Slow

As you may or may not have noticed, I wasn’t around much last week, I was on vacation in the lovely mountains of North Carolina (folks from out West are asked to hold their “you call THOSE mountains?” remarks for the time being).

It was a bit of a departure for me, since vacations for the Rhoades clan have traditionally involved a lazy week at the beach.  But we had a free place to  stay at my folks’ condo on Beech Mountain, so we decided to seize the opportunity.

I’ve often observed that there are marked differences between the type of folks who like to vacation in the mountains and those who vacation at the beach. As I wrote a few years ago:

  • Mountain people are on the move: up the trail, down the slope, across the rock face. Beach people have to be reminded to turn over periodically so that the sunburn is evenly distributed. When they do move, beach people prefer an aimless ramble along the shore rather than a brisk hike up a steep slope.
  • Mountain people are into gear: backpacks, boots, bikes, skis, etc. Beach people tend to regard shirts and shoes as an imposition.
  • Mountain people love the breathtaking vistas of peaks and valleys. The peaks and valleys that appeal to beach people are covered (barely) by Lycra and Spandex.
  • Mountain people experiment to get the right ratio of nuts to raisins in the trail mix. Beach people argue over the perfect Margarita recipe.
  • Mountain people like freshly caught trout grilled over an open campfire. Beach people like shrimp broiled in butter or deep fried, especially in Calabash, N.C. (aka Arteriosclerosis-by-the-Sea). And don’t forget the hushpuppies.
  • Mountain people are exhilarated by the smell of clean, crisp air. Beach people get all misty-eyed at the scent of Hawaiian Tropic or Banana Boat.
  • Mountain people throw logs on blazing fires. Beach people rub aloe vera on blazing sunburns.

This is not to say I didn’t have at least some time to be indolent. We spent a day lounging by (and swimming in)  lovely, cool Wildcat Lake in Banner Elk:


And I watched a few sunsets from the deck:

 

But there was also plenty of walking, to places like the Wilson’s Creek Overlook on the  Parkway, which you reach by a trail that closely resembles a stone staircase  3/4 of a mile long, but which rewards you with this view: 

 

Or the hike to Linville Gorge:

 All in all, though, it was a chance to live a little more slowly. I still did a lot of the things I do every day, like check e-mail, but with every one I made myself answer the question, “do I really need to respond to this today?” With a very few exceptions, the answer came back “nope,” as I closed the lid on the laptop. Very liberating, that. I recommend it.

I got less writing done than I’d planned. But that was okay. I wrote when I wanted, and I got a clearer vision of where I wanted the book to go in its last act. A long walk in the mountains  will do that, when you’re not gasping for breath and hoping those spots in front of your eyes don’t mean you’re about to have some sort of aneurysm.

I also got a lot less reading done than I usually do on vacation. I’m typically pretty cocky about the number of novels I can burn through while lying on the beach. This time, I got exactly two read (Brad Thor’s STATE OF THE UNION and Ian Rankin’s A QUESTION OF BLOOD, if you’re interested). But I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

Which caused me to reflect: what the heck is my hurry when it comes to reading, anyway? Even with books I like, I tend to be constantly checking where I am in relation to the last page, eager to get to the end and go on to the next book in the TBR pile. And why brag, as i’ve been known to do, about how many books I read in a week off? Since when did reading become competitive for me?

When considering the question I came across this article on the “Slow Reading” movement. Seems that I’m not the only one to ask the question, “what’s your hurry?” when reading. “Mostly,” the article says, “the ‘movement’  is just a bunch of authors, schoolteachers, and college professors who think that just maybe we’re all reading too much too fast and that instead we should think more highly of those who take their time with a book or an article.” The idea goes all the way back to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “who in 1887 described himself as a ‘teacher of slow reading.” Slow reading, the theory goes, increases comprehension and enjoyment of the text. It’s hard to do in this high speed, hyperlinked world, but now that I’m back to that world  after a week of living slowly, I think I’ll try a little slow reading. I know life’s short and work often demands speed…. but what’s the use of hurrying through your pleasures?

‘Rati, what say you? Anyone for some slow reading? Or do you do that already?

Dispatches from Hollywood

Today, my new book ICE COLD goes on sale in the U.S.  And this release, like every release before it, is filling me with a mixture of joy, excitement, apprehension, and yes — even a bit of dread.  Because I’m so good at imagining all the things that can go wrong.

So I’m going to distract myself from the book-release butterflies in my stomach by talking instead about my visit over the weekend to Hollywood.

 

 

I was there for the “Rizzoli & Isles” press junket — which is a term I really didn’t understand until after this weekend.  TNT flew me out to L.A., put me up at the Beverly Wilshire (woohoo!), and treated me to a most amazing experience.  I was there to talk to radio DJ’s from around the country, who were also flown out to L.A. 

The first day started off with an evening cocktail party at Paramount studios, where I mingled with the DJ’s and kept having to pinch myself that I was actually at the Paramount lot.  Here I am with some of TNT’s marketing and publicity team.

 

It was the little touches that I kept oohing and ahhing over — they probably thought I was bonkers, but I got so excited about funny things like … well, just the paper cups and napkins!

After cocktails, we all moved into the Paramount movie theater to watch a screening of Episode 2 of “Rizzoli & Isles.”  The theater is like a real movie theater, complete with popcorn counter and soda pop.  

Sitting in the dark theater, surrounded by the DJ’s, I was happy to hear them laughing at all the right places.  One of them later told me that he was exhausted by his flight to L.A. and was planning to take a nap when the lights went out … but instead sat up riveted to the episode.

After the screening, one of the writers on the show, David Gould, took us on a tour of the “Rizzoli & Isles” set. Here we are at the morgue, which was furnished with real hospital equipment.  It looked like every morgue I’ve ever been in, with the exception of the red sink!

Then it was on to the set for the bar “The Dirty Robber” where Jane and Maura relax after work. 

We also visited the makeup trailer, where Lorraine Bracco was getting ready to shoot her next scene.  Mind you, this was at 10 PM at night, so those actors work long, long hours. 

 

Finally, we got to peek in the production office, where desks and wall boards were covered with all the details involved with making a TV show happen. 

 

I got back to the hotel around 11 PM, crashed, and the next day got ready for round 2 of the fun: the radio interviews.  Angie Harmon, Sasha Alexander, Jordan Bridges, Bruce McGill, and Lee Thompson Young were on hand for the round-robin chats with the DJ’s.  

 

Me and Angie:

Me with Bruce McGill (Korsak) and Janet Tamaro (executive producer):

The 21 DJ’s were set up in booths in the hotel ballroom, and we went from booth to booth to be interviewed.  I was paired with Janet Tamaro, the writer and executive producer of Rizzoli & Isles, and we answered questions about where the characters came from and what it was like to adapt them to TV.  Janet really is like Jane Rizzoli — smart, quick-thinking, and thriving in a tough industry.  Obviously the perfect person to be writing this show! Each interview lasted only 4 minutes, and then we had to jump up and move on to the next DJ.  At the end of it, Lee Thompson Young told me he couldn’t believe how exhausted he was.

Then it was on to the really fun finale: the cast cocktail party! I got the chance to chat with Sasha and Lee. 

The next day, I was up at 4:30 to catch the flight home.  Still can’t believe it all happened — but if it was just a dream, it was a very good dream.

10 things I learned last week

by Pari

1.  I’m not a big city girl anymore.
Last week our family stayed with friends on an island near Seattle. We thought we’d go into the city several times to sightsee (or visit my fav bookstore in the area). We did make the ferry crossing – once – and found that all we really wanted to do was get back to the island. I guess at this point in my life, I’m simply more impressed with natural wonders such as Dungeness Spit than any man-made structure.

2.  Don’t go to the Seattle Aquarium.
Frankly, I was stunned; it was very expensive and totally depressing. From the joylessness of every person working or volunteering there to the message that humankind is destroying ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING to the gulag-like mammal/bird exhibits, the experience was a bummer.

3.  Deer are beautiful except  . . .
I spotted three bald eagles and two raccoons, a tiny squirrel, scores of jelly fish – deep red and some that looked like raw eggs – and sea stars that were purple, pink, orange, tan and yellow (my kids saw otters) all in the wild. To observe deer walking around without a care was a thrill.

However, my friends don’t feel the same way. Their new aspen tree has been denuded. Their garden has to be protected with fencing. So, yeah, I get it. Deer are beautiful except when they’re eating your yard.

4.  I’ll never tire of taking pictures of flowers.

5.  Yakima cherries really ARE that good.
Firm and sweet, deep red-purple and juicy. Yakima cherries are all that with a hint of tartness that surprises in every mouthful.

6.  Three people can polish off 42 oysters and still have room for a full Thai meal.

7.  Seven days without television is bliss.
No news blaring. No stupid, insulting shows. No commercials exhorting us to buy more of what we don’t need.

8.  Seven days without computer contact is heaven.
I read four books in six days, took daily long walks, ate wonderfully, and experienced so much gratitude about being alive that it altered my whole perspective on life. While I don’t think computers OR televisions are bad, I do know that I can quiet myself more easily when I’m not spending time with either.

And quiet heals my soul.

9.  Slowing down isn’t the same thing as stopping.
I wrote little but felt as if my creative center was working hard, rewiring for new projects and approaches. While I simply let myself be, connected with my natural rhythm, my being experienced a molecular peace.

10. Change is easy when you’re away from the familiar; it’s a challenge once you’re home again.
Within minutes of arriving at our house, the kids had turned on the television. Today, my first day back, I’ve spent at least three hours on the computer – sorting through emails, writing this blog, catching up – and I wonder if I’ll be able to remember, to evoke somehow, the calm I felt so strongly less than 24 hours ago.

 

Wish me luck.

Questions:

1. When was the last time you took a healing vacation – a calm one? Where did you go?

2. Are you a vacationer that prefers action? Visiting and sightseeing? Tell us about a vacation like that that you enjoyed.



 

little truths

by Toni McGee Causey

 

There are things I’ve been thinking about lately. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that debut novelist, or even further back, to that almost-sold writer, and say, “Here. You’ll need to know these. They will keep you from lying fetal in the corner in a year or two.” But then, it’s most often the bad times that teach the best lessons, and maybe–just maybe–knowing them ahead of time wouldn’t have really worked. Still. If I could, maybe I’d go back and tell myself a few of these little truths:

 

1) You cannot drive forward by solely focusing on the rearview mirror. You can only see where you’ve been, and what you did, and if you don’t look forward, you’ll run off the road, sooner rather than later. Likewise, you cannot grow in your career or as a person when you’re always focused on what you did before that worked and assume that if you just did it all exactly the same again, everything will be fine. Eventually, the terrain in front of you is going to change. You have to let go of who you were yesterday and look out there to see where you’re going right now to make sure you’re aiming for who you want to be.

2) Life has a funny way of taking that nice, gently climbing terrain you’re ambling on and dropping off into a canyon, without any roadside warnings. Remember, there is almost always a bridge over or a road around or, short of that, a plane. In other words, canyons aren’t the end of the trip… they’re just an opportunity to see something different, learn something new, find a new path, and become a better you. Quit griping, put your foot on the pedal, and head in the new direction. You’ll get nowhere staring at the canyon.

3) There will occasionally be bad reviews. Think of the coconut factor, and let it go. (The coconut factor: coconut, is, and will always be, disgusting, ptui, nasty, awful, horrid, and useless as a food item. Even the smell is unpleasant. But there are entire swaths of people out there who love it, for reasons beyond understanding, and think you’re crazy for not giving it a five star review. Sometimes your book is just going to be their coconut. You can’t fix that, nor change it, nor should you even care. The world needs people with all sorts of tastes… especially the coconut farmers. C’est la vie.)

4) People will astound you. Really, this is the best part about this business — you will have fan letters which will choke you up, friends who stand by you when you’re down, who reach a hand out and pick you up, others who will encourage you and still others who will give you much needed advice. You will realize that this is what makes you wealthy, not contracts, not lists, not print runs.

5) You will come to realize that everything that led up to the first book contract was the equivalent to internship/training, and signing the contract is the equivalent of signing an employment contract. Meaning, that sale is not the end of the road, the “arrival” of success, but simply the end of one phase and the beginning of another: the job. Just like any other employment, there will be good days and bad, things that go beautifully, and things that don’t. No job is perfect. It simply can’t be. Every single job has obstacles and learning curves and opportunities–and writing is no different. Expect those curves and you’ll be fine.

6) Though you’ll still hate coconut.

7) You’ll be faced with obstacles and you will choose to grow.

8) It will hurt.

9) Like hell.

10) But it will be worth it. It’s hard to see, sometimes, when you’re deep in the woods, lost, in pain, but you’ll take that dark and those woods and learn from them, and what you end up with will be so much better, that if given the choice to go back and live life without having had the pain, you’d choose the same path. 

11) You will one day be very very sleepy after writing a blog really late into the middle of the night, and you will accidentally splatter toothpaste into your eye. It will really wake up that eye. I do not recommend this.

12) When dealing with staircases, don’t assume the last two steps are merely suggestions and skip them altogether. Trust me, gravity works, concrete is not soft, and purple toes are not next year’s must-have accessory.

So tell me, ‘Rati, what little truth have you learned lately?

Google and Me, and Horace Fabyan, and the Willeys

By Cornelia Read

Many years ago, when I had small children, was still married, and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my intrepid spouse and I decided we should go camping over the Fourth of July weekend. Newly handy with Google (or Altavista, or whatever it was back then), I found us a campground that still had vacancies up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which I’d once visited on a high school ski trip.

We went to check out the hotel at Bretton Woods during the course of that trip, and on the way drove through a small crossing called “Fabyan’s,” which intrigued me. My dad’s mother’s maiden name was Fabyan, and it’s one of my middle names.

I was bored last week and started Googling dead relatives, and ended up finding out a bit more about an ancestor named Horace Fabyan, the namesake of that little White Mountains spot. He did indeed come from the same family in Maine that my Boston-born Grandmama Read derived from, but there was a whole other passel of info I stumbled into because I’d Googled old Horace, which I will relate below…

 

Horace himself

A random disaster in the early 1800s near Crawford Notch in these mountains, it turns out, launched not only the first serious wave of American tourism, but a school of landscape painters, a number of American poets and fiction writers, the concept of “artists-in-residence,” two of America’s first artists’ colonies, and even a bit of scary slang that’s still with us.

A hunter named Timothy Nash discovered Crawford Notch while tracking a moose over Cherry Mountain in 1771. He made a deal with the then-governor of New Hampshire–if Nash could get a horse through the pass, he’d be given a large tract of land in exchange, along the route of a proposed road at the head of the notch. Nash and a friend managed to get an old farmhorse through, at times having to lower it over boulders by rope. In 1775, the first official road was opened–a turnpike used to bring goods from Vermont to the ports of Maine.

Small houses along the way started putting up travelers for the night, turning a decent profit.

In the fall of 1825, a man named Samuel Willey moved into a house at Crawford Notch with his wife, five children, and two hired men. The three men spent a year enlarging the building into a serviceable inn for passing travelers.

According to http://www.nhstateparks.com/crawford.html:

During the night of August 28, 1826, after a long drought which had dried the mountain soil to an unusual depth, came one of the most violent and destructive rain storms ever known in the White Mountains. The Saco River rose twenty feet overnight. Livestock was carried off, farms set afloat, and great gorges were cut in the mountains. Two days after the storm, anxious friends and relatives penetrated the debris-strewn valley to learn the fate of the Willey family.

They found the house unharmed, but the surrounding fields were covered with debris. Huge boulders, trees, and masses of soil had been swept from Mt. Willey’s newly bared slopes. The house had escaped damage because it was apparently situated just below a ledge that divided the major slide into two streams. The split caused the slide to pass by the house on both sides leaving it untouched. Inside, beds appeared to have been left hurriedly, a Bible lay on the table, and the dog howled mournfully. 

 

Sixty years later, an elderly man named Ebenezer R. Tasker, who’d been an eyewitness among the first group of neighbors to arrive at the scene related what they found to the Lewiston, Maine, Journal. His account was reproduced in The New York Times on August 20th, 1894

 

I was a young boy then, and I suppose the events of that fearful period when the mountains echoed for days with the noise of rumbling slides, are impressed more strongly upon my mind than they otherwise would be….

On the 28th of that month it began to rain, and many of the farms in Bartlett, Carrol County, were damaged with landslides that covered the loam with gravel and rubbish in great tracts. At Judge Hall’s tavern in Bartlett the next day the farmers were sitting around the hearth when in came a man named John Barker, who told us about the fearful slide at the Willey farm.

Barker had visited the Willey farm, and not finding the family, concluded that they were safe at the home of a neighbor, Abel Crawford. But others among us thought differently…. [that night a group including Tasker and his father started for the farm]… All night we were struggling up through the notch toward our destination. At last we arrived and as soon as day broke we commenced our search.

The course of the mountain slide presented an appalling spectacle.  Its track had reached to within three feet of the house and had carried away one corner of the barn. Rocks, trees, and broken timber laid piled up and ended over all the track. The avalanche seemed to have suddenly stopped, for the lower end was more than perpendicular. The upper crust hung over the lower part and formed several large caves. Great crownds had arrived, as the story of the missing family had spread far and wide. No sign could be found of the bodies, until at last, noticing a cluster of flies about the entrance of one of the caves, my father called the attention of Mr. Edward Melcher to it, and the latter crawled in. He came out with a white, drawn face that scared me, boy that I was, nearly out of my wits. He told the crowd he had seen the hand of a man jammed between two logs, and indicated where to dig.

Three men took spades and soon revealed the body of David Allen, a hired man. Directly behind the body and clasping the hand of Allen was the body of Mrs. Willey. The remains of the rest of the family were recovered in like manner with the exception of three of the children, whose bodies were never recovered….

I suppose the family had started to escape from the house upon hearing the avalanche bearing down upon them, and had been overtaken in flight…. the house was saved by a big rock deeply imbedded in the ground, which first stopped a hemlock tree and then turned the course of the avalanche.

The tragedy, described as an “almost-miracle” (the house untouched, its inhabitants crushed) was reported nationally. As historian Randall H. Bennett reports in his book The White Mountains: 

“Soon after the Willey Disaster, hundreds of tourists began to flock to the scene of this great catastrophe. To accommodate these visitors, Horace Fabyan of Portland, Maine, built a hotel…”

The drama of the location drew dozens of writers and painters.

According to http://www.aannh.org/heritage/primer.php:

During this period artistic appreciation of the mountains reached its apogee. Nature poets such as John Greenleaf Whittier and Lucy Larcom brought forth cascades of verse.

 

Winslow Homer, “Artists Sketching in the White Mountains”

Many of 19th century America’s best-known landscapists worked in the White Mountains: Albert Bierstadt, George Inness, Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, John Frederick Kensett, Benjamin Champney, Homer Dodge Martin, Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and photographer William Henry Jackson.

Two of America’s first art colonies sprouted in the valleys of West Campton and North Conway. Painters’ works drew tourists to the mountains, and souvenir-hungry tourists eventually drew more painters.

“Mount Washington,” by Alfred Bierstadt

Nathaniel Hawthorne based his short story “The Ambitious Guest” (click to read full text of story) on the Willey family’s tragic end. Published as part of his collection Twice-Told Tales, it made his reputation.
Thomas Cole, the foremost American landscape painter of the first half of the Nineteenth Century, wrote in his diary upon visiting Crawford Notch in 1828:
We now entered the Notch, and felt awestruck as we passed between the bare and rifted mountains. . . . The site of the Willie [sic] House standing with a little patch of green in the midst [of] the dread wilderness of desolation called to mind the horrors of that night. . . when these mountains were deluged and rocks and trees were hurled from their high places down the steep channelled sides of the mountains. . . .
“A View of the White Mountains called the Notch of the Mountains (Crawford Notch),” by Thomas Cole

Cole chose to portray the Willey homestead as a bucolic haven–as it was before the avalanche–only hinting at the ominous events to come by means of the storm clouds hovering above the mountains.

Dave Thurlow of the Mt. Washington Observatory wrote of the Willey slide:

“Weather disasters sometimes transcend death tolls and economic disruption, to the level of religious and spiritual confusion about human frailty.” 
Writer David Schribman, says Thurlow, holds that the Willey’s story became the stuff of legend because “It raised questions about free will and the frailty of one’s judgement, and about the cruelty and harshness of nature itself.”
Jessica Skwire Routhie described the cultural impact of the Willeys’ demise on the American conscience as follows, in her paper “Diamonds, Rifle Rangers, and Rock Slides”

 

...Although debate over the significance of the Willey slide disaster continues to this day, most historians agree that the tale struck a chord with 1820s Americans because of what it suggested about the relationship between human beings and nature. The Willeys, while regarded with sympathy as “amiable and respectable” victims of an unfortunate tragedy, were considered to have suffered as a result of abandoning their allegiance to and faith in nature’s beneficence. Had the Willeys trusted that nature would observe the safety of their home and preserve it, and endeavored to face the slide in harmony with nature rather than in conflict with and fear of it, they would have escaped unscathed. Their story serves as a warning not only to those who remain ignorant of nature’s power, but also those who might foolishly attempt to subdue it… showing that when nature’s power, human frailty, and abandonment of faith are compounded, the result is disaster.

Such sentiments burgeoned into preservationism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Thomas Cole documented his thoughts on the subject in his “Essay on American Scenery”: “I cannot but express my sorrow that the beauty of such landscapes are quickly passing away — the ravages of the axe are daily increasing — the most noble scenes are made desolate, and oftentimes with a wantonness and barbarism scarcely credible in a civilized nation.”

 

 

The frisson of tragedy experienced at this site drew so many tourists, in addition to these artists (and certainly encouraged in their curiosity by the paintings, poetry, and stories further publicizing the plight of the Willeys,) that innkeepers began building more expansive hostelries to accommodate the new crush of travelers.
Enter Horace Fabyan, who not only bought an existing hotel to expand so that it could accomodate 150 guests (The White Mountain House, which Fabyan purchased in 1837.) By 1844, this hotel had become so successful that Fabyan bought the actual Willey House and built a second hotel beside it (both the hotel and the original Willey house burned to the ground in 1899.) The White Mountain House, in turn, was destroyed by fire in 1853. This was not an uncommon occurrence for many of the most famous hotels in the region–all of them large, wood-frame structures with only the most primitive means of fire prevention and fire fighting.
Fabyan gained such renown as a host in the region that when a new hotel was built on the site of his White Mountain House by a conglomerate in 1872, the owners named their new 500-guest accomodations “Fabyan House” in his honor.
That hotel burned to nothing in 1951, and now the only evidence left of his impact on the region is the name of the railroad stop that serviced these grand hotels in turn.
The original station has now apparently been converted to a restaurant and lounge. I might go for a sandwich… and I also want to find a copy of Eric Purchase’s book Out of Nowhere: Disaster and Tourism in the White Mountains, which sounds utterly amazing. Purchase does the most thorough job of delving into the cultural and artistic impact of the Willey disaster to date, illustrate the manner in which “the disaster becomes the apt juncture of the interacting forces of capitalism and art as they together create an American appreciation for nature.”
Purchase also says that the impact of the slide is the first American expression of the newly industrialized Europeans’ aesthetic response to natural “scenes,” particularly in the Alps, which gave rise to the concept of “the sublime.”
The book’s jacket copy sums up everything I’ve been trying to thread together here far better than I’ve probably done in my longwinded Asperger’s way…
In Out of Nowhere, Eric Purchase examines the surprising connection of this disaster to the rise of tourism in America, investigating developments that ranged from land speculation to new interpretations of the meaning of nature and landscape. The Willey tragedy, widely recorded in literature, art, travel writing, newspapers, and scientific journals, was the first natural disaster in the United States to capture national attention. Nineteenth-century Americans were intrigued with nature’s sheer perversity in destroying an entire family while leaving its house untouched. They marveled at such dramatic evidence of the natural world’s vastness and power. Suddenly the White Mountains became, in the public’s imagination, a mythical place where nature was preserved in its original, potent state.

Hundreds and then thousands of tourists, including artists, scientists, and writers such as Thomas Cole, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Charles Lyell, began traveling there every summer to take vacations amid the romantic landscape. The Willey’s undamaged house became one of the area’s most popular attractions-fittingly, Purchase notes, since Samuel Willey was among the first entrepreneurs of White Mountain tourism. It was businessmen, after all, not artists or intellectuals, who were the first to exploit picturesque notions of untamed nature in remote landscapes to lure wealthy tourists to their inns. Ultimately, the fame of the Willeys’ gruesome deaths only enhanced the tourist trade they had helped launch.

…Traces the rise of tourism in the White Mountains from the 1826 landslide which killed nine and garnered national attention. Arguing that this event marks the beginning of a new American awareness of landscapes, the author explores the European notion of the sublime (an appreciation of one’s insignificance in the face of the forces of nature) as it became harnessed by businessman wishing to bring wealthy travellers to their inns.
Anyway, that’s what an afternoon of Googling last week led me to discover about a distant cousin many times removed–old Horace Fabyan. Kind of cool, I think.
I wonder if that early American fascination with the physical evidence of tragedy has anything to do with our interest in crime fiction? That same frisson, that same wonder at how bad things happen to decent people, that same sense of needing to seek an explanation for the unexplainable?
What think you, O wise ‘Ratis?
And p.s.!! That phrase the Willey tragedy gave rise to? Remember this poor lost family the next time you say something “gives you the willies…”

Welcome Debut Author Stephen Blackmoore!

The Scene of the Crime:  Phoenix, Arizona, the Biltmore Hotel Bar

July 2006

Hundreds of milling authors, agents and publishers, all gently perspiring in the blowtorch like heat, crowd into the tiny Biltmore bar, clamoring for drinkies. Smack dab in the middle of that insanity sits a man with black hair, a glass of scotch and a wide smile. His name? Stephen Blackmoore. I knew of him through Bryon Quertermous, editor of the dear departed ezine DEMOLITION. He is funny. He makes me laugh. He makes Brett Battles and Robert Gregory Browne laugh, though I suspect they’re faking it. We all become friends, as people in bars in sweltering heat are bound to do. Blackmoore is a great short story writer, and is working on a novel. He fits in perfectly.

After all of that, you can imagine my sheer joy when I saw the Publishers Marketplace announcement that my Phoenix friend just sold not one, but two books to DAW (Penguin). Stephen gutted it out for a long time, never giving up, always moving forward with his work. His tenacity impressed me, and his deal is so well deserved I felt it an absolutely necessity to have him here to Murderati to celebrate. Since half of the participants that sultry night in Phoenix are now Murderati members, it seems only fitting that we give Stephen his coming out party.

So sit back, enjoy the show, and please, don’t forget to tip your waitresses.

Welcome, Stephen!

 

Tell us about your book.

It’s called City of The Lost.

Joe Sunday’s dead.  He just hasn’t stopped moving yet.

Sunday’s a thug, an enforcer, a leg-breaker for hire.  When his boss sends him to kill a mysterious new business partner, his target strikes back in ways Sunday could never have imagined.  Murdered, brought back to a twisted half-life, Sunday finds himself stuck in the middle of a four-hundred-year-old revenge plot centered around an ancient stone with the power to grant immortality.  With it, he might live forever.  Without it, he’s just another rotting extra in a George Romero flick.

Everyone’s got a stake in finding the stone, from a psycho Nazi wizard and a razor-toothed midget, to a nympho-demon bartender, a too-powerful witch who just wants to help her homeless vampires, and the one woman who might have all the answers—if only Sunday can figure out what her angle is.

Before the week is out he’s going to find out just what lengths people will go to for immortality.  And just how long somebody can hold a grudge.

How did you get the news that you had sold?

I’m with Allan Guthrie at Jenny Brown Associates in Scotland, so our conversations are over email or Skype and occasionally Twitter.  He sent me an email saying that DAW wanted to pick it up.  There were more exclamation points than I thought were possible for a Scotsman to use. 

Before that one email, though, I had an idea where we were going.  Al’s great and he kept me in the loop as it was coming together but when we finally got confirmation it was still a surprise.

Did the Snoopy Dance and everything.  After my wife made me.  I have some dignity.  Somewhere.  I think.  Anyway, it was more like the White Man’s Overbite, and I’m told I wiggle my ass too much, but I do what I can.

You’re a short story guru by trade, what made you decide to shift to the long form?

Wow, you make me sound like I know what I’m doing. 

Actually it was the other way around.  I originally saw writing and publishing short stories as a stepping stone to writing and publishing a novel.  Bullets on the resume as it were.  Something to put down on a query letter.  Something that says, “See all the stuffs I written?  I writes good!”

Then I discovered I really like writing short stories.

I tend to underwrite so they work for me.  And I don’t spend so much time on them that I get bored.  Short stories have to make an impact fast.  You’ve only got a few thousand words to work with.  I can’t worry about greatly detailed descriptions, long bouts of exposition.  There’s no room.  The constraints help keep me focused.

But I kept coming back to wanting to tackle a novel.  So I finally did.

Then I discovered something else.  Novels are not long short stories.

Yeah.  Duh, right?  You’d think that’d be obvious.

When I’m writing a short story I don’t plan much.  Most of the time I don’t know what it’s about until I’m halfway through.  And that’s how I tackled City of The Lost.

Which meant a lot of rewrites to fix scenes that were all over the place or led to dead-ends.  There were too many characters, too many things happening, not enough setup, poor motivation.

Learned my lesson.  The next one’s already got an outline.

I’m sure there will be just as many rewrites, though.

How long did it take, start to finish, for you to get a publishing deal?

About four years.  Not including all the time the book sat in my head before I started writing.

I wrote a short story in 2006 that was the basis for the novel.  Finished the first draft of the book in October, 2007.  Shopped it around to a few agents and finally hooked up with Al in August 2008. 

Then there were more rewrites.  Lots and lots of rewrites.  Al’s a great editor and it’s a much stronger book than when I first gave it to him.

Bouncing it around to editors took about a year and a half with some possibilities that never quite panned out and some very positive rejections.  I think only one person said they flat out hated it. 

And then I got the deal with DAW a few weeks ago.

So, yeah, four years.  Damn. 

Talk a bit about perseverance. Your deal didn’t happen overnight. What gave you the courage, the drive and the guts to keep trying?

I think it’s important to have a support team. 

I am one lucky sonofabitch.  I’ve had a tremendous amount of support.  My wife, who kept me writing when I didn’t want to, my friends, random people who just pop up out of nowhere.  People on the internet, folks I met through Sisters In Crime and the MWA.

A chunk of the Murderati crew, actually.  Brett, Rob, Dusty, JT, Toni.  And more people than I can list here.

That’s the thing about writers.  They’re immensely supportive of each other.  I know there are those out there that aren’t, but I haven’t run into them.  I just hope I can give back as much as I’ve gotten.

Do you have any advice for upcoming writers who may be getting discouraged?

This whole experience has been, and continues to be, an education.  I’ve learned a lot of lessons at every step and probably missed even more.  I can’t imagine what I’m going to get next.

I don’t know if any of these will help anyone else, but a couple things come to mind.

Be patient.  Nothing moves fast.  If you haven’t heard anything chances are there’s nothing to hear.

Don’t take any advice as gospel.  When my manuscript was going out to editors I was lucky enough to get feedback from several of them.  Every single one of them had a different reason why they didn’t want it.  Some made no sense.  Some had great ideas but I wasn’t about to go changing the book at that point so I filed them away for the next one.

Mostly they just contradicted each other. 

Don’t be a dick.  I think that one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Do you think your blog was a factor in keeping your name current within the industry?

Yeah, which is kind of funny because 99% of it has nothing to with writing.  LA Noir (http://la-noir.blogspot.com) is almost exclusively about crime in Los Angeles. 

I think more importantly is that it’s given me a place to have an online presence.  People can find me.  They can see my writing. 

The thing about blogs, Twitter and Facebook that’s good is it allows you to have a conversation and be part of a discussion.  Even if it’s just slinging crude jokes around at each other for everyone to see they still help create community.  And even the introverts need community.

What’s the best thing to drink at a conference? Scotch? Wine? Beer? What brand and why???

Depends.  How obnoxious do you want me?

Scotch.  Macallan 18.  Because you can be really hammered and still pronounce it well enough to order.  Try that with Laphroaig some time when you’re seeing double and the floor’s 30 degrees off kilter.  It won’t be pretty.

If you could be just one, which would it be, and why? Zombie, Vampire, Shapeshifter, Pirate.

What?  No monkey robot ninjas?  Let’s see.  Zombies smell funny.  Vampires burn too easily.  Shapeshifting would be nice.  Big skull crushing jaws with fangs would be mighty useful.  But then so would a thirty gun brigantine and a cutlass.

I’ll go with pirate.  I appreciate their culture of rampant drunkenness.

Thank you for playing, Stephen, and congratulations again! We’re all thrilled for you!

Wine of the Week: Heck, let’s have some scotch to celebrate: one of my favorites, a Bunnahabhain 12

(Because I’m not a fan of Macallan, no matter how old, and I like watching drunk people trying to order it…)

A Father’s Pride Not Just in His Son

By Brett Battles

When I went to grade school back in the seventies, things were different. I’m not talking about funding or how I was taught the basics or even the relationship between students and teachers…sure, to a greater or lesser degree, aspects of all of those are different these days. But what I’m talking about today is something else, something that’s a lot more personal for me since the birth of my son fourteen years ago.

When I went to school, it was the very rare day when we would see any kids with disabilities. These kids were kept separate from the “general” population. In fact, they may have been kept on a completely separate campus…I’m not even sure. So when we did see a kid with autism or cerebral palsy or Down syndrome we’d, quite naturally for kids our age, stare. Even away from school you’d seldom see a special needs child. I did have a neighbor for one year whose brother was mentally handicapped but he was hardly ever out of the house, and when he was when didn’t know how to interact with him. He was just odd, and, in fact, many of us would just go home. That’s the way kids are.

I find that sad now, thinking back. It was a missed opportunity, not just for my neighbor’s brother and the other special needs kids, but for us. The problem was we had very little exposure to the disabled, so they were foreign to us, even scary because we just couldn’t understand them. I remember times people would joke about them and make fun of these kids behaviors. It was, perhaps unintentionally, mean. But more than anything it was simply ignorant.

All this comes to mind because my son, Ronan, just graduated from junior high. You see, he has Down syndrome. For those familiar with Downs you might have noticed there are many levels to the condition from high functioning to extremely low. Ronan falls somewhere in the high side of the middle, if that makes sense.

Unlike when I was in school, he spends part of his school days in classes with the non-special needs kids. It isn’t to really learn what they were learning, that’s not something he can do, it’s more for the socialization, not just for him but for the other students. In fact, I would actually argue that it is almost more important in the long run for “regular” kids than for my son. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great for him, too.

When Ronan went to junior high, where kids now had to go to a different classroom every hour for a new subject, he did have his special needs classroom, but for most of the day he was in the regular classes. But he didn’t go alone. They have this great program at his school where kids can become buddies for a special needs kid. They help their buddies to get to class and spend time with them and become their friends.

At graduation, I met the parents of Ronan’s buddy. The boy’s father was so surprised by how his son had taken to the program. He told me his son has patience for no one, but with Ronan he has become incredibly patient. He also said that his son was always talking about Ronan, so they made a special effort to meet him that morning. But their son isn’t Ronan’s only non-special needs friend.

At some point in the past two years, Ronan had become friends with two other boys, boys who weren’t necessarily the best students in the school nor always the most discipline, but they had taken to my son, and for both years of junior high, they would hang out with him. They even asked for special permission from the school for Ronan (alphabetically at the other end from them) to walk with them in the graduation ceremony. I watched as these two boys made sure he knew where he was going, guiding him to his seat, then leading him up to the stage when it was their turn. I admit I got a tear in my eye watching this.

Then after the ceremony was over (when I met my son’s buddy’s parents), I was surprised by how many of the other students made it a point of saying hi to Ronan. And you know what? Not one child there stared at him. He was just someone they were used to seeing.

And thought he was exactly they same as he has always been, he was also…normal.

Education has been under a lot of attacks over the years. They’ve been forced to do more with less. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they don’t, through no fault of their own. But in this area of demystifying the disabled, they’re doing a great job.

Things aren’t perfect. But they are certainly headed in the right direction.

The disabled are people, too. They just need a little more time and patience and understanding. They can’t help how they are. They, like all of us, are just living the best they can. The good thing is more and more people are realizing this. Someday, maybe everyone will. Given what I’ve seen of my son’s friends, I believe it will.

 

And He’s Got Quotes

by Rob Gregory Browne

PLAYTIME

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
—George Bernard Shaw

Sometimes I forget this.  I get so wrapped up in my career and my work that I forget to take a break and have a little play time.  I don’t know about you, but even though my body gets older and my bones creak and my feet ache, I still feel eighteen inside, and playing should come naturally to me.

When I’m really feeling the strain, sometimes I just pick up my guitar and start strumming. Just like I did when I was a kid after I’d had my heart ripped out.  

There’s nothing more soothing to the soul than music.  Or to my soul, at least.

What do you do when just need to let go? 

THIMNK

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few engage in it.
—Henry Ford

I don’t know what it is, but it seems to me that a whole of of people spend whole a lot of time reacting these days, and very little time thinking.  Of course, Henry Ford said this several dozen years ago, so maybe things haven’t really changed all that much.

I guess I could often be accused of thinking too much.  I’ve always got something on my mind, a book I’m writing, a personal problem, a family issue, a money issue…

So maybe it isn’t that people aren’t thinking, but that they have so much to think about that they just get overloaded and finally explode.

Cue the clowns. 

THE FEAR INSIDE

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
—Samuel Johnson

If this is true, then I certainly don’t ever have to worry about doing anything great.  I find that creative people, by and large, are the most insecure people on the planet.  And that’s saying a lot, considering pretty much everyone alive is insecure.

I don’t know what it is—maybe it’s that whole “putting yourself out there” thing—but when I finish a book and send it off, I’m almost certain that anyone who reads it is going to have to hold his or her nose as they’re turning the pages.  And when somebody tells me they liked one of my books, there’s a little guy inside my head that says, “really?” with genuine surprise.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have my moments of great confidence when I’m writing.  I feel that, even though I’m still learning, I have a fairly good handle on my craft.  And even if I don’t have that confidence, I think the writing itself sounds pretty confident, so that’s half the battle right there.

I’m always a little suspicious of people who seem to have no fear.  I think most of them are just very good at hiding it. 

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.
—Robert Frost

I think a lot of us at Murderati have learned this the hard way over the last year.  Despite our trials and tribulations, life keeps rolling along and we can either give up on it or try to keep up with it.

As John Lennon said, life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.  Ain’t that the truth?

When I was twenty years old, I had big, big dreams.  I had no clue how I was actually going to achieve those dreams, but I had ’em, and I kept telling everyone I knew about them in hopes they’d get as enthusiastic as I was.

But of course they had dreams of their own.  Some of them realized those dreams, but most of them, like me, just kept planning and planning as life went by in a rush around us.  

A wife, two kids, several cats, a few dogs, a lot of rentals, a new house—now an old one.  A strange city—now a familiar one.

Birthdays, graduations, vacations, illnesses, deaths, births, fights, kisses, hugs, smiles, laughter, and big doses of wine, cheese and chocolate.  Oh, and sushi.  Couldn’t have gone without the sushi.

And you know what?  Fuck the plans.  I wouldn’t trade one moment of my life—even the shitty stuff—to make any of those plans come to fruition.  

I love the life I’ve led.  Every moment of it.  It has given me depth and character and a crapload of material for my books.

The one plan that finally worked out. 

The Table

By Louise Ure

 

Have I neglected to tell you about The Table? Forgive me.

Bruce’s Aunt Hazel died last year at the age of 94. She had been a dietician on the civilian hospital ship HOPE back in the ‘60’s, traveling to Indonesia, South Vietnam and Sri Lanka to bring modern medical treatment, support and training to their suffering populations. She was a gentle, optimistic woman from North Dakota who never married but always stayed close to her five sisters and their offspring.

  

 

Bruce remembered her letters home – as early as 1961 – warning of an impending war in Vietnam and the possibility that America’s youth would be drawn into the conflict. “Go to Canada,” she said, prescient in her advice.

She was a woman who always took care of herself, saving money from each paycheck, and at the end, disposing of her possessions and arranging for her own long term care.

One of the items she set aside for Bruce was The Table.

It was seven feet long and two and a half feet wide, made from a three-inch slab of solid white granite with veins of black running like river deltas through it. The legs were wrought iron, thick and straight with flat-black spheres at the knee and ankle*.

It was a beast of a table. As heavy as original sin. As dramatic a statement as the stone tablets Moses carried back down the mountain.

Most importantly, it was an autopsy table.

Hazel had purchased it, decades ago, from an auction at Swedish Hospital in Seattle when they were doing major renovations, and hauled it back to her little cottage overlooking Lake Washington. She was so proud of it and frankly couldn’t understand why her dinner guests turned green when told the history of the new dining table. Neither could I.

Oh, how I coveted that table. I wanted it immediately and would have carried it back from Seattle on my back if I could. We could drive up and get it, of course, but the cargo areas in our cars weren’t long enough for that massive granite rectangle. Shipping it seemed like a likely option but we never got around to it.

So it wound up in storage at a friend’s house and stayed there for years, only to be freed unexpectedly four months ago when Bruce’s brother moved into that same friend’s apartment and set it up in his kitchen. He’s not using it for dining, but for a flat storage area. I think he enjoys its infamy as much as I do.

But he knows it’s on loan. It’s coming down to San Francisco. A friend in the antiques business will trailer it down with the next Bay Area load. I’ll need to hire a small army of weight lifters to get it up my stairs.

I’ve promised my brother-in-law another table in replacement. I’m thinking about a veterinary exam table.

 

 

Whatcha’ think, ‘Rati? Is this the perfect dining room table for a published crime fiction author? Wanna come over for dinner?

 

 

* I wish I could have included a photo of this magical table, but it’s still buried ‘neath the trash in my brother-in-law’s kitchen. I’ll take a photo of it in its new digs once I hire that cadre of he-men to bring it upstairs.

 

Greatest Characters of the Last Twenty Years

Entertainment Weekly, or the Bible as it’s called in my house, recently listed the Top 100 Greatest Characters of the Last Twenty Years. 

As its title indicates, Entertainment Weekly concerns itself with entertainment generally: movies, television, music, the interwebs, theater, and, yep, books.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the bulk of their hundred greatest characters were known from movies and TV.  Omar Little, Cosmo Kramer, Buffy Summers, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, Homer Simpson.  Hard to argue with most of the choices.

Omar LittleThe list did acknowledge a few literary characters, but most of those were discussed in terms of their dual identities, existing both on the page and in film, such as Dexter Morgan, Bridget Jones, and Harry Potter. 

But as I perused the article, I was struck by how many of the TV and movie characters actually originated in novels and short stories.  My first instinct was critical.  Why, I asked, did the magazine make only brief mention of the original works while reserving celebration for the filmed or televised version of the character?  Why didn’t EW discuss both the literary and films versions, as the article did, for example, with Bridget Jones?

I realized, however, that as much as we readers like to say that adaptations “destroy” our favorite books, sometimes actors, directors, and screenwriters create something entirely new from literary inspiration, or at least sufficiently unique to take on new life.  When I think of Red from the Shawshank Redemption and Annie Wilkes from Misery (who both made the list), I think of Morgan Freeman and Kathy Bates, not the works of Stephen King in which they first appeared.

 

I confess that I had forgotten that some of my favorite characters had literary predecessors.  I can’t imagine Tracy Flick, for example, apart from Reese Witherspoon’s interpretation of her.

Forrest Gump, in my mind, looks and sounds forever like Tom Hanks.

And, with all due respect to Candace Bushnell, when most of us hear Carrie Bradshaw, we think (for better or worse) of TV Carrie, not book Carrie.

BetterWay worse

 

Some adaptations stray so far from their source material as to be unrecognizable.  I’m told, for example, that the novel upon which Up in the Air was based did not have either of the two female characters who taught George Clooney so much about life.  Many people did not realize that the film O Brother, Where Art Though? was based on Homer’s Odyssey until the Academy nominated the screenplay for best adaptation.  In our own genre, I can’t be the only Michael Connelly reader who was, shall we say, surprised at filmmaker Clint Eastwood’s take on the character Buddy.

Two questions for discussion, one with subparts:

1) Who are your favorite literary characters of the last twenty years?

2) And which translations of literary characters to TV or film have been most horrific, accurate, or even improvements on the originals?