The Successful Writer’s Guide to a Guilt- and Success-Free New Year!

 

You're a winner, dude!

Photo by Japheth Mast on Unsplash

If you’re me (and I sincerely hope you’re not) the New Year is already weighing you down. Maybe you openly drafted some resolutions back in December that you hoped would sharpen and expand your writing career and author business. Maybe you merely dispatched a fervent wish heavenward to the Muse, asking for guidance as you prepared for a fresh twelve months. But here it is, the third week of January, and the fragile ladder to success you’d hoped to build is wobbling.

Frankly, it’s all just too much work, isn’t it? How are you supposed to write and edit the stories that move you, while holding down a “real” job, spending time with ones you love, wresting joy from this moment on earth, while still appeasing the Gods of Ceaseless Book Promotion?

Fear not, dear scribes! I spent a stupid amount of time between November and December scouring the internet for advice on the writing craft and its necessary evil, “business.” I delved into the state of book marketing, social-media-ing, and all the rest. I attended webinars, watched courses, absorbed podcasts, and connected with movers and shakers in the burgeoning new world of Author-Care Professionals. Here’s what I learned.

Be sure you follow every one of these pieces of advice. Your career depends on it.

It would seem logical that since humans write, and all humans are different, that everyone would have a different writing pace and working style. Don’t believe the hype! If you want to succeed in the writing racket, you must not only murder your darlings but also Unlearn Your Fuzzies. That is, the molly-coddling thoughts of working at a pace that’s “right” for you. Tough love, writers: There is no right for you. There is only one way—the Successful Way.

In the hot new world of churn-and-burn publishing, if you are not writing at least 10,000 words a day, you’re destined for failure. Stop listening to the fancy-pants bestsellers who say that they write 1,500 words in the morning, before ingesting a light lunch, brewing a mug of mint tea, and turning their attention to fan mail, tending to their author brand, and blah blah blah. They can play that game, because they’re tools of the man. The rest of us can’t. Luckily, several excellent books can teach you what you need to know. Maybe you start small, writing only 5,000 words a day before ramping up to 10,000. After consuming those reasonably priced ebooks, sign up for each author’s $797 course that will school you on the hot new world of “Rapid Release.” Some courses cost a little more, some a little less, but ones ending with 9 and 7 are the best.

Need help? Hire a developmental editor, accountability mentor, and a coach. You need all three on your “support team.” The best are aligned with quasi-academic institutions you may never have heard of, but all have placed at least one short story at prestigious publications. (“Prestigious” = markets paying in copies only.) Developmental editors charge $3,000 to assess your novel, mentors $3,000 to $5000 to be on-call annually, and coaches $100 an hour for virtual sessions. Beware professionals who quote round figures. Coaches who charge $197 an hour, for example, are the best.

Fearful of overspending? Get over it. What’s your career worth? Besides, you can use Assfirm or Blarna to pay it off in sixty-seven easy payments. Every dime is tax deductible. Take your credit card out of its holster, because you’re gonna need it.

If you’re launching a book, don’t just announce it on on Facepants, Twerper, and Instapork! Who are you, Grandma? Sign up for Megadon, Shreads, and BlueEarth, and DisChump as well. If you want followers to lay actual eyeballs on your announcements, you must pay to play! For as little as $2,797 or even $3,797, you can book an exciting package that will see you and your book feted by up to 30 blogs, and Instapork and DikTok channels. Your book has not lived until a 16-year-old influencer has sung its praises. I’m not going to say you’re a loser if you resist this new class of social media titans, but I just did!

Oh, and by the way, regarding your writing? Feel free to open with the weather! Research shows that Elmore Leonard’s books have never been celebrated by DikTok influencers. Nor did he ever plumb the lucrative reverse-harem romance, or dinosaur/werewolf erotica markets. Look where those missteps got him! Feel free to write entire books about the weather! The hot new thing in spicy romance is Nimbus-Cumulus-Stratus ménage à trois fiction!

True fact: Facepants and Junglezon have both recently debuted the exciting new world of AI-driven online marketing. No longer will you need to a) dream up clever copy, and b) hire a “human” designer to create book promo ads, and c) rack up stock image agency fees. Simply upload the entire text of your book to Facepants, and a legion of helpful bots will ingest your prose, generate clever ad copy—with images!—and populate their respective sites with instant ads touting your tome. Entrust these helpful corporate entities with your credit card digits and you’re good to go. They will spend your money in the most prudent way possible, or the bot’s name isn’t Bleep-Bleep-Ka-ching!

You know all those people who signed up for your newsletter six years ago, expecting you to write them once in a blue moon when you had a book out? Scrape those suckers off your boots, and get with the program—the hot new newsletter program, Gobstack, that is—and start spitting out newsletters three times a week. Enable the Monetize-The-Crap-Out-of-This function, and soon your adoring followers will have you rolling in sweet, sweet cash! The more you noodge, you more you earn!

Since Junglezon bought the ever-popular book site Goodbleeds, you can now offer book giveaways to your adoring potential readers. Upon payment of a very reasonable $599, your new book will be free to a select number of readers. (At press time, developers are trying hard to lower that price to $597 to align with the market.)

You will need some additional software to make your literary dreams come true. Sign up for your own website store, Flickstarter campaign, and AI art generation-cum-AI-cowriting software. Use the latter to craft sales copy, outline plots, and dream up ideas for future books—only. No one is suggesting that you use such things to write your own stories! That would be unethical.

With all these new author tools, you’re sure to succeed. But we understand that you may occasionally need a daily break between your first crop of 6,000 words and the second. By all means, step outside, stretch, and smell a freaking rose. Just make sure to snap a photo of that bud, and Instapork it as soon as you get back to the cockpit.

***

Joseph D’Agnese is a writer who occasionally writes fiction. If you squint real hard, the foregoing sorta could be.

josephdagnese.com

Where's the Stuff?

by Eve Fisher and Leigh Lundin

 

My SleuthSayers compadre Leigh Lundin
sent me the following email the other day:

Leigh

Eve, I've long wondered what happens to possessions when prisoners are incarcerated. Without a family or girlfriend or close friend, they wouldn't be able to pay a mortgage.     But what about personal goods, valuables and items with sentimental meaning. It wouldn't be fair for, say, a landlord to keep them (unjust enrichment), but what does… or doesn't happen?

Well, I thought about that for a while, and decided that the outcome would largely depend upon whether or not the apartment or house was a crime scene in an ongoing investigation. Leigh also comments on foreclosure and eviction situations.

CRIME SCENE:

Right now, the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect is in jail, pending trial, no bail has been granted, and the police are combing that house from top to bottom for evidence. His personal goods, valuables, and items with (slight shudder appropriate here) 'sentimental meaning' are probably boxed up by now and in evidence rooms downtown.

The same is true of the 2022 Moscow, Idaho killings suspect, at least some of whose property – as well as his parents' – is in police hands. (BTW, I still disagree with demolishing the house where the victims lived before the trial – I know the police signed off on it, but still… Who knows what evidence still lurked there?)

And don't even think about keeping your laptop and cell phone if you've committed assault, manslaughter, or worse. The first thing law enforcement wants to see is your computer, email, texts, etc. And, as I've said many times before, do not put anything on any social media that can be used against you in a court of law.  

NOT A CRIME SCENE:

If you have money and are allowed to post bail, great, you don't have to worry about your property very much even if you are alone and no one cares. You go home, hire a good lawyer, and keep on keeping on. However, DO NOT try to saw the ankle monitor off, because you're gonna go right back to the slammer.

But say you're not allowed bail, or can't afford it, or get lost in the system? Or you get convicted and "catch a heavy case", i.e., go to prison for a long time?

Well, I'm not sure how long the landlord has to hold your apartment or your stuff until re-renting it and tossing the stuff out into the yard – or his pocket.

Leigh

TL/DR: Once a Writ of Possession (eviction) is executed, and a landlord comes into possession of personal property, landlord is required to hold and give ten business days notice before disposing of goods. Eviction of a non-military tenant typically take 30-60, even 90 days. Eviction rarely takes less time but a bad renter can take much longer.     The clock for eviction is partially spelled out by statute and partially how long it takes to get the case before a judge. See, eviction becomes a lawsuit. If a renter resists eviction, in most cases a landlord/landlady is frozen from taking further action until a judge’s decision: no harassing visits, no shutting off utilities, no interference in residents’ lives. The minimum is about a month, but an unscrupulous tenant or a squatter can draw eviction out months or more while not paying rent.     An exception centers around a 7-day Notice to Cure involving situations that put the property at risk: accidental or deliberate damage, housing unauthorized residents, allowing unauthorized pets, violating association rules, dealing drugs, prostitution, and so on. In that case, a landlord may not only move faster, but can be forced to do so.     Except for pictures and photos, tenants may not remove items affixed to the property, i.e, drapes, blinds, etc. I don’t find the procedure for final disposition spelled out in statutes. By tradition and under the watchful eye of a deputy, landlords set tenant's possessions ‘on the curb’. Landlords are not allowed to help themselves nor allow others, but over time, goods tend to scatter until picked up by garbage collectors.     I’ve seen curb disposals in nice neighborhoods where furniture and household goods disappeared with a day or two. Contrary to common expectations, when a poor tenant was evicted in a not-nice complex, the lady’s personal goods remained untouched for a week.     The homeowner can pay off the certificate any time within the seven year period.†

And I have no idea what the bank / mortgage company would do, other than foreclose, and have someone clean it all out. Who knows where it goes then?

Leigh

TL/DR: In a foreclosure, personal property rights transfer to the new owner.     Foreclosure rules differ considerably in that a change of ownership is involved. The two main reasons I can think of are (1) failure to meet mortgage payments and (2) failure to pay taxes. Homeowner and condo associations have ways of forcing evictions, but other than suing homeowners into oblivion, I don’t know how they work.     Obviously, if a homeowner doesn’t pay his mortgage, he risks losing his house. The note holder then can exercise his right to repossess the property. Unlike a tenancy, once a mortgagee take possession he can dispose of personal property as he wishes.     Failure to pay taxes puts a property at risk but not immediate foreclosure. In Florida, an unpaid tax bill turns into a tax certificate, which the public may buy at auction. The certificate can not be redeemed within the next two years but must be cashed in before year seven, else it is forfeited. Between years 2 and 7, the holder can have the county clerk sell the property ‘on the courthouse steps’, a figurative term, no longer literal. The new owner taxes possession of any real and personal property left behind.     I couldn’t find specific instructions, but it’s safer– and kinder– to attempt a ten day notice.†

Worst Case Scenario:

Worst case scenario with family: Kalief Browder spent 1,000 days in Rykers Island because his family couldn't afford the $3,000 bail that was set, the criminal justice system was overcrowded, and between the judge(s) and his court-appointed attorney, his case was delayed for 3 years, without any trial at all. Eventually, it was dismissed. Tragically, two years later, he hanged himself. (Wikipedia)

BREAKING NEWS TIP:

If you really don't want law enforcement in your house, looking over your possessions and confiscating the same, don't shoot someone while wearing an ankle monitor. Luke Eagle Star, of Rapid City, SD, shot a woman in the arm about a week ago, and then ran. Police were able to track Mr. Eagle Star because he was still wearing his ankle monitor. They are currently working "to gather additional details," and I'll bet that apartment/house is going to get a real going over.  And considering that he MIGHT have shot his girlfriend, I'd say most of the contents are going to go out in the snow... (Rapid City)

---

^† Florida Statutes Ch 83§62, Ch 83§67, Ch 715§104, Ch 702§035-702§10

Vernacular

Anthony Burgess once remarked that the Elizabethan Age was word-drunk – Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, Thomas Nashe (“an upstart crow”) – and as it spilled into the next century, the Book of Common Prayer published in 1604, the King James Bible in 1611, and the First Folio in 1623, we recognize the shaping of the English language into a modern tongue, a vernacular for the commons, in its meaning of the community at large.

What we see, in literature, politics, and religion, is a leveling effect. Not that the language becomes gross, or inexact; the reverse. It becomes more specific, and at the same time, includes more variety. The vocabulary expands beyond the cloisters, or the manners of court. In part, this is a function of class breakdown, the permeability of social and economic barriers: the collapse of feudalism. Also, the essential message of the Reformation is that you can have a personal relationship with God, independent of the interpretation of Scripture by the Church. There’s an obvious political message here, too. Your loyalty to any earthly power isn’t ordained, it isn’t written in stone, it derives from your consent.

I’d suggest that language – or more specifically, let’s say ‘usage’ – is an instrument of democratization. The term vernacular can be defined as indigenous, or local, such as a dialect; natural, or vulgar, or ordinary. In other words, a common manner of speech, in both senses: something everybody shares, or something you turn up your nose at.

Or perhaps there’s no real contradiction. My grandmother actually wrote a letter to R.J. Reynolds, back in the Bronze Age, complaining about their slogan, “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.” Amazingly, somebody in PR actually wrote her back, saying basically that their target audience wasn’t grammar-adjacent, so suck it up.

This is the Bad Money Drives Out Good argument, and I’m not sure I’m on board with it. Chandler, in The Simple Art of Murder, remarks that Hammett took murder out of the drawing room and dropped it in the street.  

He goes on to say a number of other things, some of which I disagree with, but his point is that the supposed gentlefolk of the English country house were given the bum’s rush, and the effete Philo Vances were shouldered out of the queue by the more muscular and less fastidious Sam Spade, or the Continental Op. It’s an exaggeration, and the hard-boiled and the cozy still keep company, but Chandler’s put his finger on it.

It’s no secret, either, that Chandler wasn’t a big fan of Mickey Spillane, and he clearly feels Spillane is pandering to the market, the brutality, the contempt for women, the furious, feverish psychological dream landscape, but at the same time, Chandler recognizes the inevitability.

This is an old conversation. The more accessible literature becomes, or citizenship, or Holy Communion, is the mystery cheapened, or diluted? For the previous initiates, yes. The literate, the propertied, the baptized – the chosen ones. Who wants to give up the secrets of a fellowship that sets you apart? By definition, it excludes the other, the unwashed, the unread, the unholy. We make it too easy for them. They should have to jump insuperable hurdles, rehearse impenetrable, Talmudic catechisms. Once you open books to these people, libraries of knowledge, you no longer hold the keys. You lose the power of voice.

Mickey Spillane, in any case, is fish in a barrel. I happen to like Spillane (“How could you?” “It was easy”), but you can understand how Chandler would think he debased the culture.  Chandler’s a snob. For our purposes, let’s pick somebody else. Chester Himes. Himes is definitely genre, and Coffin Ed and the Grave Digger don’t fit all that comfortably into Chandler’s “down these mean streets a man must walk who’s not himself mean,” but Himes is giving us Harlem from the native perspective – although Himes seems like an outsider looking in, dispossessed, and always an exile, the books are still unapologetically black.

We see something similar in science fiction and fantasy over the last, say, thirty to forty years. There was very much a time when it was boy’s club, and pretty much white boys, too.

Alice Sheldon published as James Tiptree, under the probably accurate assumption that SF readers wouldn’t buy stories by a girl. The community is notoriously cranky and hidebound, for all that they’re supposed to be looking to the future.

Ursula Le Guin made waves with The Left Hand of Darkness (ambiguous genders), and then along comes Chip Delany, not only colored, but queer. Sakes alive, the pearls that got clutched.

The lesson would appear to be, that opening the door to opportunity doesn’t water the whiskey. Our literature, our world, is reinvigorated, even reinvented. This is the purpose of a living language. It undermines orthodoxy, and in an Age of Lies, we could use a few choice words.

I Have First-Line Envy

I've written before about a Facebook group I belong to in which we celebrate good first lines (sometimes first paragraphs) in books and stories, often crime stories. A first line can be a thing of beauty, with lyrical language that draws you in. It can have suspense, leading you to need to know what comes next. It can portray a setting that's so beautiful you yearn to live there. It can showcase a character's voice, one that's edgy or interesting or downright funny--someone you can't wait to spend 300 pages with.

I've read a lot of good first lines over the years and some that didn't draw me in. Interestingly, some of the ones I thought weren't great received raves from others, which just goes to show how subjective writing can be.

But before today, I can recall only once reading a first line that made me wish I had written it myself. (More on that other book below.) I haven't read this book (it's coming out next week), but damn, this sentence makes me want to:

It is a sad day, indeed, when even an orgy does not interest me.

That's the first sentence in Of Hoaxes and Homicide by Anastasia Hastings, coming out on January 30th. Why do I love this opening line? To quote Shakespeare, let me count the ways.

First and foremost, this sentence makes me laugh. The voice tells me this is a character I'll enjoy reading about. The sentence is also attention-grabbing. Do I want to learn more about what is going on in this book? Oh yes, I do, especially because the author's word choices let the reader know this isn't a hardboiled book; it's softer, slower-paced, making the mention of an "orgy" all the more interesting and surprising--in the best way. The writing also is lyrical. Imagine the sentence without the word "even." It wouldn't have the same flow, the same punch. The author's words have a wonderful rhythm.

That's a whole lot to accomplish in a first sentence. Anastasia Hastings, I tip my hat to you.

What's the other great first line I wish I'd written? The first sentence in Julia Spencer-Fleming's wonderful first novel, In the Bleak Midwinter:

It was one hell of a night to throw away a baby.

I read that sentence, and I was all in. Thankfully, the book lived up to the promise of its first line. Will Of Hoaxes and Homicide do the same? I sure hope so.

Do you have a favorite first line you'd like to share, dear reader? Please do.

Before I go, the Malice Domestic board of directors would like to remind you that this year's convention will run from April 26-28th, and registration is open. If you're not familiar with Malice, it's a fan convention that celebrates the traditional mystery, though you will find attending authors write lighter and darker books too. The convention is held each year in North Bethesda, Maryland. You can learn more at the Malice website: www.malicedomestic.net. Due to technical difficulties, the registration link on the website isn't working, but you can register by clicking here. (And no, I'm not on the Malice board. Just spreading the word for them.)

Park It

Quick: What's wrong with this paragraph?

Logan turned onto Main Street and parked the car under a maple tree. He squinted his eyes against the sunset and saw Mary and Brown standing in front of the grocery store. Mary spoke and Brown nodded his head. He said something and she shrugged her shoulders. Finally Brown waved his hand and walked away. Mary turned to Logan and winked her eye. "I tried to warn you," he muttered.

Give up?

Well, for whatever other weaknesses it may have, it is 25% longer than it needs to be. The version below contains the same information and 18 fewer words:

Logan turned onto Main Street and parked under a maple. He squinted against the sunset and saw Mary and Brown in front of the grocery. Mary spoke and Brown nodded. He replied and she shrugged. Finally Brown waved and walked away. Mary turned to Logan and winked. "I warned you," he muttered.

As Will Strunk said: "Omit needless words. Omit needless words. Omit needless words."

Harsh Words

One of our correspondents sent an article, ‘31 of The Most Hard-to-Pronounce Words in the English Language’. In actuality, the problem isn’t necessarily difficulty vocalizing the words, but associating their voicing and spelling. As their web page explains, English doesn’t always follow a strict likeness between its writing units (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes). Remember the sound-alike spellings of ‘fish’? Ghoti? Pheti?

This disconnect can result in embarrassing mishaps.

• A French friend asked directions to the ‘Moe-Jave Desert’.
• A national brand of canned food advised the consumer to “let the air excape.”
• Dan Quayle couldn’t spell ‘potato’.
• George Bush Jr couldn’t pronounce ‘nuclear’.
• I can’t spell, uh… More on that in a moment.

I’ve watched words change meanings such as ‘nimrod’. Originally it was a Biblical name, which came to mean sharpshooter or good hunter, and recently has now come to mean a dolt, an idiot.

I’ve also observed words change pronunciation. Thanks to a horrible branding ad campaign, the word ‘chic’ changed from a pronunciation of ‘sheek’ to ‘chick’. Ugh. When I was a child, ‘pot pourri’ sounded like ‘POE poor-ree’. Years later when I heard my mother call it ‘paht POORy’, I questioned her about changing the pronunciation. She said, “I gave up.”

Yatch Yacth Yacht

A story circulates amongst boaters about a sea captain who each morning extracted a slip of paper from a drawer and read it before putting it away again. One night a deckhand sneaked in and read it. It said,

“Port = left; starboard = right.”

Me, I have difficulty recalling the difference between a ketch and a yawl… I know I want one, either will do. But my real nemesis is the word ‘yacht’.

I can NOT spell that damn word for anything. I had to look up the spelling for this article after getting it wrong TWICE.

In a similar vein, I suspect I’d have more than usual trouble with the word ‘height’ except I used it several times a week in my technical career (and still use it in SleuthSayers HTML). It’s downright cruel that its sister dimension, ‘width’, has a different ending, ‘th’ instead of ‘ht’.

Speaking of technical, I used to confuse trigonometry with nude sunbathing. ‘Tangential’ tended to come out ‘tangenital’.

The Good Housekeeping list dates back a few years and was picked up by Secret Life of Mom. 

Secret Life of Mom / Good Housekeeping™ Hard Words

accessory	espresso	lackadaisical	nuptial	scissors
anemone	February	library	onomatopoeia	specific
choir	hyperbole	mischievous	pronunciation	squirrel
colonel	isthmus	murderer	remuneration	supposedly
coup	jalapeno	niche	rural	synecdoche
epitome	juror	nuclear	schadenfreude	worcestershire

They ironically end the list with ‘vocabulary’. I suspect they omitted the word ‘yacht’ because no one could spell it. (Damn, I had to look it up again.)

In their word list, I have to be careful not to spell ‘expresso’ and step carefully when writing ‘mischievous’. Other challenging words rattle about in my head, but I’ll end with a historical note.

Mr Monk Mangles the Monastery

In the days before the printing press, monks copied manuscripts by hand. In a particular abbey, the original was copied once and stored away in a vault, and that copy would be copied, and its copies recopied, to propagate across Europe.

A novice approached the abbot and said, “Reverend Father, we’re doing it wrong. By recopying copies, any errors will be reproduced in subsequent versions. I believe we should always copy from the original.”

The abbot was impressed. He said, “You’re right, lad,” and descended to the vault. An hour later, monks passing the doorway heard sobbing. A friar grew brave enough to enter and ask the abbot what was wrong.

The abbot said, “The word celebrate… We left out the R.”

What are your word nemeses?

Doing Its Zone Thing

Fiction writing is a strange business. Any writer will tell you that. Publishing is even stranger, but to get something published you have to write it first, so it's that pastime that interests me most. 

Picture this: the late Rod Serling, standing on a dark, spooky set, frowning with great intensity into the camera and saying, "You unlock this door with the key of imagination . . . You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into … the Writing Zone."

He actually said that, except for the next-to-last word. And in all honesty, the Writing Zone is just as odd and mysterious as the one in Serling's famous TV series. (I re-watched the whole thing again, by the way, not long ago--all 156 episodes. I think my wife's still trying to recover.)

So. What, exactly, am I talking about?

It's hard to describe. The Zone (writing, not twilight) is sort of a feeling, or a state of mind, that we fiction writers sometimes reach during the process of creating a story or novel. It's a strange sense of comfort and familiarity and satisfaction, where the ideas pop and bang in the sky like fireworks and the words flow like honey, and you think Whoa, this is fun, I can do no wrong. It doesn't happen every time you sit down to write or plan to write, but when it does, it's great. John Simmons, in a piece he wrote for Writers & Artists, said, ". . . When I'm in that zone, I'm not always aware of it. It's a wonderful feeling when you realise afterwards that you've been there. I think it's part of the addiction of being a writer."

I think so, too. It's not only a concept, it's a real place--athletes know this--and I suspect every one of you writers have felt its magic at one time or another. And when you find yourself there, in that mystical wonderland, time seems to fly. Hours can pass before you know it, and when you look back at what you've managed to accomplish during that time, it's usually good.

So the obvious question is, how do you get there? Or if you've made the trip and returned, how do you make sure you can get there again?

I've heard a lot of writers' opinions of how to "activate" the Zone, and--as you might imagine--they're all different. Some people write at the same time every day, or at the same place, or accompanied by certain sounds or external inputs. When all those conditions are met, they sit down and try to let the creative juices flow.

It's almost like an attempt to enter a hypnotic state: different things work for different subjects. Timewise, I think I ease into my Zone most often in the mornings, when my mind's fresh (or at least fresher). That's probably unfortunate for me, because I'm a night owl and always have been--but that's just the way the mop flops. And whatever time of day it is, I have to first be loose and comfortable. And warm. I don't do anything well if I'm cold. One writer friend told me she does her most productive thinking in the bathtub, which I guess is fine if you don't drop your writing pad or laptop.

Locationwise, I probably do most of my writing writing right here where I am now, in front of a desktop Mac in my little home office. Some of my non-writing writing, which I guess could be called planning, is also done in this chair but most often it's done elsewhere, in other places that I find relaxing. My recliner in the den is one, our backyard swing is another. If we lived near a beach--we don't--I would probably do most of my story-plotting there, and would be even more worthless than I am now. 

Another thing that works for me, in terms of getting lost in my story thoughts, is physical activity. I like to walk (walk, don't run, like the old Ventures song), and during long walks ideas can blossom out of nowhere, to the point that I often walk a lot further and longer than I intended. (Once again, because I'm an "outliner," much of my writing process is thinking about the story before the writing starts. I usually spend twice as much time dreaming up scenes and plotting in my head as I spend actually typing words into the computer.) I don't know if I believe everything I hear about exercise and endorphins firing up the brain cells, etc., but I do know some of my most satisfying stories were born on the walking track, which in my case are our neighborhood streets and our thankfully big back yard.

This is digressing a bit, but one thing that's not part of my writing process is assigning myself a quota (a certain number of words, pages, etc.) and making sure I meet that quota during my writing session(s). That kind of self-motivation is something I don't want or need. To me, writing is more like play than work, and I'd like to keep it that way. My opinion only.

A quick word about surroundings. Unlike most writers I know, I think and work best without background noise, or even music. It's the one time that I prefer silence. Not so for other writers: some of my author friends say they think best with a lot of bustle and noise and activity going on and a lot of people around them. One of them says she does her best plotting while sitting at a table in a busy Starbucks. Not me. Unless it's the soft sound of waves going in and out, I like it quiet. Main thing is, do whatever works.

And, having said that . . .

What works for you? Do you write in the same place every day, and/or at roughly the same time of day? Do you like music or other external sounds while you're writing? Are there any places where (or times when, or conditions under which) you can't write? Do you set quotas for yourself, and keep going until you reach them? Does that make you more productive? How do you increase your chances of finding your way to your Zone?

Author Carolyn Wheat (How to Write Killer Fiction) once said, "Getting to that state, and staying there for as long as possible, is the key to writing success."

Smart lady.

Managing Time

Managing time –

Until 2017, I worked full time and wrote in the evenings, weekends, anytime I could find time. When I retired in 2017, I thought I'd have more time to write.

Wrong.

Too many interruptions. Some necessary, many unnecessary which writers like me allow to creep in from the internet primarily. Keep hearing solutions to this problem but the only real solution is to shut everything down but the writing. It's hard but it does work before the cats interrupt.

21st Century –

The 21st Century is zipping by, dragging me along and I'm happy to be alive, although old age brings problems. It's better than the alternative. As for this writer, I write very little set in the 21st Century for many reasons, the most pressing is things change too quickly. Forensic advances, social media zooming along at the speed of sound, CGI stuff, AI – not even sure what that is.

So I go back to the 1950s and 60s and 70s, where I remember what it was like and set the stories and novels there. Easier for me and who knows, I might enlightened a reader on what it was like to have only three TV channels and TV going off the air at midnight and dial telephones and long distance operators and information operators (before directory assistance), and typewriters and how it was fun when Dad put on the brakes or had to swerve and you got to bounce around the back seat.

"Hey, Dad. Do that again."

Lately, I'll spot something on TV and wonder who the hell are those guys. Watched part of the Emmy Awards last night and I was lost. Who are those guys?

Getting back to focusing on writing.  I wrap into the cocoon of the past and let my characters solve crimes the way we used to.

That's all for now. Thanks for listening.

www.oneildenoux.com 

The Uses of Mystery part 3: Tim Dorsey

It is probably a sign of old age, but lately I seem to get book recommendations from the New York Times's obits. Depressing as that may be, Tim Dorsey's December 2023 obituary led me to more interesting examples of the uses of our favorite genre, which in Dorsey's hands becomes the capacious satiric receptacle for obsessions and complaints, along with sex, drugs, rock and roll, fart jokes, and digressions on US policy and the CIA.

At least, that's the total for The Maltese Iguana and the opening pages of No Sun Screen for the Dead. But as Dorsey racked up 22 other novels, I am sure he found lots more of the Sunshine State to include.

In fact, that's certain. Dorsey, a former Tampa Tribune reporter, has not only a genuine love for his home state, but an encyclopedic knowledge of its history, geography and culture. Much of which he gifts to Serge A. Storms, his central character, who operates with his drugged up and alcoholic wingman, Coleman, a man with an uncanny ability to regain sentience at crucial moments.

These occur in rapid succession because the charismatic and voluble Serge combines features of two favorite mystery/ thriller protagonists: the lone avenger/ protector and the serial killer, an unusual combination that works for Serge. He's a one man consumer protection bureau, out for grifters, unscrupulous sales people, pandemic profiteers, and computer criminals, with a special look out for elderly victims.

Totally on the side of the angels is Serge, with just a little weakness for the extra-judicial punishments that, by the end of The Maltese Iguana, have left a body count to rival Hamlet. But don't expect blood spatter and weapons a la Dexter. Besides his knowledge of the weirder aspects of Florida history, Serge has science at his fingertips.

I won't spoil future reading pleasure with the details, but death by ping pong balls was never on my radar, and while the cause of the so called Havana Syndrome has eluded all experts, Serge not only knows the instrument but has his own version. 

In The Maltese Iguana, Serge and Coleman are the spine of the story, flitting in and out of the action while running The Underbelly Tours of the Florida Keys. Around them are two story lines, one, a CIA op in Honduras with a lively cast of wannabe militia types, an honest Honduran cop, and a CIA bodyguard in a sequined cowgirl costume. And two, and only slightly less flamboyant, the trials and tribulations of Reevis, an honest reporter in Miami.

How these story lines merge in a spectacular denoument involving the culminating shoot of a major motion picture is a thing of beauty, and Dorsey gets high marks for plotting as well as his marvelous titles. Who can resist monikers like Florida Roadkill, Atomic Lobster, or The Tropic of Stupid? 

The latter could, I suspect, be the title for any of his novels, for Serge, and in Iguana, Reevis, too, inveigh against stupidity in many forms, including foreign policy, the degradation of the press, corporate consultants, rampant marketing, and crowd think. 

The lively mystery is an armature for Dorsey's satiric observations, and genuine bad guys like the dubious "Colonel" come in for vicious caricatures. There are no shades of gray in this moral realm, and that is rather odd, given that Serge, himself, is equal parts White Knight and serial killer.  

But Serge is perhaps an acquired taste. While admiring the construction and the flamboyant prose of The Maltese Iguana, I did not really take to the protagonist, who, to my mind, is an irritating motor mouth of slender social skills. 

Still, conviction and energy count for much in prose, and Tim Dorsey has both in abundance, along with a lot of strong opinions and evidence of buried malfeasance. In his hands, mystery easily stretches to satire and social critique without ever losing its footing.

###

 

The Falling Men, a novel with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.

 

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books at:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-who-met-the-elf-queen/id1072859654?ls=1&mt=11

 

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is available at: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-dictators-double/id1607321864?ls=1&mt=11

Three Little Words

  Occasionally I am reminded of the paucity of the written word.  Of course there are wonderful things about the written word.  As Penn Gillette noted, it's digital, or can be made so.  It is permanent in a way that spoken words cannot be.  But it has inherent limitations...

Consider the movie Forrest Gump.  I assume I don't have to put in any spoiler alerts at this late date.  In the movie whenever Forrest, a "slow" child, asks why he has no daddy in his life his mother replies "He's on vacation." This is obviously a convenient excuse for his absence.  (In Winston Groom's novel, by the way, the father died in an accident.)

But when Mrs. Gump is trying to get her son into a normal class as opposed to a "special school" for the retarded, the principal asks smugly "Is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?"

And Sally Field, playing the mother, replies: "He's on vacation."

See? Those three written words tell you almost nothing.  But what Field gets across in her performance is: To get my son into  school I'm going to have to sleep with this bastard. And I will.

It shows what acting can add to a text.

I was thinking of this because of another scene I saw recently.

For All Mankind is an alternative history TV show on Apple.  It asks the question: How would history have changed if the Russians reached the moon first?  And the short answer is: The space race would have gotten hotter and we would have moved out into the solar system much faster than we have.

But in a third season episode called "All In" there is a stunning scene in which one character utters a three word phrase (not "He's on vacation").  Then they say it again.  And a third time.

The first two times it's a cliche.  The third time the actor makes it clear that the character has realized that their life is about to take an unexpected and very unwelcome turn.

Same words given a completely different meaning by the actor's performance.

It sort of makes me wish my characters could hop off the page and speak for themselves.

Toast

     As frequently happens on the way to one thing, I encountered something else. 

    While doing some research, I bumped into the etymology of the expression "to toast." The phrase we use for words spoken about the bride at a wedding or a guest of honor at a banquet, I learned, is directly related to that piece of bread with jam you might be consuming while perusing your morning email or skimming this SleuthSayers offering. 

    The word "toast" is derived from an Old French word, toster, meaning to grill, roast, or burn. That word is drawn from an earlier Latin word, tostare, meaning to parch or dry out. It's no great stretch to see how this word became associated with the browning of bread served with a slathering of preserves or perhaps a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar.

     Focusing on that last flavor combination gives the jump off to the use of "to toast" as celebratory words offered with a cocktail. 

    16th and 17th-century wines might be bitter and sediment-filled. Adding a piece of spiced toast to the drink added flavor, lessened any foul smell, and perhaps acted as a sponge to trap sediment particles. The toast made the wine more drinkable. William Shakespeare mentions the practice in The Merry Wives of Windsor.  Falstaff instructs his fellow to  "Go, fetch me a quart of sack;  put a toast in 't,". 

    According to accounts, the toast was not eaten but plucked from the cup and flicked to the nearest dog. 

    The offering of kind or thoughtful words to an honored guest added to the occasion's flavor, leading those praises to be called "the toast." 

    The practice of offering kind words pre-dates their designation as a toast. People have always felt the need to give speeches while drinking. 

    That's the G version. Both Merriam-Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary, my sources for this, also offer a bawdier explanation. That story centers around a woman taking the therapeutic cool waters of a pool near Bath, England. While she floated, a traveler happened along. He plunged his cup into the water and offered a wish for her good health. His traveling companion, possibly drunk, suggested that while he might not care for the drink, he would undoubtedly enjoy the toast. "Toast" became both the words of praise and the subject--the toast of the town. 

    A bit off-topic, but the same sources note that to use "toast" to mean that someone is a goner or has been destroyed owes its genesis to an ad-libbed line by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters. Some argue that it had earlier origins, but all agree that the movie brought this usage of "toast" to the public. Now you know who you gonna call when you want a word placed in general circulation. 

    Back to today's subject. I will raise my mug of morning coffee and offer a toast to 2024. It may be a bit late in the month for such things, but in the due course of the SleuthSayers blog rotation, this is my first opportunity of the year. 

    May all your writing be prize-winning and effortless. May all your reading inspire and entertain. May your every encounter suggest another story. May your life be free of your main character's pain. 

    As for me, the new year will prove life-changing. I'm retiring as a criminal magistrate at the end of January. I'm doing so partly because I want to devote more time to writing. The full-time job gets in the way. Or, at least in my mind, it does. I will be curious to learn whether I'll produce more in the months ahead. Perhaps the time it takes to accomplish something will merely expand to fill the time available. 

    I may lose my new-found time running down rabbit holes in pursuit of etymologies. 

    One regret about leaving the magistrate gig is that I'll be deprived of the steady stream of typos I've found in the case documents. Reporting on that collection has been a semi-regular blog topic for the last couple of years. Like faithful companions, these unintended misspeaks stood by me, ready to jump in whenever I needed to meet an imminent deadline. 

If mystery fiction teaches us anything, it's that actions have consequences. The decision to retire cuts me off from that rootstock. We'll see what happens from here. 

    But that problem doesn't need to be solved for another three weeks. For now, I think I'll pour another cup of coffee and drop something in the toaster. 

Until next time. 

Does anybody really know what time it is?

           Einstein taught us that time is relative.  Popular writers will say this explains why an hour in a waiting room is longer than an hour having a beer with your best friend.  This isn’t true.  These occasions feel different because your perception of passing time is highly contingent on the qualities of the experience.  Einstein’s got nothing to do with it.

    The human factor, in those cases, has mostly to do with patience.  I’m not an expert on the subject, since I have none.  For me, a dentist’s office, traffic jams, my living room while waiting for my wife to put on her makeup, my bedroom as a child waiting for Christmas morning to commence, the queue administered by the NTSB, are torture chambers. 

            Checkout lines at the food store are the ultimate gladiator combat zone of patience.  Recently, I got behind a crowd of cheerful partygoers preparing for a big night at home.  They were having a lot of fun, and the food store employees were infected by the high spirits.  There was non-stop joking and laughing.  I was dying, since I really needed to get through that line as soon as possible, since I had to flee the store for reasons inexplicable at the time.  In retrospect, I was merely impatient. 

            So I bailed out of my position and went to the line next door, where only a single elderly lady was ready to find her way through the self-checkout. This was a huge mistake.  She had no idea how to navigate the automated system, stumbling her way through every transaction.   She had also stacked her purchases to overflowing in the little bin at the rear of the cart, and having angled the thing so she was now at the front end, had a great deal of difficulty retrieving her packages, fruits and vegetables.  I rescued this effort by moving all her stuff onto the conveyor belt.  She thanked me, while complaining loudly that nothing in life worked as well as it used to.  I agreed.

The young guy in charge of helping people through the self-checkout came over about a dozen times to recalibrate the system after the woman did some novel things with the barcodes and buttons at her disposal.  The guy had to call over his supervisor at least twice with the words, “Never seen this one before.”

I became the old lady’s fiduciary for the final act of cashing out, which involved discovering that only one of her fistfuls of credit and debit cards actually worked.  I nearly wept with joy when the word “Approved” finally flashed on the little screen.   Somewhere in the middle of all this, the partygoers left the store, in full celebration.  We waved to each other.

            The lesson for me was a little bit of patience at first would have saved a huge amount of time, and stomach acid, on the back end. 

             I know several people who have virtually no sense of passing time.  Whether a blessing or a curse is up for debate, since one can easily fill in both sides of the ledger.  I have an acute sense of time, which I blame on the German side of my family, who considered five minutes early as being on time.  Not five minutes before, nor five minutes after.  None of them wore a watch, since they could tell you the exact time aligned with the GMT down to the nearest second.  So I’m almost never late, though someone I live with is never on time, unless by happy accident. 

Another relative of mine ascribes his wife’s time blindness to the perfidy of the Magic Clock.  If she needs twenty minutes to complete a task, she merely looks at the Magic Clock, which will tell her five is all she needs.  Her surprise at the actual outcome is endlessly recurring and never instructive.

  My German grandfather was a clock smith, who would translate time’s march into pendulums, springs, axels and gear sprockets.  He filled his house with about 100 clocks, most of which were strikers.  At midnight, the house would erupt with bells, chimes and ancient clackers.  His family would sleep through it all, since it was merely a cacophonous reminder that another day had just ended, a little bit of life consumed, and new days ahead, a few more bits yet to be endured.