Scaring Myself: The Challenges of Writing a Dual Time-Line Thriller

It's always nice to know many fellow mystery authors, either personally or at least via social media, because then I often can contact someone to ask if they'd be kind enough to write an article for me.  It happened just the other day, after I'd finished reading Lee Goldberg's latest title, Calico.

As a writer I was fascinated by the idea of writing a story, involving two different genres, and two different timelines in the same book. With Calico he's done something I think maybe only a handful of authors today could do successfully.  
Lee's an amazing best selling book writer but is also a TV screen writer, producer and developer, from Diagnosis Murder to Monk, to Bond & Goldberg Terrorize a Nursing Home. Okay, he lied about that last one or perhaps I lied. Honestly, he's written numerous books, including five with Janet Evonavich. He is a two-time Edgar nominee from MWA, a Shamus nominee from PWA, and a 2024  SPur nominee for contemporary western from  Western Writers. He's also a book publisher. I just have no idea when he sleeps, eats or enjoys family time. Unless, he's like Asimov and has a basement of trained monkeys banging away on keyboards.

So when I contacted, my pal, he happened to already have written about the origins and evolving of writing Calico, and which he immediately sent to me. Now it's with great pleasure, I present Lee's article, "Scaring Myself."  - Jan Grape


Scaring Myself: The Challenges of Writing a Dual Time-Line Thriller 

by Lee Goldberg
 
My thriller Calico, out this week in a new paperback and deeply discounted ebook editions, is both a contemporary police procedural…and a traditional western set in 1883. What the two storylines share is a body, buried in a shallow grave in California’s desolate Mojave desert.

I’d been thinking about the story for years… but put off writing it because I had too many contractual commitments and not enough time in-between them to do it. Those are lies, of course, excuses I told myself to justify not writing the book.

The truth is, the story terrified me. Thrillers are hard enough to write without trying to balance two time-lines and, on top of that, two wildly different genres (actually, three genres, but talking about that would be a spoiler).

The challenge of telling two connected stories, one in the past and one in the present, is making sure the reader isn’t ahead of the characters in either time-line. Because if you fail, it will kill the suspense and the mystery. There will be no surprises. Yet, you also don’t want to withhold information from the reader, because that would be cheating. The trick is knowing when to cut away from one time-line to the other, so the reader is never quite sure how much they really know. Maintaining that delicate balancing act throughout the story is the sweet spot because, if you can pull it off, it creates a palpable tension that generates excitement… the thrill in thriller.

You also have to create two protagonists, one in each time-line, that the reader will find equally compelling and that will anchor the reader so they can endure the shifting POVs. In Calico, those characters are Beth McDade, a disgraced ex-LAPD cop, seeking redemption as a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s detective in the Mojave Desert in present day…and, in 1882, it’s unskilled wanderer Ben, desperately trying to survive in a silver mining camp located in a scorching, dry, desolate hell-scape. Ben’s choices in the past will have a profound impact on Beth’s life over 135 years later, when a homicide investigation will either redeem her… or destroy her.

I created a spreadsheet to track the two time lines…as well as the key plot moves/reveals which, if given away too soon or too late, could ruin the entire book. I also used the spread sheet to get a sense of the pacing, of when it would be the right time, emotionally or thematically, to shift time periods, to keep the narrative momentum moving at warp-speed.

Beyond telling a two-track story, I wanted to take the two genres (actually three) and, while delivering on the familiar tropes, also subvert all the baked-in cliches and expectations. So, I gave myself another delicate balancing act to perform: delivering a true police procedural and a western (and that other genre I’m not revealing), while also de-constructing them to create something new.

And if you’re crossing genres, and time-lines, it’s essential that you maintain the same tone and pacing across them both, so it doesn’t feel like two different books, but one relentlessly engaging thriller.

Calico was the hardest book I’ve ever written (out of nearly 40) but, in some ways, it’s been the most creatively rewarding. I’m glad I took the risk. Because I believe if I don’t occasionally scare or challenge myself, I’m going to fail anyway – because my writing will become formulaic and complacent. 

I hope you’ll read Calico… and that you’ll let me know if my high-wire act worked…or if I hit the ground with a sickening splat.  

Musing on Mitty

 At the just-completed Nashville Bouchercon, I was on the panel "Is It Over Now?: Bringing Characters to Life in Short Stories."  I always find these panels fun, a chance to meet some fellow writers and have engaging exchanges with the audience.  Our moderator, Meagan Lucas of Reckon Review, had some lively and insightful questions for us, including this: who is your favorite character from a short story?  For this particular question, I didn't have to think very hard.  My all-time favorite character from a short story is the protagonist of my all-time favorite short story: Walter Mitty, from James Thurber's masterful 1939 "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

If you haven't read "Mitty," you're missing something special, and you should go do so now.  It can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, and a little light Googling just might turn up a PDF version on the web, if you're not picky.

Am I going to spoil the story as I discuss it here?  In a way, although "Mitty" is a hard story to spoil, because, in some ways, it's barely a story at all.  It's very short, coming in at just over 2000 words, and strictly speaking almost nothing happens.  There's certainly not much that you could describe as a plot: Walter and his wife dive into the town of Waterbury to run a few errands.  That's it.

James Thurber

So what makes the story so memorable, and why is it worth talking about on a blog about crime fiction 85 years after it was published?

It's all about Walter.

Walter Mitty is fiction's ultimate daydreamer.  As he goes about the crushingly dull chores of a perfectly mundane day, he repeatedly slips into highly detailed reveries in which he is the world's foremost surgeon, or a crack pistol shot on trial for murder, or an RAF pilot stoically preparing for an impossible mission, and so on.  He's always jerked back to reality, but invariably returns to his inner world of fantasy, to the imaginary existences where his true life is lived.

As far as everyone else in the world is concerned, Walter is a shlub.  His wife nags and infantilizes him.  Cops yell at him to move it along.  Parking attendants and mechanics sneer at him, and store clerks condescend to him.  In his fantasies, however, he is powerful, accomplished, confident, feared, adored.  And here, perhaps, is the first reason for any reader or writer to love this story: it's a tribute to exactly the kind of enrichment and empowerment we have all felt in reading and writing; in slipping away into a story, of our own making or someone else's; in the world of fiction itself.  To be sure, Walter's specific fantasies owe more to the movies than to written fiction, but in a very real way Walter Mitty is a writer.  He may not be a great writer, or even a particularly good one; his fantasy life does lean heavily on familiar narrative tropes and genre archetypes.  Still, there are some inspired stylistic touches (I love the "pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" noise he imagines every machine as making), and you certainly can't fault him for lacking narrative energy.

What really makes the story work is that Thurber doesn't look down on Walter or condescend to him.  He shows us all the other people who feel disdain for Walter, but, right up through the story's perfect closing line (which I will not spoil here), he himself understands, sympathizes with, and even admires how Walter has made an interior life for himself that is so much richer and more fulfilling than his reality.

It hardly needs to be said that the story itself is masterfully written.  Thurber was a great prose stylist in the style of The New Yorker, where "Mitty" first appeared: sophisticated, witty, expressing tremendous emotion through restrained, carefully selected detail.  He creates one of literature's most enduring characters and his entire world in what amounts to about five pages, something anyone interested in short fiction can respect.  I particularly love the way small details are woven through through the story, linking Walter's inner and outer lives in clever ways.  

For example: remembering how he's been humiliated when his wife makes him take their car to a mechanic, Walter decides that next time he'll wear a sling on his right arm to show why he couldn't do the work himself.  In the meantime, he can't remember what it was his wife asked him to go buy, and while he's thinking about it, a passing newsboy shouts something about a trial.  In a flash, Walter is on the stand being interrogated by a district attorney about his ability to fire a fatal shot at a great distance with a pistol.  Walter's lawyer protests that his client had his right arm in a sling on the night of the murder, but Walter immediately and calmly asserts that he could have easily made the shot with his left hand.  A woman screams, the DA strikes out at her, and Walter punches him on the chin, calling him a "miserable cur"--and the physical Walter, standing on a sidewalk, says "puppy biscuit" out loud, having suddenly remembered what he's supposed to be shopping for.

A lot of what a writer needs to know about transitions and focus can be found in that passage.

Hollywood has taken two passes at adapting "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and while both films have elements of interest, neither completely lives up to the source (surprising, I know).  The first version, released in 1947, starred Danny Kaye as Walter and was directed by Norman Z. McLeod, who made some truly great comedies with people like the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields. Thurber was consulted at various points by the filmmakers, and there are small moments lifted more or less directly from his story, but he ultimately didn't care for the result.  The film's narrative and style were so directly shaped around its star's persona that Thurber is said to have referred to it as "The Public Life of Danny Kaye."

Kaye's Mitty is a proofreader at a publisher specializing in pulp and adventure magazines (in the original story, we're given no hint of Walter's occupation, and he may well be retired).  He's had this job for eleven years, but still lives at home with his overbearing mother, who tucks him in at night and brings him warm milk.  His abusive boss steals his best ideas while mocking him for his daydreams, and his fiancé is an empty-headed young woman who cares a good deal more for her dog than for Walter.  

The film is not, of course, content to let Walter remain just a daydreamer.  A chance encounter with a mysterious woman on a train draws him into a real-life adventure revolving around the location of Dutch treasures, hidden prior to the Nazi invasion and now sought by government agents and a gang of crooks.  The plot makes virtually no sense, but there is some fun to be had, particularly in Boris Karloff's turn as a malevolent psychologist who tries to get information from Walter by convincing him that it's all just been another daydream.  In the end, Walter asserts himself, foiling the bad guys, marrying the girl (the one from the train, natch) and demanding a promotion.  He thus earns what Thurber's Mitty never earns, and does not need: the validation of the external world.

Danny Kaye was known for comic songs built around nonsense patter, and the movie obliges him by shoehorning two of them in for no very good reason.  The first is particularly jarring.  It comes at a moment when Walter is having his fantasy of being an ace RAF fighter pilot, much of which--including some of the specific dialogue--is lifted directly from Thurber's text.  Suddenly, however, one of the other pilots remembers that when he and Mitty were in college together, Mitty did a hilarious imitation of their music professor.  Everyone present immediately demands that he do the imitation, causing Walter to shuck his RAF uniform, don a waiter's coat as an academic gown, and launch into a German-accented musical "lecture" about the history of a symphony.  When I watched the film, I felt as though the song lasted just a bit longer than WWII itself (the YouTube link above is only a portion of the number).  Danny Kaye was a talented man who did a lot of great things in his career, but this scene is the reason fast-forwarding was invented.

The other song, "Anatole of Paris," is somewhat more bearable, if only because it is shorter and easier to understand.  It comes when Walter, for reasons I won't even try to explain, is trapped at a fashion show and daydreams about being a famous designer of women's hats--not, I think, something that would have much appealed to Thurber's character.

The next big-screen version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty arrived in 2013 and starred Ben Stiller, who also directed, in the title role.  This version is even further removed from Thurber's story, but is, in my view, a considerably better film than Kaye's vehicle.  Stiller's Mitty works in the photo department of Life magazine, which is about to publish its final print edition before becoming Life Online (it's interesting that both movies have Walter working in publishing).  He has a crush on his coworker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), but can barely bring himself to speak to her, let alone send her a wink on eHarmony.  He's good at his job, but his family and coworkers are accustomed to the moments when he "zones out," entering one of his daydreams and becoming completely oblivious to what they're saying.

The daydreams in the 2013 Mitty are largely confined to the first half of the film, and none have any connection to the specific fantasies in Thurber's original.  They're mostly brief action sequences, like an elaborate, physics-defying martial arts battle with his smug jerk of a boss.  Inevitably, this Walter is also drawn into a real-life adventure.  A legendary photojournalist (Sean Penn) has sent in a picture to be used as the final Life cover, but it's been lost.  Walter sets out to track the photographer down, pursuing him first through Greenland and Iceland, then across "ungoverned Afghanistan" into the Himalayas.  Along the way he jumps from a helicopter into the shark-infested North Sea, flees an erupting volcano, plays soccer with warlords, and so on.  Once again, by the end of the film, he has gained the courage to act, making a date with Cheryl and telling off his boss.

Like the earlier film, this adaptation of "Mitty" inverts Thurber's story by presenting Walter's daydreams as a childish habit that must be left behind, rather than a defiant act of resistance again drudgery.  Still, the Stiller version is much more worthy of your time.  The central plot is engaging and reaches a satisfying resolution, the cast is stacked with talented performers (Patton Oswalt, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott), and much of the movie, particularly the sequences in Iceland, is stunningly beautiful.  It's also interesting as a kind of time capsule of the cultural moment when the old, analog world vanished into a new, digital one.  The film is explicitly an elegy for the print version of Life, and thus an elegy for the world of newsstand magazines--like the one that gave birth to "Mitty" to begin with.

We really did lose a great deal when we let that world slip away.  Computers can do a lot, but they hardly ever go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.

   

Where Have All the Gentleman Gone?

 

Warning: Controversial material ahead 

 

Mike and I had a favourite couple over for dinner last weekend, and something Cindy said has been haunting me ever since.

Where have all the Gentlemen gone?  

It used to be that Cary Grant and David Niven were role models for young men.  All the girls swooned over Cary Grant, so young men wanted to BE like Cary Grant. 

It wasn't just his looks.  It was the way he treated others. He was a Gentleman.

I remember other gentlemen from the movies: Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Elvis and even John Wayne!  Men who treated women with respect, but were still highly regarded as men who would step up to battle (be it personal, or wartime) if needed.

A gentleman was strong. He was sure of himself. He didn't have to belittle others to make himself feel good.

My own favourite was Humphrey Bogart.  Yes, he was way before my time, but movies like Casablanca and To Have and Have Not, cemented my ideas of what an ideal man would be like.  Someone who is decent and honorable, but also a protector.

You ask any woman what she wants in a man, and most will say 'a Gentleman'.  What do we mean? A fellow who treats her with respect.  Who understands that she deserves agency over her own life. Who does not use blue language around her. Who especially does not refer to women's body parts crudely, as if talking about a prostitute. ( I'm reminded of a certain political candidate here...)

I ask again: where have all the gentlemen gone? How did we lose this ideal?

My friend puts this sorry change down to the movies. In the old days, many movies put value on the way a man behaved.  If he treated women well, was honest with others and decent in his behaviour, he was a good guy.  He got to wear the white hat. This reflected societal values - the values I grew up with.

Now, so many movies and thriller novels portray the 'good guy' as a killer; they glorify bullies who use crude language that belittles women, while blasting their way through countless people, grinning all the while.

If that is the current idea of a hero in Hollywood or thrillers, then it's no wonder young men are seeing this as a role model.

But I tell you, men - it's not what women want.  Ask us.

 

With thanks to all the men in my life, and on Sleuthsayers, who are Gentlemen.

 

Melodie Campbell loves creating steadfast, courageous heroes with honour, who are gentlemen.  You can read about them in The Merry Widow Murder series, including the upcoming Silent Film Star Murders.  Available now for preorder at Barnes and Noble, Chapters/Indigo, and all the usual suspects.

 

And to Think It Was All Started by a Fish

I was ten years old when Jaws hit movie theaters in 1975. There was no particular reason why my parents would take me and my siblings to see such a movie. Even after the movie became the hit of that summer, one that forever altered the summer movie-going experience, we still didn’t go. In general, the ‘rents didn’t like shelling out for theater runs, and they certainly didn’t relish the thought of dealing with the nightmares that would inevitably ensue among their three young sons after such a viewing.

How wise they were! A few summers later, when we visited a beloved aunt who lived at the Jersey Shore, she unhesitatingly took us to see the sequel at a drive-in. It’s generally acknowledged today that that movie (and all the sequels that followed) were terrible, but tell that to a kid who refused to enter the water for the rest of his so-called beach vacation.

Even today, I don’t really “do” horror. Don’t read or watch much of it, because, well, it scares me. The Jaws movie poster and the gigantic black-and-white ads that appeared in our local newspaper that year both mesmerized and scared me off. But this was also a transitional period for me, during which I routinely dipped in and out of grown-up books. And wherever I prowled garage sales, flea markets, and library sales, the Bantam paperback edition of Jaws was ubiquitous and dirt cheap. The going rate for used paperbacks then was ten cents. Who could resist?

The book scared the bejesus out of me, of course. It was coldly scientific, and occasionally salacious. The affair between Chief Brody’s wife and ichthyologist Hooper, for one thing, is something I can recall with a crazy amount of detail today, though I haven’t looked at the book in forty-plus years. Guess their sex scene was seared into my brain. For years after, I didn’t rush to read other books Peter Benchley wrote, but they were always on my radar. I read one of his later thrillers as a slightly older kid who was now interested in writing, and I remember mulling it over for days. How few characters he needed to create conflict, how the action of the book neatly shook down into three decent acts, and so on.

After college, a girlfriend dragged me to see Jaws: The Revenge, which I frankly found repellant on so many levels that I never dipped into the franchise again.

I had occasion to reconsider my Jaws experience sometime last year when my wife bought the first and arguably only watchable film, and started leaving it on while we cooked dinner. It’s crazy; this film was such a huge part of American culture, but I don’t think I had ever watched it all the way through until now.

Once, for work, I had traveled to Martha’s Vineyard—where the movie was shot—to interview a coppersmith for a home magazine. I spent an entire day with the (now departed) Travis Tuck, driving around the island to look at all the weathervanes he had designed and constructed for his high-end clients. But the very first weathervane he created, which launched his career, was a raging shark for the top of Quint’s shack. (The artisan firm Tuck started still sells replicas, and they’ve since created a velociraptor for one of Spielberg’s homes.)

T-shirt No. 1

I knew Tuck’s story. I had seen photos of the weathervane he created, but I still never watched the entire film. And when I did, finally, two things leaped out at me. One: Hollywood would never allow such normal-looking people in movies these days. The film looks like Spielberg went to Martha’s Vineyard and just started shooting ordinary people he saw walking around. Not even the movie stars—Shaw, Scheider, Dreyfuss, etc.—look like movie stars. Two: the film adheres to a nearly flawless story structure better than Benchley’s book.

Some people call it a horror movie, but most describe it as a thriller. Our own Fran Rizer called it a “howdunnit,” because the killer is known from the beginning. We watch, she said, to learn how our heroes will catch and kill it.

Most stories need a character in a setting with a problem. The character tries to solves the problem, and fails. Their try/fail cycle continues as the stakes rise. Things go south, leading to a moment when all is nearly lost. The character must do or die. And lo—he/she succeeds and triumphs. That’s police chief Brody in Jaws.

The biggest chunk of action happens when these three very different men hit the open sea to kill the shark. Their skills levels vary, but each has their own reasons for being there. In the end, the guy with the least shark experience defeats the monster. Holy crap—a great story.

I dug deep into the lore of my new favorite old movie a few weeks ago. When my wife returned from a trip to Martha’s Vineyard with a girlfriend, she presented me a couple of Jaws T-shirts that will I never wear for fear of coffee stains. And when she told me that Vineyarders are gearing up to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the film next year, my mind was blown. The significance of the dates had escaped me.

Gee—time flies, huh, folks?

This April 1974 New York Times Magazine
cover story offered a comprehensive
behind-the-scenes look at the
book’s journey to publication.
(Link to story below.)

It’s actually a dual anniversary. The book pubbed in February 1974, which makes 2024 a 50^th anniversary suitable for a lesson in the changing world of book publishing. Imagine: a writer meets for lunch with a book editor, sketches out an idea for a book he thinks he might want to write, and the editor offers to pay him a $1,000 just to write the first three chapters, and see what they all think about the concept.

After the editor buys the full manuscript, he circulates a few chapters around the office daring his fellow staffers to read the first chapter only. They all know they have something potentially big, but they waffle on the title and cover art. I don’t think the book would have had the same punch if it had been called Leviathan Rising, or The Stillness in the Water, as originally proposed.

When the book launched, it was reviewed twice by the New York Times (something that still happens to this day), with both reviewers dismissing it snottily. Lord, what fools these mortals be! The hardcover parked itself on the Times Bestseller List for 45 weeks, and the paperback sold 9 million copies by the end of 1975, after the movie came out. (The book sales figure stands at an estimated 20 million today) Bantam’s paperback, which is the one I read and the edition we all know, is the first one to carry that indelible shark image that made the franchise. (You can read the story behind the book’s covers at a link below; apparently the original painting has been lost.)

T-shirt No. 2. Wish I knew who designed it.

The movie was Spielberg’s third. It was a big deal to entrust an $8 million movie to a neophyte director who was not yet 30. His decision to shoot on the open sea instead of a backlot tank was a choice that nearly bankrupted the production. Saltwater wreaked havoc with the pneumatic guts of “Bruce,” the three mechanical robots that brought the monster to life, causing the production to fall behind by about 100 days.

We, they, all of us laugh about this now. The finished film was the first to earn $100 million, and it taught Hollywood the wisdom of releasing summer “tentpole” or (must-see blockbusters) films. It also taught them that sequels could be a great thing for them, albeit only occasionally for us. The success transformed author Peter Benchley into a lifetime activist and advocate for marine life. A longtime lover of the sea, he was horrified to learn that the thing he created was now responsible for the wanton slaughter of sharks by macho idiots who believed that they were purging the seas of manhunters. Before he died in 2006 at age 65, he told interviewers that he regretted creating the impression that a great white would intentionally attack humans out of spite or malice.

Script is currently only available
from the licensors of the play.

It’s interesting to see how the book and film keep spawning new creations, and no, I’m not just talking about T-shirts, yellow drum earrings, and Jaws-themed etsy swag. Right before Covid, a small stage play called The Shark is Broken debuted in London, co-written by Ian Shaw, the son of actor Robert Shaw, who so masterfully portrayed the shark hunter Quint in the film. Poignantly, Ian Shaw played his father in both the London and New York productions.

The 90-minute comedy-drama is takes place during the filming of Jaws, when the three main actors—Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss—are stuck aboard the set of their boat, the Orca, killing time, playing pub games, drinking heavily, and bickering while Spielberg’s team tries to fix their famously temperamental mechanical “co-star.”

I loved reading the playscript. I think it would make an engaging, funny movie in its own right, but I should probably mention that reviews have been mixed on both sides of the pond. The Shaw character struggles with his alcoholism throughout the play, and twice botches his famous USS Indianapolis scene. He despises the lines the scriptwriters have asked him to speak, and begs Spielberg’s indulgence to rewrite it. (The elder Shaw was an accomplished novelist and playwright.) The play culminates with his rendition of what is now regarded as one of the greatest monologues in cinema. It’s the scene that reveals Quint’s psychology and why he wants the shark dead.

Of course, the larger conceit of the play is that all three actors have no freaking clue how well this movie will do, and how it will forever change their lives. Well, I thought as I read, they were hardly alone, were they?

Thanks for reading. Some background material that you might enjoy:

A look back at the book phenomenon. (NYT)

An article on the making of the iconic cover design. (Print Mag)

The exhaustive 1974 article on the making of the bestseller. (NYT Mag)

Widow of Peter Benchley shares her recollections. (Marthas Vineyard Times)

---

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

WWAD: What Would Andy Do?

I have been enjoying Andrew Welsh-Huggins' fiction for years. I recently heard him interviewed on the House of Mystery podcast and was intrigued by a phrase he used.  I invited him to expand on it, and it is the title of this piece. Andrew has been nominated for the Shamus, Derringer and International Thriller Writers Awards.  His eighth Andy Hayes novel, Sick to Death, came out this month. Read more about him here.

WWAD: What Would Andy Do?
by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

I just can’t get this guy out of my head.

The person in question is Andy Hayes, the fictional protagonist in my long-running series about a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned private eye. He’s been knocking around my cranium for a dozen years or more, since the day I decided to take a break from writing nonfiction and try my hand at a private eye novel.

           So that’s how it happened.
            Zip it. I’m trying to explain some stuff here.
          Ooh, Mr. Fancy Novelist.

Anyway, like many of my characters, he didn’t come close to arriving fully formed. When he first popped into my imagination, he was on a long bike ride someplace in Ohio and suddenly fielded a call from a potential client. He didn’t even have a football background yet. But not to worry. He settled in, made himself comfortable, and got down to the business of accompanying me everywhere I went as I got to know him. He still does, all these years later, whether I like it or not.

           Are you saying I’m annoying?
            Not really. But please, keep it down. I’m writing.
          Again? What a surprise.

It’s true that anytime I encounter a boorish or mean person, I imagine how Andy would deal with them, up to and including a physical encounter. As someone who’s been in approximately one physical fight in my sixty-odd years, I take all the cues I can get for how to write realistic confrontations. More valuable to character-building, however, is putting myself in my protagonist’s shoes in a variety of quotidian activities, from jogging to shopping to eating out. 

          Which reminds me, I’m hungry.
            Tell me something new, why don’t you?

In general, I look at the world through Andy’s eyes in three situations:

 • Restaurants. I spend way too much time figuring out what kind of food my protagonist would order, but it’s all part of figuring out his personality. On the surface, Andy would appear to be a classic meat-and-potatoes guy, with pizza for dessert. But he, like any parent, is influenced by what his health-conscious kids order and increasingly isn’t averse to salads and vegetarian meals from time to time (not to mention his girlfriends’ preferences).

          I draw the line at quinoa, though.
            Sorry, bud. I’m the one who draws the lines.

• Sporting events. This is not as obvious a character-seeking exercise as you’d think, given Andy’s fictional backstory. As a young man, he went from BMOC star quarterback to throwing a game that cost Ohio State the national championship. Not surprisingly, a few decades on he has mixed feelings about sports culture and its associated fanatics. As a result, it’s illustrative to find him watching a baseball game, hockey match, or soccer contest, and see him wrestle with his feelings about his sporting past, especially when people around him are enjoying the game. I’ve learned a lot about the guy sitting in ballpark and arena seats.

          You forgot Roller Derby.
             Thanks, Mr. Equal Opportunity.

 ª Finally, shopping. Forget gun battles, fist fights and, oh yeah, a moral compass. Figuring out how my protagonist would tackle a trip to the grocery store, Target, or Walgreens or CVS, is one of the best exercises in determining character I’ve found. Does he choose organic or non-organic produce? (Non-organic, like me.) Does he buy name-brand or generic toiletries and cleaning supplies? (Generic, unlike me). Whole milk or skim? Pulped juice or non-pulp? Folgers or Starbucks?

          And kibble.
             Right. Gotta keep your labrador happy.

Though trivial-sounding, these in-my-head conversations are crucial to determining character traits and quirks. But they are also important in reining in what I think of as authorial auto-reflection, or a tendency to assign a favorite character my own preferences, prejudices, and perspectives, without discerning whether he or she would actually think that way.

Over the years, this has helped me infuse my protagonist with significant differences: he stocks and drinks Carling Black Label beer, for instance, whereas I’m hard-pressed to have more than one or two cans of the swill a year.

          Swill. Really?
            Yes. Really.

Moving on. He’s a dog person, I’m a cat guy. He’s all about non-fiction, I’m mainly (though not exclusively) a fiction reader. Perhaps most importantly to the series, he’s been married twice, with a broken engagement thrown in for good measure, has two sons by two different ex-wives, and an adult daughter from a one-night stand he barely remembers. These days, trying to put his bad boy past behind him, he operates as a kind of serial monogamist. As for me, I’ve been married to the same woman for forty years. But my protagonist and I both have three children, so at least there’s something in common on the family front.

Ten years in, I still walk to the post office trying to figure out which side of the street Andy would choose and what he’d look at on the way. But the relationship is more comfortable, and more familiar, now than we’ve been together for so long.

Fortunately, I have another challenge. I’m writing about a new character these days, Mercury Carter, a former federal agent turned freelance courier, who is cut from a different cloth than my ex-quarterback. I know Mercury loves baseball, prefers tea to coffee, and eschews most alcohol with the weird exception of sake. Why any of this is so, I’m still trying to figure out. After all, he’s only just taken up residence. And there’s a lot to learn about him.

          Hey. Who’s the new guy? It’s getting crowded in here.
            Get used to it. There’s more on the way.
          Oh, joy.

Nelson DeMille

I wanted to put in my own two cents about Nelson DeMille, after Joe Finder’s warm personal appreciation last week on Facebook, and John Floyd’s recent SleuthSayers piece, about DeMille’s influence and inspiration. I have two favorites among DeMille’s books, Up Country and The Charm School, for quite different reasons, so here goes. Up Country came out in 2002. It’s the book that sends us back to Viet Nam. If you didn’t know, DeMille served as a platoon leader with the 1st Cav, during the Tet Offensive in 1968. I don’t, in all honesty, think Up Country is that successful as a novel, it seems both languorous and contrived, but there are many vivid moments of striking emotional transparency, when the hero, Brenner, or another American vet on the reunion tour (so to speak), are overcome by memories of what they experienced in their previous combat tour. They make a stop at Cu Chi, in one scene, and go down into the tunnels. Brenner comes back up, and there’s a guy – an American, a former GI – sitting in the dirt, pale and shaking, with the cold sweats, and he hasn’t even gone into the tunnels. Just the thought of it is enough to give him a panic attack. You know that the former platoon leader went to Viet Nam, this time as a tourist, to see what it was like, now, and to see how he felt, and you know that things like this happened, while he was there. We can’t complain that a writer didn’t write the book we wish he had, we all know we write the book only we can write, and we write the only book we can. All the same, I still wish Nelson had written this, not as a novel, but as a memory piece, Viet Nam in his mind’s eye. The Charm School is a very different kettle of fish. It, too, has a Viet Nam connection – see below, spoiler alert – and it came out in 1988, when the fall of Saigon, thirteen years before, was a living memory, and an embarrassment. This, actually, makes up a part of our response to the novel, or certainly, part of my response to the novel. I have to give you a notion of the major plot hook, here, and if you haven’t read The Charm School, skip this next part. One of the chief rewards of the book is its reveal, the measured release, easing the tension off the line, and taking up the slack, but by then you’ve already swallowed the lure. Anyway, the basic idea is that the Russians have built a fake American suburban community, to train sleeper agents. Everybody speaks English, they dress in khakis and button-downs, they shoot hoops in the driveway. But the kicker is that the core role models for these deep-cover agents are American POW’s, captured by the North Vietnamese but then shipped off to the Soviet gulag. So, take a step back. First off, the late 1980’s. Me personally, I always thought the whole POW/MIA thing was a lot of hooey. It’s a fake controversy drummed up to satisfy American vanity, the premise of a couple or three very bad Chuck Norris pictures, that struck a resonant nerve in our domestic grievance politics. I’d call it some kind of mental illness, in fact, to believe we didn’t lose in Viet Nam. It’s also racist. How could a bunch of bandy-legged gooks in black pyjamas beat the strongest military power in the world? Well, the answer is, they didn’t: here’s Chuck, come back to kick their ass. We’ve invented an alternate reality, where history is negotiable, and the loudest voices crowd out the rest. I don’t where DeMille himself stood on this, but I’m guessing he’d be of the same mind I am. The point, on the other hand, is that he took a far-fetched premise - not just preposterous, but politically repellent – and made it utterly convincing. You don’t have to go one way or the other on the MIA question, once you step inside the reality of the book, it all follows inexorably. The Charm School is flat-out one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read, in spite of my not wanting to believe a word of it. I’m sorry you left us, Nelson. May the road rise up to meet you.

Untied

In 2015, I had my first story accepted for publication. I'd seen a posting for the Black Orchid Novella Award. For those unfamiliar, the Black Orchid is a collaboration between The Wolfe Pack, the Official Nero Wolfe Literary Society, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

      The challenge is to write a 15 to 20,000-word story in the deductive style exemplified by the Nero Wolfe series. I submitted a story, and it was selected. In December 2015, The Wolfe Pack etched my name onto the scroll of winners, a list that included fellow SleuthSayers Steve Liskow and Robert Lopresti. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine published "A Meter of Murder" the following summer.

(The next deadline is May 31^st, 2025, for anyone wishing to enter the contest. The details may be found at The Wolfe Pack's website.)

     The winner is feted at a banquet in Manhattan. My traveling companion and I gleefully traveled to New York City for the dinner. The evening was a clubby affair with song competitions and toasts dedicated to the cast of characters inhabiting Rex Stout's fictional universe. An erudite speaker talked about the author's place in the mystery genre surrounded by a roomful of well-dressed aficionados.

     I was an almost-published author sitting as a guest of honor at a banquet in the literary capital of the United States. I exuded bonhomie and urbanity.

      I might easily have said that I felt smart and happy. Banqueted literary sophisticates, however, allow words like bonhomie to drop effortlessly from our lips. They are what set us apart.

      Shortly after my triumphal return to Fort Worth, I received a compliment from a woman who had attended the dinner. She emailed me to say she'd read and enjoyed the story. In particular, she praised the denouement.

      Since our conversation was via email, I had the opportunity to look up denouement before I replied. I was pretty sure I knew what she meant; the context clues revealed that. But as a recently banqueted, budding literary sophisticate, it was not a word I'd ever used, so I wanted to double-check.

      In the legal profession, we tend to say final argument or summation. I knew those terms. I also had a smattering of impressive-sounding legal-Latin phrases at my tongue's command. Literary words, however, I was still picking up one at a time.

      Before replying, I looked up denouement's definition and confirmed I understood the meaning. I also checked the pronunciation guide. After a few quick taps into my search engine, I quickly and accurately wrote her back, thanking her for her kind words. I'm confident my reply dripped literary panache.

      For the scant few who might also have missed English class that day, denouement is an elegant literary term used to describe the final part of a story. The denouement is the place in the tale where the details are wrapped up, where the various threads of the plot are drawn together and resolved. Our English word was first borrowed in the 18th Century from a French term for "untying." The guides to proper pronunciation taught me to say Dey-noo-mahn, although the internet authorities have differing views on how much emphasis to place on that final N. Everyone agrees that the T gets kicked to the curb.

      It's not often that you can accurately say when you learned a word. I can pinpoint this one. My path to knowledge began on the first Saturday in December 2015.

      When I've had a brief run of publications or something else has occurred to make me think I'm all literary, I'll remember that story. Before I pull out the herringbone jacket with the leather elbow patches and begin holding forth, I remind myself of how I learned this stock literary term late in the game. It makes me remember how much more I still need to know about this writing business. The lesson, undoubtedly, has saved me from embarrassment. (Summertime in Fort Worth is way too hot for tweed anyway.) Recalling the story helps me reset my ego. The memory proves less bruising than opening the folder containing all my recent rejection emails.

      The current issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine contains my story, "The Denouement of a Most Curious Case." And there you have the story's origin. The tale might have easily been "The Resolution of a Most Curious Case" or "The Solution to a Most Curious Case." But for me, it had to be Denouement.

      The word simultaneously reminds me of a success and a failure. It conjures up an image of an education continually in progress. The story began with an idea about writing a denouement, and the tale piled up around it. Starting with "A Meter of Murder," I've always been thrilled when the folks at Alfred Hitchcock include one of my stories. I'm again honored that they chose to publish this one.

      And since Denouement is printed rather than spoken, I don't have to reveal how much emphasis I put on the final N.

       Until next time.

Say what?

            

            Much of writing you have to make up.  

            This is hard work, taxing for the mind and body, which has to input the effort on a keyboard.  But I find dialogue much easier, since it usually just comes to you over the airwaves – on the sidewalk, at the cash register, in friendly conversations with close friends and strangers. 

            I live in both Connecticut and New York, so there are regional nuances, but all fertile territory. 

            One day I was walking my dog past an outdoor restaurant and there was a clutch of late middle-aged New Yorkers more or less in the way.  As my dog and I negotiated the tight space, one of them said, “Cute dog.”

            I thanked her. 

            “How much?” asked one of the guys.  “For the dog.”

            “I don’t know,” I said. “Make me an offer.”

            “How old is he?” the woman asked.

            “About ten.”

            “Oh,” said another guy, “So we get depreciation.”

            Several years ago, a local paper in Connecticut had an article on my novel writing.  It included a photo.  I went into the hardware store I’d been frequenting for about twenty years, staffed by dour Yankees who only knew how to say, “It’s over there,” and “Thank you,” when you bought something.  That day, the granite-faced clerk looked at me and said, “You’re Knopf.”

            I admitted I was.

            “I knew it.”

            Just recently I picked up an O ring I’d special ordered from a tool repair shop in New York.  The tab was about $1.75.  When the woman behind the counter rang me up, I said, “Big sale for you folks.”

            “Yeah, I’m locking up and we’re heading out to the bar.”

            I was at Walmart buying a pile of stuffed animals for a Christmas toy drive.  One of the toys was a little dog in a seated position.  When I put it on the conveyor, I said, “Sit.  Stay.” The cashier looked over and said, “Now there’s good boy.”

            I was having some hardwood milled at a lumber yard.  I was standing there with a friend while the old, bearded mill worker in a flannel shirt with gnarly hands was feeding the material through various machines.  For this one piece, I asked the guy to rip it. 

            My friend said, “Rip it good.”

            Without looking up, the guy responded, “Into shape.  Shape it up. Get straight.  Go forward.  Move ahead.  You gotta rip it.  Rip it good.”

           I was listening on the radio to a couple of scientists talk about the difficulty of designing a Mars rover given the extreme conditions on the planet.  One of them said, “It can get up to well over two hundred degrees during the day.”

The other guy said, ”But it’s a dry heat.”

I was late for a meeting in New York, held up by a huge traffic jam only a few blocks away from the meeting place, a midtown hotel.  When I got there, literally hot and bothered, the guy at the front desk, a native African of some sort, lamented that the cause of the problem was a state visit by an African dignitary who decided to spend the afternoon visiting the department stores along Fifth Avenue.  He apologized on behalf of the hotel and the entire African continent.  At that moment, the doorman, a burly white guy clearly from Brooklyn, dressed in his John Sousa uniform, volunteered, “I think it’s the king of fuckin’ Somalia.”

The desk manager nodded at that, and said, “Can’t feed his own people and what is he doing?  Shopping at Bergdorf’s.”

The two of them smiled at each other in solidarity.

It’s too much to say that I live for these moments, but obviously they’re unforgettable.  It’s not just the humor, but the timing of the delivery, the spontaneity of the response.  It’s a type of improvisational music.  A volley and serve poetry.  And it’s an elevated example of how people naturally speak.  All you have to do is remember the rhythm to fit the content to your story.

It’s the soundtrack of our lives if you take the trouble to listen. 

AI on AI

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Real Life

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our daily lives, transforming various sectors and enhancing the way we live and work. From healthcare to finance, education to entertainment, AI’s applications are vast and continually expanding. Here are some key areas where AI is making a significant impact:

Healthcare

AI is revolutionizing healthcare by improving diagnostics, personalizing treatment plans, and predicting patient outcomes. AI algorithms can analyze medical images with high accuracy, assisting doctors in detecting diseases like cancer at early stages. Additionally, AI-powered tools can monitor patient vitals and predict potential health issues, enabling timely interventions.^[01]

Leigh: I anticipate robotic nursing assistants will rapidly move into disabled and elder care. The initial robots may not look humanoid, but they will have strong and gentle arms capable of lifting patients in and out of baths and toilets. AI and possibly AI robotic figures may find use to alleviating patient loneliness and boredom. Chess anyone?

Finance

In the financial sector, AI is used for fraud detection, risk management, and personalized banking. AI systems can analyze transaction patterns to identify fraudulent activities in real-time. Moreover, AI-driven chatbots provide customers with personalized financial advice and support, enhancing the overall banking experience.^[02]

Education

AI is transforming education by offering personalized learning experiences. Adaptive learning platforms use AI to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses, tailoring educational content to meet individual needs. This personalized approach helps students learn more effectively and at their own pace.^[03]

Transportation

AI is at the forefront of developing autonomous vehicles, which promise to make transportation safer and more efficient. Self-driving cars use AI to navigate roads, avoid obstacles, and make real-time decisions, reducing the risk of accidents caused by human error.^[04]

Leigh: Vehicles like the Tesla with FSD (full self-driving) are actually robots on wheels. I suspect one advance will be the ability to communicate with like-minded vehicles. “Car 54, your view is blocked of a child running into the street, vector 13.56.”

Entertainment

In the entertainment industry, AI is used to create personalized content recommendations. Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify use AI algorithms to analyze user preferences and suggest movies, shows, and music that align with their tastes. This enhances user engagement and satisfaction.^[05]

Leigh: And with that said, just for fun…

AI’s Role in Mystery Fiction Writing

For mystery fiction writers, AI offers a range of tools and capabilities that can enhance the creative process and streamline writing tasks. Here are some ways AI can be particularly useful for mystery fiction writers:

Plot Development

AI can assist writers in developing intricate and compelling plots. By analyzing existing mystery novels, AI can identify common plot structures and suggest new twists and turns. This helps writers craft engaging and unpredictable stories that keep readers on the edge of their seats.^[06]

Character Creation

Creating multi-dimensional characters is crucial in mystery fiction. AI can generate detailed character profiles, including backstories, personality traits, and motivations. For instance, an AI might suggest that a detective character has a mysterious past as a former spy, adding depth and intrigue to the story.^[07]

Writing Assistance

AI-powered writing tools can help authors with grammar, style, and coherence. These tools can provide real-time feedback, suggesting improvements and ensuring the narrative flows smoothly. Additionally, AI can help writers maintain consistency in tone and style throughout the manuscript.^[08]

Idea Generation

When facing writer’s block, AI can be a valuable brainstorming partner. AI can generate prompts, plot ideas, and even entire scenes based on the writer’s input. This can spark creativity and help writers overcome hurdles in the writing process.^[09]

Market Analysis

AI can analyze reader preferences and market trends, providing writers with insights into what themes and genres are currently popular. This information can guide writers in tailoring their stories to meet reader expectations and increase their chances of success.^[10]

In conclusion, AI is a powerful tool that can significantly enhance various aspects of our lives, including the creative process for mystery fiction writers. By leveraging AI’s capabilities, writers can develop richer stories, create compelling characters, and engage readers in new and exciting ways.

^[01] Beebom • ^[02] Tableau • ^[03] Adobe Experience • ^[04] Coursera • ^[05] GeeksforGeeks • ^[06] The Verge • ^[07] AIContentfy • ^[08] Mashable • ^[09] WriteMe • ^[10] Squibler

---

Human Here

Leigh: I recently wrote about AI and a bit of what we might expect, whether sweet or sour. As I'm sure you surmised, I asked ChatGPT (a large-language model AI) to write an essay on the topic. This is the result.

R.I.P., Nelson DeMille

  

Three days ago, I sat down to start a column about writing dialog--rules, myths, hints, tips--that I intended to post here at SleuthSayers today (I'm up every first, third, and fifth Saturday). Instead, I immediately saw a post by friend Don Longmuir on Facebook about the September 17 passing of crime/suspense author Nelson Demille.

All of a sudden I had no interest at all in writing a blog post about dialog. I couldn't seem to think about anything else except the unexpected loss of one of my favorite authors. I mean, much of what I learned and know about dialog--and other elements of fiction as well--I learned from DeMille's work. I devoured his books.

By way of background, Nelson DeMille was a NYT bestseller and Vietnam veteran who lived most of his life on Long Island. His novels were full of dry humor and sarcasm, and often avoided so-called "Hollywood endings"--they often finished in a satisfying but unexpected way, with the characters' futures unresolved. As far as I know, only one of his novels has been adapted for film: The General's Daughter (1990), starring John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, and James Cromwell--though I suspect almost all of them have been optioned. Now that he's gone, I especially hope that more movies will follow.

I own all his major novels, in hardcover because I bought them as soon as they were released, beginning with By the Rivers of Babylon in 1978. (I was a Book-of-the-Month Club member back then, and I think it was a main selection, sent to me automatically.) I loved it, and was an avid fan from that point on. Looking at one of the shelves behind where I'm sitting right now, I have twenty-three of his novels, two of them co-written with his son Alex. Every one of them is special. DeMille is one of those few writers whose books I will pick up and re-read every few years. 

One of the things that 's always surprised me a bit is that so many of my writer friends, and readers also, are unfamiliar with his fiction. Those who do know of him seem to be most familiar with one particular series he wrote, beginning with Plum Island in 1997, starring retired NYPD detective John Corey. I believe there are eight Corey novels, but I can tell you, I thought all DeMille's books, series or standalone, were good--well-written, entertaining, and sometimes educational. One of the things I most loved about them is the way he inserted humor into otherwise serious fiction, sometimes on almost every page. It makes reading--and re-reading--his novels even more fun. 

For what it's worth, my favorite DeMilles are The Charm School (1988), Plum Island (1997), Up Country, (2002), Wild Fire (2006), and The Cuban Affair (2017). Only two of those are installments in the John Corey series, but again, I liked 'em all.

I never knew Mr. DeMille or met him, except via one Zoom call a couple of years ago. But some of those who did know him well--Otto Penzler, Andrew Gulli, and others--have told me he was as good and as interesting a person as he was a writer. I know for sure that he's one of several authors who had a great influence on me and my storytelling. 

(Something only just occurred to me: The feeling I had when I learned of DeMille's death the other day was like the way I felt the week before, when I heard James Earl Jones had died. I never knew either of them, but somehow it seemed as if I did. Probably because I so admired and respected them, and spent so much time reading and watching them over the years.)

 

In closing, if you've not read the novels of Nelson DeMille I hope you will, and if you've already read some of his work, I'd love to hear what you think, in the comments section below. Personally, I will miss him greatly, and will miss looking forward to his next release.

As for my column on dialog, I'm not letting you off that easy. It'll be my next post.

See you in two weeks!