.
In the movie, there is a second coincidence (spoiler alert) and it's a doozy: the businessman ALSO happens to be the head of the drug ring! Because in 1980s Hollywood every businessman had to be a crime boss. When I saw that happen in the theatre my eyes rolled so hard I'm surprised they didn't tumble down the aisle. Thank heavens nothing like that happens in A Walk Among The Tombstones.
To end on a more cheerful note, and to give you something to argue with, here is a list of my ten favorite private eye movies. It is possible that after I think about it for a year or two Tombstones might muscle its way in.
The Big Sleep
Chinatown
The Conversation
Farewell My Lovely
Harper
Klute
The Late Show
The Maltese Falcon
Twilight
Vertigo
Put your own alternatives in the comments.
30 September 2014
Fast Eddie
Once upon a time, a man named "Fast Eddie" Watkins could get in and out of banks quickly, relieving them of cash, and usually not harming anyone. He became one of Cleveland's most notorious criminals, and that says a lot in my hometown. Cleveland had the Torso Killer. Its suburbs produced Jeffrey Dahmer while the Tremont neighborhood spawned notorious kidnapper Ariel Castro. A branch of the Genovese crime family ran the underworld for years, and Irish mobster Danny Green met a fiery end when his car exploded leaving a union hall in the late 1970's. So, yeah. The Northcoast has hosted its share of thugs and monsters.
But we always had a soft spot for Fast Eddie. Sure, he robbed banks. But he was a gentleman thief. In and out, and he loved the publicity. The Plain Dealer, The Press (infamous for its shoddy reporting of the Sam Sheppard murder case), and the local TV stations faithfully recounted his exploits. In a city more famous for its burning river and its serial killers, Watkins developed a Robin Hood reputation.
The one time Fast Eddie's robbery didn't go so well, he took 9 hostages. After 21 hours, though, he let everyone go and surrendered. The feds sent him to prison in Atlanta. He escaped, and therein is where Fast Eddie crossed a very young Jim Winter's path.
South of the exurb where I grew up, there is, to this day, a stretch of potato fields called The Muck, a handful of rock quarries, and cornfields all sandwiched between the CSX and Norfolk Southern railroads. We used to ride our bikes out through there, headed for the tiny little freeway burg of Burbank. Only one day, the local police stopped us.
"Why can't we ride out to Burbank?" I asked the Lodi cop at the roadblock.
"We got a bank robber cornered out past the rock quarry."
I went home. At 6:00, WEWS led their news broadcast with the standoff between Fast Eddie Watkins and the Medina County Sheriff. By 7, Fast Eddie was in custody and headed back to prison.
Watkins never hid the fact that he was a bank robber. He said he enjoyed it. "I wanted to be a big shot," he confessed. His illegal withdrawals helped finance his lavish lifestyle. So where did he keep his money?
"I trust banks with my money. They're insured. It's the best place in the world to put your money."
But was it the money? Watkins wife once said no. Mrs. Watkins said that Fast Eddie ogled banks the way most men ogled girls.
But even in prison with his criminal career over, Watkins remained a character. The Cleveland papers occasionally reported that Fast Eddie had taken up painting while behind bars, favoring landscapes.
Fast Eddie died in 2002 at the age of 82 after a long battle with heart and lung disease. Unlike the bank robbers of an earlier era, going out in a blaze of glory wasn't for him.
But we always had a soft spot for Fast Eddie. Sure, he robbed banks. But he was a gentleman thief. In and out, and he loved the publicity. The Plain Dealer, The Press (infamous for its shoddy reporting of the Sam Sheppard murder case), and the local TV stations faithfully recounted his exploits. In a city more famous for its burning river and its serial killers, Watkins developed a Robin Hood reputation.
The one time Fast Eddie's robbery didn't go so well, he took 9 hostages. After 21 hours, though, he let everyone go and surrendered. The feds sent him to prison in Atlanta. He escaped, and therein is where Fast Eddie crossed a very young Jim Winter's path.
South of the exurb where I grew up, there is, to this day, a stretch of potato fields called The Muck, a handful of rock quarries, and cornfields all sandwiched between the CSX and Norfolk Southern railroads. We used to ride our bikes out through there, headed for the tiny little freeway burg of Burbank. Only one day, the local police stopped us.
"Why can't we ride out to Burbank?" I asked the Lodi cop at the roadblock.
"We got a bank robber cornered out past the rock quarry."
I went home. At 6:00, WEWS led their news broadcast with the standoff between Fast Eddie Watkins and the Medina County Sheriff. By 7, Fast Eddie was in custody and headed back to prison.
Watkins never hid the fact that he was a bank robber. He said he enjoyed it. "I wanted to be a big shot," he confessed. His illegal withdrawals helped finance his lavish lifestyle. So where did he keep his money?
"I trust banks with my money. They're insured. It's the best place in the world to put your money."
But was it the money? Watkins wife once said no. Mrs. Watkins said that Fast Eddie ogled banks the way most men ogled girls.
But even in prison with his criminal career over, Watkins remained a character. The Cleveland papers occasionally reported that Fast Eddie had taken up painting while behind bars, favoring landscapes.
Fast Eddie died in 2002 at the age of 82 after a long battle with heart and lung disease. Unlike the bank robbers of an earlier era, going out in a blaze of glory wasn't for him.
29 September 2014
Genre-Jump
Some of you (hopefully most of you) are familiar with my six Callie Parrish cozeysque novels. Fewer people have read my first two books. Aeden's Two Homes is a children's picture book, and Familiar Faces & Curious Characters is a collection of dramatic monologues for intermediate-age drama students. Both are out-of-print, but a new regional publisher has agreed to take a look at them.
What does this have to do with my search for self now that I'm entitled to the senior citizen discount where I shop? I'm changing genres. (Not genders, genres!) I will now reference a few of the many others who have done this:
Lawrence Block - Crime fiction author, including Matt Scudder novels and the Bernie Rhodenbarr novels. Quite successful in this genre, but back in the '60s and '70s, he wrote more than a hundred books of soft-core erotica, including seven "sensitive evocations of lesbianism" written as Jill Emerson.
Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (aka Willie Wonka), Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The BFG (Stephen Spielberg is filming this favorite of mine for release in 2015.) are examples of his fantastically successful children's books. "Lamb to the Slaughter" (woman beats her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, then cooks the murder weapon and serves it to the policemen who investigate the killing) is an example of his classic crime stories. Macabre stories in Kiss, Kiss and salacious ones in Switch Bitch and the novel My Uncle Oswald (about "the greatest fornicator of all time") illustrate Dahl's versatility and comfort in many genres.
Ian Fleming - Author of both the James Bond spy series and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - nothing else needs to be said.
Stephen King - Best known as a writer of horror and sci fi, King's recognition as MWA's Grandmaster in 2007 was based on his crime fiction, including "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and The Green Mile.
Philip Roth - Portnoy's Complaint and two dozen other literary novels won him numerous awards. In 2004, he took his first stab at the branch of sci fi called "alternate history," about the fictional results of anti-Semitic American hero Charles Lindbergh being elected president.
E.B. White - Successful and memorable for an unusual combination: Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, both widely beloved children's books, and the classic reference work on the subject of clear writing - The Elements of Style. Written by William Strunk, Jr., one of White's college professors, this style guide was edited and revised by White. His publisher released it as by "Strunk and White." E.B. White is as well known for this handbook of grammar and style as he is for that spider and pig.
Please note that I listed these gentlemen in alphabetical order. (I promise I'm not compulsive, but I tend to alphabetize all lists except for groceries. I think it's my way of not showing favoritism as well as a hold-over from my days in the classroom.) I am not comparing myself or my writing to any of those writers, but they do demonstrate that authors aren't limited to one genre, and I am using them as an introduction to my own genre-jump.
Joanne Fluke, author of more than twenty highly successful Hannah Swenson cozy mysteries about a lady baker, has had five suspense novels released by her publisher, which happens to be Kensington. I've long admired Ms. Fluke as having reached my idea of the height of accomplishment. Though I've had the pleasure of book talks, readings, and signings in Borders, BAM, B&N, and Indies as well as libraries and book clubs, Callie never achieved my goal. Those Hannah Swenson books get displayed right there on the book racks I yearn to occupy: Publix and BiLo.
When I bought Fluke's The Other Child, I found "A Letter from Joanne Fluke" explaining her venture into this new genre on the very first page. (My apologies for putting that heading in quotes but not printing it exactly as it is in the book: All caps.) At the risk of being called a copy cat (I've been called worse), I borrowed that idea, and the very first page of my soon-to-be-released new book appears below:
A Note from Fran Rizer
A very
special thanks to all the readers of my previous books, the Callie
Parrish mysteries, which are cozyesque---not quite cozies, but no overt sex,
profanity, or described brutality. For
this reason, Callie has had some youthful readers, whom I appreciate.
KUDZU RIVER is different.
It’s a much grittier book about three women whose
lives become entangled as a serial killer leaves a trail of murdered teachers
up and down the coast of South Carolina.
At times the writing goes beyond gritty to raw. It is not meant for
children. This is a tale that could not
be told in cozy style, but it’s a story that I feel compelled to share.
I cannot think of better words to describe the
differences between Callie’s books and
KUDZU RIVER than these:
KUDZU RIVER is to cozies what a great white shark
is to a guppy.
-------Richard
D. Laudenslager
Author of Wounded
I'll be back in two weeks and tell you more about KUDZU RIVER. Meanwhile, if you have the time and are interested in reading and reviewing this for SSers, email me.
Until we meet again, take care of … you.
28 September 2014
I Learn Something New
In these postmodern times of information overload, I find it almost impossible to discover anything new under the sun because everything is moving so fast in cyberspace that I don’t have time to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. One part of my brain urges me to pause and read information on a webpage. Another part whispers, “Click that link and you just might discover exciting new information about a subject that interests you.” That is how I stopped and read about the new way young people are using the slash (/) in conversation and on the Internet.
The use of the slash dates back to ancient Rome. In the Middle Ages in Europe one / represented a comma, two // represented a dash, which evolved into the equals sign and was eventually simplified as a single dash (— ). In English prose, the slash is usually used as a conjunction. Of course, it is used in other ways too, such as in poems to show a line break. It also has many nonlinguistic uses.
As with many other punctuation marks in this cyberage, the slash is now used somewhat differently. I discovered the new use in the article, “The One Word In Everyone’s Texts/Conversations Right Now” by Sara Boboltz on the Huffington Post website. The slash, she says, is being used in texts, instant messages, emails, and face to face conversations.
Boboltz links to the article “Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore” in The Chronicle of Higher Education of April 24, 2013, by Anne Curzan, professor of English at the University of Michigan. Professor Curzon requires the students in her history of English course to teach her two new slang words before class every day. In one class, a student mentioned “slash.” The slash is used as a conjunction, and slang doesn’t often create a conjunction. Instead of using the symbol /, the students used the word “slash” in their writings on Facebook, blogs, and Tweets as a conjunction. The students also used “slash” to mean “following up” and to indicate an after thought or topic shift.
It seems only the forward slash is currently used. I wonder how in the future the kids will use the backward slash. Maybe they’re already using it, and I just haven’t stumbled across an example.
I imagine that at this very moment a graduate student is trying to earn his slash her degree studying the use of language on the Internet, and calling the study “netdialectology.” Maybe he slash she will come up with a name for this new way of speaking and writing that is evolving on the web.
My candidates are netspeak, webspeak, cyberspeak, or nettalk, webtalk, cybertalk.
What are your thoughts on what we should call the language used on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites?
27 September 2014
You Know You're a Writer When...
Recently, I read something that got me thinking. (Okay, have your little laugh. I can wait.)
The quote was:
“A writer who isn’t writing is a monster.”
At first, I wasn’t sure if that meant a writer who wasn’t writing right now and every minute was a monster. Or whether it meant a writer who was prevented from writing was a monster.
For the sake of all concerned (at least in this house,) I’m goin’ for the latter.
Which brings me to this little list. If you are a writer, tick off the ones that apply to you and leave a comment below with the goods. Or better still, add your own. If you are not a writer, stand back.
You know you’re an author when:
1. You’d rather spend time with your characters than your friends.
2. You’ve been at the computer all day and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish seem like a major food group.
3. Your spouse yells “Are you all right in there,” and you’re pretty sure you’ve heard that voice before. Somewhere.
4. Your idea of a vacation means hours and hours of time to write. And nobody bugging you to “do something fun.”
5. You reach for Glenlivit when the internet goes down.
6. You could be arrested if the Feds look at your search history.
7. You actually know the difference between less and fewer. And consider it a hanging offense when people misuse them.
8. You have been known to ignore phone calls from your mom, kids, husband, boss, and possibly God.
9. Your idea of supreme hell is being trapped at a cocktail party for three hours with people who aren’t writers.
10. You have seriously considered murdering people who say, “I have this great idea for a book, and if you’ll write it, I’ll share the profits with you.” And the ones who say, “I think I’ll write a book someday when I get more time.” And the ones who say, “Of course, it’s just a mystery/fantasy/romance genre book you’ve written. When are you going to write something important?”
Excuse me now. I have a lot of people to murder, and I’m behind.
Melodie Campbell murders people regularly in her zany mob crime series, The Goddaughter. She lurks at www.melodiecampbell.com
The quote was:
“A writer who isn’t writing is a monster.”
At first, I wasn’t sure if that meant a writer who wasn’t writing right now and every minute was a monster. Or whether it meant a writer who was prevented from writing was a monster.
For the sake of all concerned (at least in this house,) I’m goin’ for the latter.
Which brings me to this little list. If you are a writer, tick off the ones that apply to you and leave a comment below with the goods. Or better still, add your own. If you are not a writer, stand back.
You know you’re an author when:
1. You’d rather spend time with your characters than your friends.
2. You’ve been at the computer all day and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish seem like a major food group.
3. Your spouse yells “Are you all right in there,” and you’re pretty sure you’ve heard that voice before. Somewhere.
4. Your idea of a vacation means hours and hours of time to write. And nobody bugging you to “do something fun.”
5. You reach for Glenlivit when the internet goes down.
6. You could be arrested if the Feds look at your search history.
7. You actually know the difference between less and fewer. And consider it a hanging offense when people misuse them.
8. You have been known to ignore phone calls from your mom, kids, husband, boss, and possibly God.
9. Your idea of supreme hell is being trapped at a cocktail party for three hours with people who aren’t writers.
10. You have seriously considered murdering people who say, “I have this great idea for a book, and if you’ll write it, I’ll share the profits with you.” And the ones who say, “I think I’ll write a book someday when I get more time.” And the ones who say, “Of course, it’s just a mystery/fantasy/romance genre book you’ve written. When are you going to write something important?”
Excuse me now. I have a lot of people to murder, and I’m behind.
Melodie Campbell murders people regularly in her zany mob crime series, The Goddaughter. She lurks at www.melodiecampbell.com
26 September 2014
Some Details: Fast-Rope vs. Rappel
David Dean's excellent blog post, which provided important details for those writing about Catholic characters, put me in mind of some other information you might find useful. And, naturally, given my background, these details tend to be military in nature. But, I see a lot of military techniques used in cop shows, and sometimes evidently by real police, these days. So I thought you might have seen some of these techniques, too, and that this info might interest you -- as mystery writers.
There are many places where a helicopter can't land, but people need to get off the helicopter and onto the ground below. Thick jungles or forests are such locations, but there are others you might not have considered. Think of the roofs of high-rise office buildings: they are often festooned with antennae that prevent a helicopter from landing. Yet, a helicopter -- if properly equipped -- can put people onto that roof, or take them off.
When helicopters can't touch down, but need to offload personnel, two options are fast-roping and rappelling. Fast-roping is faster than rappelling, but I've seen fictional law enforcement units using both methods on TV and in movies, so I'll cover both here.
Viewed from a distance, Rappelling and Fast-Roping from helicopters can look very similar.
In both cases, people slide down ropes that hang out of helicopters.
But the person rappelling is usually attached to the rope by a D-ring or snap-link, while a fast-roper is only attached by hands and feet.
The ropes used by these two operations are quite different -- because they serve very different needs.
("Fast-Rope" can evidently be spelled with or without a hyphen, and even sometimes as a single word.) A fast-rope, itself, is a thick hawser-type rope about 1.5 to 2 inches thick. The ropes are pretty long -- 35 feet and 40 feet, I seem to recall. With a few that were about 60 or 70 feet. The number "78 feet" sticks in my mind as the greatest distance one can safely fast-rope -- though I may be wrong.
The rope needs to be thick, because the fast-roper needs something to hang onto. As I mentioned above, the fast-roper isn't tied or snapped to the rope. Instead, s/he gets down from the helicopter to the ground by grabbing the rope in gloved hands, and between boots, then sliding down the rope as if it's a firehouse pole.
Fast-roping is a quick way to empty a helicopter that can't land, because several people can slide down each rope at the same time. Hence the name "Fast-Rope": a rope used to empty a chopper fast.
On my old A-Team, we usually rode UH-60 or MH-60 Blackhawks (seen above) when we fast-roped, and would use two ropes to exit the aircraft: one per door. As we neared the objective, helicopter crewmen would prepare to deploy the fast-ropes, while we gathered in two groups, one around each rope, where it hooked to the chopper.
Everybody would grab the rope, in a specified well-rehearsed order -- the top of each man's hands touching the bottom of the hands of the man holding the rope above him -- ensuring no one's hands overlapped anyone else's.
When we hit the objective, the crewman dropped the rope coil out the door and leaned out to be sure the far end was dragging on the ground as the chopper moved slowly forward.
Simultaneously, our "doorman" would do the same thing with a quick glance (to ensure he didn't slide down the rope, only to plunge off the end.) Then he would swing out and jump his feet onto the rope, sliding down.
As the doorman went out, the man beside him rotated around and dropped down the rope, followed by the next guy, and the next. In this manner all twelve of us could descend the two fast-ropes, with our equipment, and be "weapons-up" in a matter of seconds. Due to the chopper's forward movement, we'd hit the ground about 2 or 3 meters apart.
The ticket with a fast-rope is that the friction generated between your gloved hands, and your boots, on the rope, slows you down enough that you don't get killed or injured by the drop. And that's A LOT of friction! I saw a buddy of mine, who tried to fast-rope without gloves one time. His palms and fingers looked like hamburger: horrifically blistered, torn and bleeding. He had to wear serious bandages for about two weeks. (To his credit, he fast-roped, wearing the bandages under his gloves, during those two weeks -- because it was VERY important. But it hurt him like heck, every time!)
On the web, I've seen photos posted by knuckleheads who prided themselves on letting go of the rope as they descended, only to grab it again later, to slow their descent. However, I strongly urge you not to let any fictional law enforcement personnel practice this foolish "showboating" in a story.
The fact is: the folks in those online pics are just Good-Time Charlies; they aren't carrying any equipment. If they had been, and they'd let go of the rope -- even for just a moment -- they'd have been toast.
If you look closely, you'll see that the folks in the pics in this post aren't carrying any equipment either. Clearly, these are training photos, though I never did any fast-rope training in which I didn't wear at least my load-bearing equipment and weapons.
When I did this work, the U.S. Army did not officially permit anyone to fast-rope while carrying more than 35 lbs. of equipment. However, 35 lbs. was just about the low-end weight of our load-bearing equipment, weapons and basic combat ammo load in SF. When we added rucks, we could fast-rope with up to 50 or 60 lbs., but that really is about the top-end limit for safety.
I can think of a specific instance when 7th SF Group had us practice fast-roping with heavier loads, such as 75 or 80 lbs., and even more. They did this for very good reasons, hoping we could find a way to fast-rope with heavier loads, by doing a good PLF (Parachute Landing Fall) when we hit the ground, to minimize the impact. That much weight, however, resulted in quite a few injuries, which was how we came up with the 50 or 60 lbs. total equipment weight limit. And, the fast-roper carrying that much, had better do a good PLF on impact with the ground.
The sad fact is: You can parachute while wearing a 110 lbs. rucksack (I've done it -- A LOT. It hurts, but it works. Trust me.), but you can't fast-rope with more than 50 or 60 pounds of gear strapped to your body. Well . . . you can, if you want . . . but the odds that you'll be in fighting shape after hitting the ground are pitifully low.
Which brings us to Rappelling.
Rappelling is probably more familiar to you than fast-roping. Even if you haven't practiced it, you've seen it in countless mountain climbing or adventure films, such as The Eiger Sanction. Both fellows in these two photos are practicing standard repelling: off a wall (left) and out of a helicopter (right).
In both cases, they're wearing very nice high-speed "Swiss seats" or "Harnesses" similar to the one seen to the left. The "rappeller" hooks a snap-link to the D-ring on his seat, and runs the rope through the snap-link so that it wraps around it but can still slide through. In some cases, s/he may run the rope through the D-ring, itself, though this isn't necessarily recommended.
Though this type of harness is nice, it's not necessary for rappelling. Frankly, I always had to use a rope "Swiss seat" similar to the one in the drawing on the right.
To create this Swiss seat, you take a rope about five or six feet long, hold the center at your waistline below your navel and wrap the ends around your back to bring the ropes front again. Then, you wrap the ends once around the rope, just forward of your thighs, and tuck the ends under the rope, bringing the running ends down between your legs and running them back up across the rump cheeks to come back up between your body and the rope around your back.
Now, squat down while you pull up on the two ends of the rope, tightening everything you just did. (Men must take particular care at this point, to ensure the ropes do not cross each other, or the crotch area!) Once your seat is tight, stand, while holding the ropes good and tight, then tie the ends together in a square knot (see pic). The drawing shows the square knot tied below the navel, however I was taught to tie it off on my "off-hand" side. (i.e.: Since I'm right handed, and hold my rappel line with my right hand as "brake hand," this brings the rappel line around my right side. Thus, I "tie-off" my Swiss seat -- with the square knot -- on my left, to keep it out of the way of the rappel line when I'm rappelling.)
It's also possible to do a "Body Rappel" by passing the main rappelling line under one thigh and across the body and back, but I don't want to get into that because:
Some readers may have seen rappelling, but might not completely understand how it works. So let's discuss it a moment.
.jpg)
Take a look at that the pic of the guy rappelling off the wall again (right). His left hand, on the rope in front of his body, is his "guide hand." The guide hand doesn't really grasp the rope; it just lets the rope run through it, in order to guide the manner in which it enters the snap-link or D-ring. This hand has little to no impact on the speed of descent.
His right hand, which is thrown out away from his body, is his "brake hand." In this photo, he's in mid-drop: the rope is running freely through both his hands. He bounded out from the wall when he threw off his brake hand, which is why his feet aren't touching the wall. He's currently falling down the rope.
In this photo (left) you can see how the rappeller is completely suspended by the rope pulling up on his snap link. Note the trailing rope that wraps around the right side of his body (left side of photo), and that his right hand is behind his back.
This guy has stopped, or slowed, his descent by moving his brake hand tightly up to the small of his back. This action causes the friction of the rope around his waist, and the rope trapped against his back by his tightly grasped right hand, to overcome the inertia of his fall, slowing or completely stopping his descent.
When going down a wall, a person can walk, but more commonly they "bound" -- jumping out from the wall as they release their brake hands, zipping down the line, then moving the brake hand to the small of the back and swinging up the feet to meet the wall when they want to stop.
The person in the foreground (pic on right) is the "belay man." His (or her) job is to watch the person rappelling, and stop their fall if that person seems to suddenly lose control. Belaying is accomplished by grabbing the rope in two gloved hands and running backward to put tension on it. This tension binds up the rope, where it passes through the snap-link and around the body, and thus breaks the fall.
Rappelling off a wall is just like rappelling out of a helicopter except:
There are other types of rappelling.
The person on the left is performing an "Australian Rappel." In this case, instead of creating a Swiss seat, that five or six foot section of rope is simply wrapped twice about the waist, and the snap link is attached in the center of the small of the back.
This person is using his right hand as brake hand, and he's got it raised as if about to put on the brakes. You brake, in an "Aussie" by raising your brake hand tightly to your chest.
On the right, is a person practicing the Australian Rappel on the "free side" of the wall, where there is no wall beneath the platform you jump off of. This is how you practice performing an Aussie from a chopper, when no helicopters are available for training.
As you can see, he's just jumped off the wall, brake hand held out to zip down the line until he decides to brake his plummet.
Note, from the photos above, that the Australian leaves the rappeller with a free hand that's not doing anything.
In this photo on the left, of South Korean police in action, you see that these guys are using the Aussie to bound/run down the wall of this high-rise, while holding weapons at the ready. The Aussie also permits them to look where they're going, so they can engage any bad guys who poke their heads out, if needed. The shield held by the man on the right side of the photo tells me this is probably a breaching team. They plan to breach a window or door below, in order to enter the building from an unexpected direction -- preferably directly into the room occupied by the bad guys.
Rappelling can put good guys where the bad guys don't expect them to show up!I hope you found this useful.
There are many places where a helicopter can't land, but people need to get off the helicopter and onto the ground below. Thick jungles or forests are such locations, but there are others you might not have considered. Think of the roofs of high-rise office buildings: they are often festooned with antennae that prevent a helicopter from landing. Yet, a helicopter -- if properly equipped -- can put people onto that roof, or take them off.
When helicopters can't touch down, but need to offload personnel, two options are fast-roping and rappelling. Fast-roping is faster than rappelling, but I've seen fictional law enforcement units using both methods on TV and in movies, so I'll cover both here.
 |
| FAST ROPE OPERATION Note the number of men sliding down each rope at the same time. UH-60 Helicopter. |
 |
| HELICOPTER RAPPEL OPERATION Note that there is only man per rope at any given time. UH-60 Helicopter. |
In both cases, people slide down ropes that hang out of helicopters.
But the person rappelling is usually attached to the rope by a D-ring or snap-link, while a fast-roper is only attached by hands and feet.
 |
| A coiled Fast-Rope: The eye-splice at photo bottom is used to tie-into the aircraft. |
("Fast-Rope" can evidently be spelled with or without a hyphen, and even sometimes as a single word.) A fast-rope, itself, is a thick hawser-type rope about 1.5 to 2 inches thick. The ropes are pretty long -- 35 feet and 40 feet, I seem to recall. With a few that were about 60 or 70 feet. The number "78 feet" sticks in my mind as the greatest distance one can safely fast-rope -- though I may be wrong.
The rope needs to be thick, because the fast-roper needs something to hang onto. As I mentioned above, the fast-roper isn't tied or snapped to the rope. Instead, s/he gets down from the helicopter to the ground by grabbing the rope in gloved hands, and between boots, then sliding down the rope as if it's a firehouse pole.
 |
| Fast-roping uses a thick rope that the roper slides down, similar to sliding down a firehouse pole. |
Fast-roping is a quick way to empty a helicopter that can't land, because several people can slide down each rope at the same time. Hence the name "Fast-Rope": a rope used to empty a chopper fast.
 |
| These fast-ropers are much better spaced (closer) than the folks in the upper left pic. Going out closer means you get more folks on the ground faster. |
Everybody would grab the rope, in a specified well-rehearsed order -- the top of each man's hands touching the bottom of the hands of the man holding the rope above him -- ensuring no one's hands overlapped anyone else's.
When we hit the objective, the crewman dropped the rope coil out the door and leaned out to be sure the far end was dragging on the ground as the chopper moved slowly forward.
Simultaneously, our "doorman" would do the same thing with a quick glance (to ensure he didn't slide down the rope, only to plunge off the end.) Then he would swing out and jump his feet onto the rope, sliding down.
As the doorman went out, the man beside him rotated around and dropped down the rope, followed by the next guy, and the next. In this manner all twelve of us could descend the two fast-ropes, with our equipment, and be "weapons-up" in a matter of seconds. Due to the chopper's forward movement, we'd hit the ground about 2 or 3 meters apart.
The ticket with a fast-rope is that the friction generated between your gloved hands, and your boots, on the rope, slows you down enough that you don't get killed or injured by the drop. And that's A LOT of friction! I saw a buddy of mine, who tried to fast-rope without gloves one time. His palms and fingers looked like hamburger: horrifically blistered, torn and bleeding. He had to wear serious bandages for about two weeks. (To his credit, he fast-roped, wearing the bandages under his gloves, during those two weeks -- because it was VERY important. But it hurt him like heck, every time!)
On the web, I've seen photos posted by knuckleheads who prided themselves on letting go of the rope as they descended, only to grab it again later, to slow their descent. However, I strongly urge you not to let any fictional law enforcement personnel practice this foolish "showboating" in a story.
The fact is: the folks in those online pics are just Good-Time Charlies; they aren't carrying any equipment. If they had been, and they'd let go of the rope -- even for just a moment -- they'd have been toast.
If you look closely, you'll see that the folks in the pics in this post aren't carrying any equipment either. Clearly, these are training photos, though I never did any fast-rope training in which I didn't wear at least my load-bearing equipment and weapons.
When I did this work, the U.S. Army did not officially permit anyone to fast-rope while carrying more than 35 lbs. of equipment. However, 35 lbs. was just about the low-end weight of our load-bearing equipment, weapons and basic combat ammo load in SF. When we added rucks, we could fast-rope with up to 50 or 60 lbs., but that really is about the top-end limit for safety.
I can think of a specific instance when 7th SF Group had us practice fast-roping with heavier loads, such as 75 or 80 lbs., and even more. They did this for very good reasons, hoping we could find a way to fast-rope with heavier loads, by doing a good PLF (Parachute Landing Fall) when we hit the ground, to minimize the impact. That much weight, however, resulted in quite a few injuries, which was how we came up with the 50 or 60 lbs. total equipment weight limit. And, the fast-roper carrying that much, had better do a good PLF on impact with the ground.
The sad fact is: You can parachute while wearing a 110 lbs. rucksack (I've done it -- A LOT. It hurts, but it works. Trust me.), but you can't fast-rope with more than 50 or 60 pounds of gear strapped to your body. Well . . . you can, if you want . . . but the odds that you'll be in fighting shape after hitting the ground are pitifully low.
 |
| Common rappelling ropes. |
Which brings us to Rappelling.
 |
| This guy has his brake hand on (right hand). He's waiting for permission to go. |
.jpg) |
| This person is in mid-rappel. |
 |
| High-speed "Swiss Seat" or "Harness" |
In both cases, they're wearing very nice high-speed "Swiss seats" or "Harnesses" similar to the one seen to the left. The "rappeller" hooks a snap-link to the D-ring on his seat, and runs the rope through the snap-link so that it wraps around it but can still slide through. In some cases, s/he may run the rope through the D-ring, itself, though this isn't necessarily recommended.
Though this type of harness is nice, it's not necessary for rappelling. Frankly, I always had to use a rope "Swiss seat" similar to the one in the drawing on the right. To create this Swiss seat, you take a rope about five or six feet long, hold the center at your waistline below your navel and wrap the ends around your back to bring the ropes front again. Then, you wrap the ends once around the rope, just forward of your thighs, and tuck the ends under the rope, bringing the running ends down between your legs and running them back up across the rump cheeks to come back up between your body and the rope around your back.
Now, squat down while you pull up on the two ends of the rope, tightening everything you just did. (Men must take particular care at this point, to ensure the ropes do not cross each other, or the crotch area!) Once your seat is tight, stand, while holding the ropes good and tight, then tie the ends together in a square knot (see pic). The drawing shows the square knot tied below the navel, however I was taught to tie it off on my "off-hand" side. (i.e.: Since I'm right handed, and hold my rappel line with my right hand as "brake hand," this brings the rappel line around my right side. Thus, I "tie-off" my Swiss seat -- with the square knot -- on my left, to keep it out of the way of the rappel line when I'm rappelling.)
It's also possible to do a "Body Rappel" by passing the main rappelling line under one thigh and across the body and back, but I don't want to get into that because:
- It's too easy to describe it in a way that might put a practitioner in danger.
- Frankly, I find it quite uncomfortable, and would only employ the body rappel in an emergency.
- To get a look at roughly how it's done (for story-writing purposes) you're probably better off watching the 1986 horror movie House, in which the main character uses a body rappel method at one point, and you can see how it might work.
Some readers may have seen rappelling, but might not completely understand how it works. So let's discuss it a moment.
Take a look at that the pic of the guy rappelling off the wall again (right). His left hand, on the rope in front of his body, is his "guide hand." The guide hand doesn't really grasp the rope; it just lets the rope run through it, in order to guide the manner in which it enters the snap-link or D-ring. This hand has little to no impact on the speed of descent. His right hand, which is thrown out away from his body, is his "brake hand." In this photo, he's in mid-drop: the rope is running freely through both his hands. He bounded out from the wall when he threw off his brake hand, which is why his feet aren't touching the wall. He's currently falling down the rope.
In this photo (left) you can see how the rappeller is completely suspended by the rope pulling up on his snap link. Note the trailing rope that wraps around the right side of his body (left side of photo), and that his right hand is behind his back. This guy has stopped, or slowed, his descent by moving his brake hand tightly up to the small of his back. This action causes the friction of the rope around his waist, and the rope trapped against his back by his tightly grasped right hand, to overcome the inertia of his fall, slowing or completely stopping his descent.
When going down a wall, a person can walk, but more commonly they "bound" -- jumping out from the wall as they release their brake hands, zipping down the line, then moving the brake hand to the small of the back and swinging up the feet to meet the wall when they want to stop.
The person in the foreground (pic on right) is the "belay man." His (or her) job is to watch the person rappelling, and stop their fall if that person seems to suddenly lose control. Belaying is accomplished by grabbing the rope in two gloved hands and running backward to put tension on it. This tension binds up the rope, where it passes through the snap-link and around the body, and thus breaks the fall.
Rappelling off a wall is just like rappelling out of a helicopter except:
- There is no wall to push off of.
- Helicopter rotor wash -- the wind of the rotors pushing down -- will push the rappeller more quickly down the rope, making it harder to stop.
In either case, once the person rappelling hits the ground, s/he must run backward until the rope comes completely out of the snap link (or simply open the snap link and pull out the rope!) in order to get off the rope.
Now, recall that "Belay Man"? The reason you can't easily send more than one person down a rappelling rope at once, is that the weight of the person rappelling below would act as a belay, stopping or majorly hindering anyone trying to follow. This is one major reason why fast-roping is faster than rappelling, when it comes to emptying choppers.
There are other types of rappelling.The person on the left is performing an "Australian Rappel." In this case, instead of creating a Swiss seat, that five or six foot section of rope is simply wrapped twice about the waist, and the snap link is attached in the center of the small of the back.
This person is using his right hand as brake hand, and he's got it raised as if about to put on the brakes. You brake, in an "Aussie" by raising your brake hand tightly to your chest.
On the right, is a person practicing the Australian Rappel on the "free side" of the wall, where there is no wall beneath the platform you jump off of. This is how you practice performing an Aussie from a chopper, when no helicopters are available for training.
As you can see, he's just jumped off the wall, brake hand held out to zip down the line until he decides to brake his plummet.
In this photo on the left, of South Korean police in action, you see that these guys are using the Aussie to bound/run down the wall of this high-rise, while holding weapons at the ready. The Aussie also permits them to look where they're going, so they can engage any bad guys who poke their heads out, if needed. The shield held by the man on the right side of the photo tells me this is probably a breaching team. They plan to breach a window or door below, in order to enter the building from an unexpected direction -- preferably directly into the room occupied by the bad guys.
Rappelling can put good guys where the bad guys don't expect them to show up!I hope you found this useful.
I hope you found this useful.
See you in two weeks!
--Dixon
25 September 2014
The Minister and the Choir Singer
This summer, among other things, I read Sarah Churchwell's "Careless People: Murder and the Making of The Great Gatsby". Very well written, very well researched. Churchwell says that The Great Gatsby was influenced, and borrowed from, the Hall-Mills murder case, which captured everyone's imagination from Damon Runyan (who was one of the reporters on the spot) to James Thurber ("A Sort of Genius") to William Kunstler ("The Minister and the Choir Singer"). The case was never solved, for a variety of reasons ranging from incomprehensibly bad police work to, as David Gates put it a while back, "a lack of any practical forensic approach", to the wholesale swamping of any reason or fact by a media storm that most people don't think existed until O. J. Simpson. |
| Eleanor Mills |
It was obvious they'd been shot, but the investigation was... unbelievable. According to Churchwell, the first doctor to look at Mrs. Mills body didn't even do an autopsy, since it was obvious she was dead by foul play; and it took two more autopsies to discover that Mrs. Mills had been shot three times, her throat cut, and her tongue cut out. There was no police cordoning of the area, and, as publicity blazed ("Priest and choir singer slaughtered in New Jersey!"), people came and went freely. It became such a tourist destination that, by the time of the 1926 trial, the crab-apple tree was entirely gone, hacked away by souvenir hunters.
 |
| Frances Noel Stevens |
The prosecution's key witness was Jane Gibson, a pig farmer on whose property the bodies were discovered. She would be known throughout the next few years as The Pig Woman. Because she was poor, uneducated, and highly "colorful", people quickly took sides regarding her story: she was either the bearer of ultimate truth or a crazy woman trying to get attention and money. Her first story was that her dog got her up and out around 9 on the night of the murder. She saw a man standing in her cornfield, so she got on her mule and rode towards him. As she got close, she saw four people by the crab apple tree. Then she heard gunshots, and one fell to the ground. She heard a woman scream, "Don’t", repeated three times. She said she turned her mule in the opposite direction, heard more gunshots and when she looked back, saw a second person fall and heard a woman shout "Henry".
Over time she saw more people; she saw fewer people; she heard more sounds; she saw a black man; she didn't see a black man. At the trial, she was a great sensation, rolled in on a hospital bed to give her testimony.
The trouble was, there was no proof, no evidence, and even if Mrs. Hall had arranged and/or participated in the murders, her husband was an adulterous pastor. The Hall/Stevens family were all acquitted, even though most historians and students of the case believe that they were guilty. (William Kunstler was the exception: he posited that the KKK committed the murders. Most people disagree.)But the case captured the imagination of the day, especially since it was never solved. It held primacy in the public imagination until the tragic Lindbergh kidnapping of 1932.
Churchwell links this murder to The Great Gatsby, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, everyone was talking about it during the time F. Scott Fitzgerald was actually living in Great Neck ("East Egg" in the book). The novel takes place in 1922, the year of the crime. And there are patterns throughout: Hall gave Mills a novel - Simon Called Peter - (racy for the 1920s) that Fitzgerald has Nick Carraway read while Tom Buchanan and his mistress, Myrtle, romp in the back bedroom. Myrtle and George Wilson are supposedly based on Eleanor and James Mills. George was a mechanic, James a janitor. Tom Buchanan describes George in the novel as "so dumb he doesn't know he's alive", and one of the reasons James Mills was never a credible suspect is that he first appeared to be so dumb he didn't know his wife was having an affair, and he didn't have the "manliness", apparently, to do something about it. Meanwhile, Myrtle and Eleanor were both sleeping above their station, desperate for another life, away from their boring, working-class husbands.
I don't know if Churchwell is right in all her surmises, but it's a fascinating case, and a great book. Start off slow: read Thurber's essay and/or Gatsby to whet your appetite; then go to Churchwell and discover the whole cast of characters. And let me know who you think did it.
(NOTE: I am, hopefully, in Quebec. See you in a week…)
24 September 2014
Lee Child's Personal
by David Edgerley Gates
PERSONAL is the nineteenth Jack Reacher book in the series, and Lee Child doesn't need my help to sell it. It opened at #1 on most national lists the first week it was out, and week two, it's still there.
This post isn't about promoting the book, which happens to be a knockout - Lee certainly hasn't lost his chops, and Jack keeps getting deeper as a character - but about P.O.V.
PERSONAL is told, appropriately, in first-person. This isn't a departure for the Reacher books, but more commonly, they've been told in the third. In other words, Jack is observed, and doesn't share his confidences. This is true of thirteen books, so far. It's interesting to me why you'd decide to shift gears. Lee uses the first-person in KILLING FLOOR, PERSUADER, THE ENEMY, GONE TOMORROW, THE AFFAIR, and this book. Oh, you might think, work with the change-up pitch to keep yourself on your toes and avoid getting stale, or to keep your readers invested, over the course of a long and successful run of novels, but it seems to me there's a more calculated narrative choice involved.
Reacher's never been entirely generic - unlike, say, Travis McGee. John MacDonald, famously, never wanted to do a series character, but he got talked into it. McGee has his quirks, but he remains a flat character, until you get to THE GREEN RIPPER, and he steps outside of himself, the formula no longer able to contain him. The dynamic for Reacher, even at the beginning, allows for more expansion and contraction. Lee Child himself has said that he meant from the get-go to write books that would be accessible, and commercial, and that Reacher was a conscious construct, designed - not market-researched, but a means to an end.
He turns out to be more. This is something that happens, and not always by accident. There are other examples. We might start out to write one story, and then find it gets away from us, or a walk-on part suddenly takes center stage, and completely unexpected. But in Reacher's case, Lee Child might have intended a sort of empty vessel, a hero you could inhabit with your own devices and desires, and what he wound up with was somebody whose own devices and desires overtook the original template.
Which brings us back to choosing a voice. In each of the books where Jack himself is speaking, he invites our confidence, and we become complicit. This is, I think, most true of THE ENEMY and THE AFFAIR, which take place in the past, when Jack is still active military. One of my favorite lines, in all of the books, is a throwaway, from THE ENEMY, a seemingly casual remark. Reacher's gone to Germany, and they're outside some big U.S. Army armor base, Baumholder or the like. In the early morning fog, they hear the tanks coming back from a live-fire exercise. The sound of tank treads on pavement, the sound of the 20th century, Reacher thinks to himself, the Wehrmacht, the Soviets putting down the Budapest revolt. One of the rare instances where Reacher is reflective. It's a very telling detail. Jack's not your average lifer.
Also, in THE ENEMY, we get to meet not just Jack's brother Joe, but their mom, with her own past history in the French resistance, something neither of the boys know about. Lee revisits this in PERSONAL. The real zinger in the book, for my money, isn't ninety pages in, with the Russian (no spoilers), but a hundred pages in, the scene afterwards, at Pere Lachaise cemetery, where Jack visits his mother's grave. This is the entire argument for using first-person. We hear Jack's thoughts. We see him revealed.
Vulnerability isn't the first word that comes to mind, with Reacher. Far from it. He's kind of a force of nature, a guy without visible weakness. Big, and certain. Nobody you want to mess with. People do, and live to regret it - or don't. Live, anyway. A hard guy, and unsentimental. A guy you believe in. A guy you want on your side.
I don't think, though, that you believe in Jack Reacher simply because he's an unstoppable force. I think what Lee Child has done, in the course of the books, is to pull off a real hat-trick. You get used to Reacher in some diner by the side of the highway, hoping he's going to get a decent cup of java, or head-butting some asshole cop who gets in his face, just being Jack. What takes you off-guard is the occasional, and sudden, moment of clarity. He assesses the background, his immediate environment, the threat potential, how not? What makes Jack different, what gives him depth, isn't that he examines himself. He doesn't. But he knows who he is.
You could say this is one in a long line. Spade, or Marlowe, Lew Archer. Spenser, and Travis McGee. Kinsey Milhone, for that matter. Lone wolves, who stake out their turf, and make it their own. I beg to differ. Reacher is somehow on another plane. I don't know how to explain it to myself. Not even Bob Lee Swagger - and I bow to none in my admiration for Steve Hunter - but Lee's done something else. He's reinvented the character, he owns Jack Reacher. he speaks with his voice.
We identify with our characters. I do with mine. Lee seems to have actually inhabited Jack. This is a gift, or a kind of magic. I think it's astonishing. We don't all manage it. Not even. Lee got a gift. It wasn't handed to him, by any means, but we take it when the tray is passed.
PERSONAL is the nineteenth Jack Reacher book in the series, and Lee Child doesn't need my help to sell it. It opened at #1 on most national lists the first week it was out, and week two, it's still there.
This post isn't about promoting the book, which happens to be a knockout - Lee certainly hasn't lost his chops, and Jack keeps getting deeper as a character - but about P.O.V.
PERSONAL is told, appropriately, in first-person. This isn't a departure for the Reacher books, but more commonly, they've been told in the third. In other words, Jack is observed, and doesn't share his confidences. This is true of thirteen books, so far. It's interesting to me why you'd decide to shift gears. Lee uses the first-person in KILLING FLOOR, PERSUADER, THE ENEMY, GONE TOMORROW, THE AFFAIR, and this book. Oh, you might think, work with the change-up pitch to keep yourself on your toes and avoid getting stale, or to keep your readers invested, over the course of a long and successful run of novels, but it seems to me there's a more calculated narrative choice involved.
Reacher's never been entirely generic - unlike, say, Travis McGee. John MacDonald, famously, never wanted to do a series character, but he got talked into it. McGee has his quirks, but he remains a flat character, until you get to THE GREEN RIPPER, and he steps outside of himself, the formula no longer able to contain him. The dynamic for Reacher, even at the beginning, allows for more expansion and contraction. Lee Child himself has said that he meant from the get-go to write books that would be accessible, and commercial, and that Reacher was a conscious construct, designed - not market-researched, but a means to an end.
He turns out to be more. This is something that happens, and not always by accident. There are other examples. We might start out to write one story, and then find it gets away from us, or a walk-on part suddenly takes center stage, and completely unexpected. But in Reacher's case, Lee Child might have intended a sort of empty vessel, a hero you could inhabit with your own devices and desires, and what he wound up with was somebody whose own devices and desires overtook the original template.
Also, in THE ENEMY, we get to meet not just Jack's brother Joe, but their mom, with her own past history in the French resistance, something neither of the boys know about. Lee revisits this in PERSONAL. The real zinger in the book, for my money, isn't ninety pages in, with the Russian (no spoilers), but a hundred pages in, the scene afterwards, at Pere Lachaise cemetery, where Jack visits his mother's grave. This is the entire argument for using first-person. We hear Jack's thoughts. We see him revealed.
Vulnerability isn't the first word that comes to mind, with Reacher. Far from it. He's kind of a force of nature, a guy without visible weakness. Big, and certain. Nobody you want to mess with. People do, and live to regret it - or don't. Live, anyway. A hard guy, and unsentimental. A guy you believe in. A guy you want on your side.
You could say this is one in a long line. Spade, or Marlowe, Lew Archer. Spenser, and Travis McGee. Kinsey Milhone, for that matter. Lone wolves, who stake out their turf, and make it their own. I beg to differ. Reacher is somehow on another plane. I don't know how to explain it to myself. Not even Bob Lee Swagger - and I bow to none in my admiration for Steve Hunter - but Lee's done something else. He's reinvented the character, he owns Jack Reacher. he speaks with his voice.
We identify with our characters. I do with mine. Lee seems to have actually inhabited Jack. This is a gift, or a kind of magic. I think it's astonishing. We don't all manage it. Not even. Lee got a gift. It wasn't handed to him, by any means, but we take it when the tray is passed.
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