ON LOSS, ON ART

 

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

 

We’ve experienced some loss here recently.  It was hard for all of us to learn that Louise’s wonderful, talented, charming husband Bruce had died.  I think we’re all experiencing that same kind of shock after hearing about Cornelia’s father, who died from suicide last week.  We’re all thinking about them, and caring about them, during this very painful time.

Cornelia’s post about her father brought instant memories of my own father, who took his life twenty-five years ago.  I was twenty years old. 

I want to be careful not to detract from their losses by rattling on about my own ancient history.  But, in many ways, it’s never ancient history.  Although things are easier, I still live with this loss every day.  Last night I woke from a dream that I was certain was real.  I dreamed that, after many years thinking my father had died, I discovered he was alive and well, having faked his death and assumed a new identity.  I dreamed that we were close again, that I had forgiven him for disappearing and making us think he had killed himself.  I sat for twenty minutes awake in bed before I realized that I had it all wrong.

Everything that has happened in my life since the day he died has been influenced by that moment.  Every sentence I’ve written flows from that place of wonder and anger and passion and curiosity and pain.

I’ve always written stories and by the time I was twenty I was in the middle of writing my first screenplay.  A crucial relationship in the story involved the eighteen-year old protagonist and his estranged father.  The father didn’t know how to love his son.

So, while I’m writing this screenplay, my dad up and kills himself.  He accomplished this using Demerol, which he had easy access to.  He was a doctor.

My writing changed instantly.  Suddenly I had feelings and questions and an anger that needed to be communicated.  Feelings so strong they couldn’t be buried in immature writing.  The writing would have to mature if I was going to be heard.

When my parents divorced I was just fourteen years old.  I was in shock for a year, thinking things were just hunky-dory.  And then—Wham!—it hit me.  Hard.  I had wild fits of anger, punched walls until my knuckles bled, kicked boulders, screamed epithets into the sky. 

Remembering this, I knew my father’s suicide would hit me harder.  This time I wasn’t going to be caught off-guard.  So I dove in, writing, writing, writing.  I wrote whether I had something to say or not.  Most of it was free-verse poetry, not my forte.  But it tapped the emotions, the anger, the grief.  I also explored my father’s last days, trying to get a handle on why he did what he did.  I went to the hotel room where he ended his life, where he spent a long three days and nights before committing the act.  I sat on the bed where he was found.  I stared into the bathroom mirror, as I imagined him doing, hour after hour. 

I wrote my first short story at this point, called “Yahrzeit Candle.”  It was about a little Jewish boy who wakes up one morning to find his father sitting in front of this ominous candle in the living room.  When the boy goes to the candle the smoke from the flame gets in his eyes and he is suddenly overwhelmed by memories of his grandfather.  He doesn’t realize it yet, but his grandfather has died, and his father is engaged in the seven-day ritual of Yarhzeit.  But the father, seemingly hypnotized, never leaves the candle, and the boy sees his daddy falling apart, bit by bit, day after day.  The boy comes to believe that the candle is causing his daddy’s pain and he decides to snuff it out.  But, as he gets closer, the smoke fills his eyes and the memories force him back into his father’s arms and the two finally connect, father and son, and they rock back and forth in their bear hug and the flame finally flickers out on its own. 

It was my first short story and I hadn’t even really considered myself a writer yet.  I submitted it to two national contests and won both.  I sent it to Elie Wiesel and he sent back a note saying it was “Shining, evocative and penetrating.”  I don’t think I could’ve written that story if I hadn’t gone through the trauma of my father’s death.  I don’t think I could have written anything “evocative.” 

I also wrote a screenplay for a short film.  It was really just a ten-page poem, a description of visuals without dialogue, representing the relationship between my father and I from my birth to his death.  I had to enroll in film school, and it would take another five years before I had the skills to do it, but eventually I made “Meditations on a Suicide.”  I needed the help of dozens of professionals, and I didn’t have a dime to pay anyone.  They all worked for free.  Everything was donated.  The budget would have probably been around thirty thousand dollars, but it cost me just about nothing, except for what I managed to cash-advance on my credit cards and the cash donations I received from people who believed in the project.  It all came through at the eleventh hour.  A film that should not have come together was somehow made, and I can’t help but think that my dad was there helping it along, getting people to make the right decisions, making sure I got what I needed to realize the vision in my head.  The film went on to garner awards and accolades, at least as much as it could for being a short, black-and-white, 16mm student film.  The process forced me to reach deep inside myself to do something I hadn’t known I could do.  I don’t think I would have accomplished it if my father hadn’t been at my side.

The film was supposed to be my catharsis.  That’s how I saw it.  But in the process of making the film I became desensitized to the subject matter and I found that I was directing what felt like a fictional story.  In a sense, it was.  I mean, how do you whittle down a twenty-year relationship into a twenty-minute film? 

Every time I think I’m over it, it reappears. 

A good friend of mine whom I met when I made the film (twenty years ago) told me, after reading Boulevard, that he felt I was still dealing with my father’s suicide.  Of course I am.

The anger has gradually subsided, although it has never really gone away.  I’m mostly sad and upset that my children will never know their grandfather.  He was a pediatrician, he loved children.  It would have been great to call him up in the middle of the night as the kids were growing up, ask for advice on how to crack a fever or soothe a sore throat. 

But he did leave me with something.  A reason to tell stories.  Through his own story, his pain and suffering.  His suicide took me by the shoulders and said, “Wake the fuck up.  Look around.  What have you got to say about this?”

As Mr. Hemmingway once wrote, “The world breaks everyone, and afterwards some are stronger in the broken places.”

THANK YOU, MRS. B

Two weeks ago I did something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. It’s something I’ve thought about over the years. Something I NEEDED to do.

Thankfully I was added in this by the mother of a friend I grew up with. Some of you will recall that in March I went back to my home town and spoke to the writer’s group there. One of the officers of the group was said mother. She keyed into one of the things I mentioned in my talk, and not long ago, she sent me a note with the information I needed (unsolicited).

See, when I look back at my K-12 education (5 to 18 years old for those of you not familiar with the U.S. system), I can pick out a hand full of teachers who meant a lot to me. And out of that handful there are two who really stand out, and one that gets honorable mention.

Of the two standouts, one was my high school drama teacher. He treated me like an adult, and encouraged me in things I never thought I’d do. I’ve been lucky over the years to stay in contact with him, so he knows how important he’s been in my life.

But the other teacher I haven’t talked to since I left elementary school for junior high. (Another primer: elementary school here is grades K, 1-6 – basically 5 to 11 – junior high for me was grades 6 – 7, and high school grades 9 – 12.)

The person I’m talking about was my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. B. She may have been the youngest teacher at our school. And though the hormones hadn’t quite kicked in with us 10 year old, we all knew she was pretty hot. (It was amazing how many fathers who had never attended a parent-teacher meeting before always seemed to make it for ones with Mrs. B.) But what was important to me about Mrs. B. was that she was always, always encouraging.

The mother I mentioned above had a daughter a couple years older than me who had also had Mrs. B. This daughter apparently had the habit of doodling cartoons and other drawings in the margins of tests and homework. Instead of chastising her and telling her to stop it (like apparently some later teachers did), Mrs. B. complimented her on them, and even asked if she could keep some for her own collection. To this day, that girl remembers this.

My most vivid memory of Mrs. B. was that everyday after lunch she would sit us on the floor on these great carpets she had, get into her rocking chair, and read to us for a half hour. This was my favorite time of day. Hearing the stories meant so much to me. And on those few days when she couldn’t do this for us…well, those were not my favorite.

It was right about this time, in fifth grade, that I told myself, and several of my friends, that I was going to be an Author. And I know part of why I felt confident about that choice was because of Mrs. B.

All these years I’ve been wanting to tell her just how much she meant to me. To let her know that I thought of her often, and that she was one of the best teachers I’d ever had. Well, in that note from my friend’s mom was Mrs. B.’s phone number.

Because of travel, I wasn’t able to call for several weeks. In a way, I was thankful for that. I was a little nervous to call her. Would she remember me? How would she react? I think I kind of reverted to school boy.

Finally, I pulled out the number and called. No answer, just voicemail. But I wasn’t going to leave a message, so I hung up. I found excuses not to call for the rest of the day, my fear creeping up again, but then, just about 24 hours later, I redialed her number.

Now know that – as is my way when faced with similar situations – that I had played out in my head multiple ways of reintroducing myself. I was going through them again as I pressed the connect button.

But then, before the phone had even rung in my ear, someone on the other end picked up.

“Brett Battles?” a familiar, if a bit older, voice said. I could hear her smile in her voice.

It took me a second to realize that she had caller ID, and that all the intros I had practiced were unnecessary.

Of course she remembered me. I think she probably remembers most of her kids.

We talked for probably twenty minutes, me and my fifth grade teacher. It was an amazing conversation, and I got to tell her all the things that I so wanted to say. And you know what? She’s just as wonderful today as she was then.

She said she’d seen my picture in the local paper about my books, and that I hadn’t changed at all. I said I probably wasn’t shaving back then. She asked about my family, and was interested in hearing about my life. We talked about the other kids in my class. And she wanted me to call her by her first name, something I told her was just not going to happen. And finally we exchanged contact information with a promise not to loose touch, and hung up.

The purpose of calling her was because I wanted her to know the affect that she had on me, and no doubt most of her other students. I wanted her to know the truth, to get that feedback, even decades later. I’m pretty sure she felt really good at the end. And she should have. She was a fantastic teacher.

But what I didn’t expect was that I would feel so good. I rode a cloud from the moment I heard her voice until I fell asleep that night. I still rode it in the days after. It wasn’t that I felt good with myself for calling her, it was more I was reminded about how great it was that she and my other wonderful teachers had been part of my life. I am who I am today in large part because of these people. And the work they’ve done, and the goals they’ve achieved live through me, and their other students.

Thank you Mrs. B. and Mr. K. and all the others. Thank you more than I can ever express.

 

All right, Murderati peeps, time to name your favorite teacher and tells us why they mean so much to you. I expect all of you to respond to this one. We should have a boat load of comments.

Let’s share and celebrate these people who molded us and guided us and helped us on our way.

 ____________________________________________________________________________

Also I wanted to mention that next Tuesday marks the release of the third Quinn book, SHADOW OF BETRAYAL, in paperback…AND the release of Rob’s latest, DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN! Two great paperbacks, perfect for the beach or the plane or wherever you may be!

 

TL;DR

by J.D. Rhoades

The other day, I was having an e-mail conversation with a friend. As we often do,  we got to talking about books.  She was deep into Hilary Mantel’s 2006 book, A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY. “It’s a commitment,” she said, alluding to the book’s 768-page length, “but you don’t care.”

Which got me to thinking. I’ve noticed recently that I have a much shorter attention span than I used to when it comes to books. I think twice before taking on a massive work, and will often pass it over in favor of something shorter. It took me forever, for example, to “commit” to Neal Stephenson’s CRYPTONOMICON, even though I loved it when I finally did read it. And the third volume of his Baroque Cycle  is sitting on the bookshelf, waiting for me to get up the gumption to take it on. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see it as a chore. I LOVE Neal Stephenson. I just get to about Page 300 of any book, see a few hundred pages to go,  and start feeling antsy. I feel the pressure of the TBR pile building up in the back of my head. And this is from someone who used to regularly sit down and devour the entire LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy every couple of years, and then finish off with a dessert of THE SILMARILLION.

 

It seems I’m not alone. In a recent article I read on Slate, writer Nicholas Carr notes:

Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

And the culprit, for Mr. Carr, is easy to find: that bad old Internet. The article, in fact, is titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and Carr  suggests that spending a lot of time on the Web is trashing our attention spans:

[W]hat the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

After all, the ‘net is the home of the acronym used to dismiss an overly verbose or lengthy article, comment, or blog post: “TL; DR”.

 

Which stands, in case you didn’t know,  for “Too Long; Didn’t Read.”

On the other hand, this article suggests that that worry is not only overblown, but cliched:

Worries about information overload are as old as information itself, with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and brain. From a historical perspective, what strikes home is not the evolution of these social concerns, but their similarity from one century to the next, to the point where they arrive anew with little having changed except the label…Socrates famously warned against writing because it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.“

So, maybe it’s not the tech. Maybe it’s the stuff I’ve gotten used to reading. For the past few years, my reading has skewed towards noir, pulp, and hardboiled. That’s the stuff I like, and it tends to be short, simple, and fast-moving. Not coincidentally, that’s how I like to write as well. So it takes some adjustment to settle down into something more long and discursive, something that takes its time getting to where it’s going.

Or maybe it’s just life in general. With a family, a day job, four pets, and an incurable writing habit, I’ve gotten used to a faster, more breakneck (almost literally) pace.

How about you? Are you finding it harder or more daunting to tackle long works? If so, why do you think it is? Any ideas for overcoming it?

Oh, Canada!

In the short time I’ve been a member of the Murderati gang, I’ve watched my fellow bloggers’ lives overturned by the vicissitudes of life, and I cannot post today without thinking of Cornelia and the recent tragedy in her family, and of Louise and the terrible loss she so recently suffered. And then there is Rob, who has known the recent joy of watching his book turned into a TV pilot.  Life is unpredictable and sad and painful and triumphant, and there is no way to predict what will happen around the corner.  

Which has made me decide to write about something that’s utterly lacking in sturm und drang.  So I’m going to blog about Canada.

Canada is fresh in my mind, as I’ve just returned from the Canterbury Tales Literary Festival in St. John, New Brunswick.  Living in the state of Maine, right on the border, I’m privileged to meet many Canadians during the summer months, and I’ve made the crossing to visit our northern neighbor a number of times.  Every time I visit, my impression of Canadians as basically nice, well-behaved, polite people is invariably reinforced.  It’s the land where people actually wait for the Walk signal to flash before they’ll cross the street.  Even when there’s no traffic coming in any direction.  And because they seem to follow the rules, it made me follow the rules as well (even though my rush-rush personality had me ready to dash across the street no matter what that darn traffic signal said.)

This recent visit also gave me the chance to check in on the Canadian publishing scene, and discover how different it is from the U.S.  One thing that had always impressed me was how the Canadian bestseller list is sometimes so different from ours.  I’d noticed that theirs is heavily weighted toward literary novels.  I assumed that Canadians were simply more literate readers, not as prone as Americans are to lunge for the latest crass entertainment.  I pictured Canada as a nation of intellectuals who turned up their noses at genre, and instead reached for the difficult read, the books that would stretch their minds and enrich their souls.

Ha.  It’s not so simple as all that.

Based on several conversations I had with people familiar with the Canadian publishing world, I discovered something that stunned me, coming from ultra-capitalist, money-is-everything America.  And that is: many Canadian publishers are subsidized by their government.  They have a myriad number of small presses which could otherwise never survive without those subsidies, and their government has chosen to subsidize literary fiction which would otherwise not have a chance of making it on the market.  Popular fiction is left to sink or swim on its own because it is, after all, popular and therefore more likely to turn a profit without any help.  Subsidized literary fiction also gets more of a subsidized marketing push, and since marketing dollars result in better public awareness of a title, those literary novels have a sales advantage.

Hence the more literary slant of the Canadian bestseller lists.

In some ways, this is a good thing.  It directs the public toward books they would normally not read.  It brings otherwise unknown authors into the public eye.  And since I love discovering new literary fiction, I think it’s about time that not all the titles on bookstore front tables featured vampires,  zombies, and serial killers.  It’s sort of the National Public Television philosophy of “let’s give the public what we know is good for them.”  

On the other hand, it rubs my populist nature the wrong way because I also love genre fiction.  I love romance and horror and SF, and I’d feel more than a little miffed that my taste in fiction is considered unworthy.

Another characteristic that sets Canada apart from the U.S. is the difference in scale.  In Canada (with a population of 33 million), if a hardcover title sells 5,000 copies, it’s considered a bestseller.  If it sells 750 copies, it’s considered a successful publication.  Needless to say, it’s almost impossible for a Canadian writer to make a living at his craft, if he only sells in his home country.  With the exception of a few rare authors such as Margaret Atwood, whose Canadian sales alone might support her, most Canadian authors need to be able to sell to markets outside Canada to earn a living. Linwood Barclay, one of Canada’s most successful genre writers, no doubt earns most of his income outside his home country.

Another thing I learned is how under-appreciated Canadians feel, despite their many contributions to the literary world.  I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t know that Joy Fielding, Vincent Lam, William Gibson, and Alice Munro were Canadians.  In my typical American arrogance, I just assumed they were Americans.  (Which is something that irritates Canadians no end.)

One of the best parts about attending literary festivals is the chance to meet other authors, and in St. John, I was very happy indeed to hear readings by some truly gifted authors, including Kathy-Diane Leveille (LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU) and Robert Rayner, whose searing YA novel SCAB had the audience on the edges of their seats.  These authors deserve a far wider audience.  In Canada, where there seems to be far deeper support for such authors, they at least have the chance of being heard. 

 

Of Hypocrisy and Floods

by JT Ellison

(After Cornelia’s loss on Friday, I took this post down so she could get the love and sympathy of our wonderful community unhindered. Because this is such a topical post, Pari very graciously offered to give me her Monday to help raise awareness for the victims of the Nashville flood. My deepest thanks to Pari for her generosity, and thanks to all of you for your support and donations – they’ve made a huge difference.)

I am a hypocrite.

I am a weather junkie. My husband calls me junior meteorologist. I live to watch the Weather Channel. I have four weather sites bookmarked in my Internet toolbar.

So how did I get caught short when one of the biggest natural disasters to hit the United States decided to drop in my backyard?

It started simply enough. Friday, April 30 was my birthday. We went to the symphony. Had elegant seats in one of the Founder’s box. Met the conductor, Giancarlo Geurrero. We had no idea that two days later, the symphony hall would suffer more than 2.5 million dollars in damage.

It began to storm overnight. I woke to thunder and driving rain. We were under a tornado watch. Despite this, a birthday breakfast was in order. We went to my favorite breakfast restaurant in Belle Meade. While we ate, I kept my iPhone app for Weatherbug open and watched the radar. The Flood Warnings started to pour in, four alerts in thirty minutes. I read one of the alerts and saw Memphis has already received 12 inches of rain. We decide to make a grocery run. Stock up. We didn’t think to get ice. We get ham and cheese, sandwich makings. Go home and watch the Weather Channel, read Twitter. Watch the local news. It is raining harder than I’ve ever seen.

The thunder and lightning continue for two days.

The mudline is 30 feet high. Trees are choked with brown goo. It looks like a fungus has uniformly climbed the bushes and fences, like something from the Matrix. 

The insides of people’s houses are on the outside. Pink insulation floats like discarded cotton candy at the curbs. Asphalt has turned to dirt roads, clouds of choking dust following the dump trucks barreling by. Debris, piles and piles of debris, clog the sidewalks and lawns. What haven’t they found?

By Sunday morning we knew we were in trouble. My husband woke me early—the culvert on the other side of our next-door neighbor’s house had become a raging river. We suited up and went to check it, video camera in tow. Trees were down. My neighbor’s driveway was a lake, one of his cars had water up to the door. My husband went under our house, where a rather simple yet sophisticated drainage system is in place because of the natural spring that runs beneath our subdivision. He returned jubilant, the drains were working. We had a fractional amount of standing water under the house. Mind, we’d already gotten ten inches of rain by this time, so that was the best possible news. The fact that we are about three feet higher than our neighbor helped too. Those three little feet made all the difference.

We were watching the radar when the power blew.

I dream of water. Swimming, boating, surfing. Long showers, mud puddles, then raging torrents pulling trees and cars into the current. A doll floats by, then a man’s head. I wake in a sweat.

We checked the phones, thrilled to hear a dial tone. I called my parents, knew they were worried. Hell, at this point, I was worried. It was still raining. Not a drizzle, or a soft patter. It was still coming down in what we like to call a gully washer, thick sheets of rain. I’ve seen it rain like that for an hour and get a flood warning. But two days? 

By Sunday afternoon, the phones were out too. We used Twitter on our cell phones to follow what was happening. Twitter proved to be our hero in all of this, Twitter and local radio host Steve Gill, who broadcast until he was hoarse.

By the afternoon, the cell towers had lost power and we had no way to know what was happening. Total isolation. Junior meteorologist realized she didn’t have the supplies she needs. A generator. Ice. A weather radio. A battery-powered television. A decent radio, period — that’s a fluke, by the way. We just cleaned out our storage area and gave away the televisions that don’t work on a digital signal, and got rid of three battery powered radios. We didn’t think we’d need them, and planned to replace the TV. Sometime. We eventually found a cheap plastic one that would run on batteries and tuned in. Static voices warned that hell had arrived in Bellevue.

We gathered flashlights and candles. Realized we were low on batteries too.

The water was still rising.

There is nothing eerier than being in a storm with no power. You are surrounded by a penetrating darkness that bleeds into your skin. Lightning is your only illumination, and it comes in brief, strobe-like bursts. The sound of rain becomes white noise, like crickets and cicadas in summer, a commotion you expect to hear.

At 7:00 p.m., knowing it wasn’t a good idea, we made the hard decision to leave the house. At the very least, we could find out what was happening firsthand.

And suddenly, the rain stopped. The silence was overwhelmingly loud.

We drove out and saw unbelievable amounts of brown, dead water. Realized that this was ten times worse than we could have ever imagined. Houses, neighborhoods, roads, all underwater. We heard there were water rescues going on less than a mile from us. The water was up to the stop lights. Not the stop signs, the stop lights. The roads into our part of the county were all closed, either washed out of blocked by mudslides and trees. We were literally an island.

We went to high ground by the Natchez Trace to make cell calls and let our folks know we’re still okay but unreachable at home. I gave thanks for my iPhone as it downloaded a few important emails that I was waiting on.

Publix was open, God bless them. They know how to handle a disaster from years of working in hurricane zones. That’s what this felt like, a hurricane’s aftermath. We stocked up on a few things that we needed. Oranges. Soup. Things we could cook on the grill that could stay on the counter. Water. Batteries. We only took what we needed, a few of each, so there was enough to go around. Hoarding would not do.

We hatched a grand plan to rescue the open package of hot dogs from the refrigerator, along with my birthday cake and a half-drunk bottle of wine.

It started to rain again. We cooked under umbrellas, realized we were low on propane. When will our shortcomings as survivors end? Remember when Zoë Sharp wrote the essay “Four Meals From Anarchy” which detailed how the world would fall apart without basic conveniences. I realize I’m living her thesis.

We ventured out again late Monday afternoon. Word was the road to the highway was open. It was. We went two exits up the highway, and it was another world. No mud. No standing water. People at Target and Best Buy. We bought chargers for the car so we could power the laptops. Ate at McDonalds. The woman behind the counter looked at me and said, “Oh my God, where did you come from? You look exhausted.” I suppose I did. And my house was still standing. I had no right to be exhausted. I accepted the free cheeseburger anyway.

I got to work on my manuscript by hand and quickly realized my mind doesn’t work that way anymore. I am so in tune with my keyboard that the words don’t flow out of my pen correctly. A strange realization, I am utterly dependent on electronics. This is sad. I changed tactics and outlined the remainder of the book. That works.

Tuesday night, as we were wrapping a cul-de-sac block party (one of our neighbors has a generator, so there was fresh food and lots of cheer) the power came back on. We’d all retreated into our individual darkness, candles were lit. I was just settling in to read and CRACK! the lights blared to life. What did we do? All of us, the whole street, ran outside, whooping and hollering. Back into the dark, to which we’d become so accustomed. The inky night greeted us, but the brilliant display of stars faded to pinpricks. The sky became small again.

Still no phones or cell, but sweet, blessed power.

We were saved.

I’m betting there will be a whole lot of babies born in January named Noah.

 

#

 

There will be rain tonight. And while the thought strikes fear in me, knowing that the storms will pass through at 40 miles an hour is heartening. It is temporary. I may park the truck in the driveway to let the rain wash away the mud caked on it from trying to drive around in the muck to get supplies.

Irony abounds. Take the sad story of the man from White’s Creek who has spent years advocating for his neighborhood because he was worried about the houses being flooded, who was turned down by the city time and again, swept away by the flood waters as he tried to save his house from the rising tide, found drowned in a field upstream. Our police chief, leaving in the middle of the crisis to take the police chief position in New Orleans. He leaves this week, practically before the body counts are finalized. Honestly? Good damn riddance. His manipulation of the crime figures to make it seem like crime has diminished are just one problem the new chief will have to undo. Morale in the rank and file has been dismal, the cops I’ve talked to, the very ones patrolling our neighborhoods and dragging bodies from cars, are giddy with relief.  Serpas even had a subconscious slip during his press conference, when he said his main concern wasn’t Nashville at this time. No kidding, chief. Sayonara.

We had so few reports of crime. Instead, all was turned upside down. Our inmate population saved the water supply for Davidson County. They, rightly so, busted their butts, sandbagging. In a true crisis, there comes a time when everything is transcended—class, race, desire, greed. All of that is supplanted with a yearning for survival. New York saw it during 9-11. Sadly, New Orleans didn’t see it the way they should have, as government agencies sniped and the Mayor of that city declined help. In a crisis of this magnitude, you need your infrastructure to work seamlessly. Nashville’s did.

There are stories of hope and darkness. The former head coach of the Vanderbilt Commodores was rescued from waist deep water in his River Plantation home by his ingenious son and a photographer from The Tennessean. Coach has MS. He’s confined to a hospital bed. They finally realized his mattress was inflatable and floated him out the front door on a raft, saving his life.

Can you imagine what it must feel like, strapped to a bed, unable to save yourself, watching the water rise, lying in the brown murk of the flood. Knowing that you’ve only got an hour left at most? Begging your wife to leave, to save herself, and knowing it’s too late, she’s too frail, there’s no way she could escape, she’d be swept away. Feeling your body begin to float.

Five days in and the power still flickers off and on. All but two of the bodies have been found. The sense of community is unrelenting—I was greeting with hugs at the grocery store. The ones with no damage to their life and property are suffering survivor’s guilt. The donations are being turned away, there are too many volunteers. How is that possible? Too many volunteers and donations? Unheard of.

But this is the south. That’s what we do.

We are Nashville.

And we still need your help. Please click here to see a list of Nashville charities and other ways you can donate. Thank you!

Wine of the Week: 2007 Castel Venus Nero D’Avola (When you’re stuck in the dark, it’s not a bad companion.)

Conversation… with our own Zoë Sharp

by Toni McGee Causey

 

All of our hearts are just overwhelmingly saddened for Cornelia, and what she and her family are going through. Everyone here at Murderati wants to extend our condolences to all of the Read family, wherever they are, and especially to our beloved Cornelia. Come home soon to us, C. You are missed.

….

I love this group. Our commenters, our regulars, our lurkers… you all make this place so incredibly special. Thank you all for hanging out with us.

And as I’ve said before, one of the very best things about this gig is getting to talk at length to fellow ‘Rati members and find out such cool things about them. Well, I jumped at the chance to interview our own Zoë Sharp and had so much fun. I think this blog could have gone on for pages and pages. We’re going to be dangerous, when Zoë makes it over here for her tour in June.

This, my friends, is fun! And so, the interview…

Toni McGee Causey 1) Anyone who peruses your website or blogs for any length of time will realize that you are a professional photographer. In one of the interviews on your site, you mention that you like to try to give descriptions that encapsulate the character instead of being a full “formal CV.” Could you tell us a little bit about how you started off in photography, how you knew how to proceed to make a living at it, and what it taught you about description? (Framing, light/dark, contrast, composition, the importance of the telling detail, etc.)

Zoë Sharp 1) As with most things I end up doing, I kind of fell into the photography side of things, having started out writing non-fiction articles for motoring magazines. After a couple of years doing that, my editors started saying, “Can’t you just take some pictures to go with these words?” And – as is so often the case way when people are too ignorant to know the true difficulty of what they’re agreeing to – I said, “Erm…OK.”

(Toni’s note… okay, that cracked me up. Are you sure you’re not a contractor? (grin))

When it comes to making a living at it, the advantage I had when I started was that I already had a market for my work – the articles I was writing were the hook on which to hang the sale of the accompanying pictures. As I’ve since discovered, although good pictures will sell an OK story, bad pictures will kill a good story stone dead. I would never have thought, when I started out, that there would be enough work just in photographing weird and wonderful cars to make a living – in fact, I was told outright by a very experienced newspaper photographer that it couldn’t be done – and yet, 22 years later, here I still am…

Just about all the photographic work I do now is on location, rather than in a studio, so it’s a constant challenge to find a suitable backdrop for each shoot. I’ve developed a habit of looking at places with location-hunting in mind, even when we’re not on the way to a shoot. As Sherlock Holmes said, people look, but they don’t see, and I feel working as a photographer has taught me to see more. I like snapshots, taken from up high or lying on the ground, looking at things from a different angle, in a slightly different way. I don’t spend hours setting a shot up, I just know where the light and shade needs to go, place the flashguns, and shoot. I like to write the same way. Although I can appreciate beautiful prose, like the Laurie Lee books I read years ago, usually pages of description about the contents of someone’s desk bore me and I start to skip-read at that point, so my aim is to avoid writing the bits other people skip.

TMC 2) You have a terrific list of fun hobbies; you’ve even flown a helicopter! So tell us a little bit about your hobbies, what inspired each, what’s the most fun you’ve had for each, and how they’ve influenced you as a writer.

ZS 2) Oh boy, we could be here all day with this one! Somebody once said that you always regret the things you didn’t do, more than the things you did, so if I get the opportunity to go and do something, I tend to take it. It’s no good sitting around in your octogenarian bath chair going, “Oh, I wish I’d got round to…”

The Robinson R22 helicopter trial flight was a birthday pressie from Andy, and it was wonderful, if incredibly difficult. I think at one point after my instructor handed over control,  he rather nervously advised me to pull the nose up because, “Erm, we’ve gone into a bit of a screaming dive here…”

(T’s note… this is probably where I’d have had the heart attack.)

Now, I’m not sure if the hobbies affect the writing, or vice versa. In the Charlie Fox book I’ve just finished the rewrites on (Hurrah!) I’ve included horses. I mean, they’ve always been there as a vague part of Charlie’s background, but it’s never been more than mentioned in passing as backstory. This time, I had the perfect opportunity for it to play a fairly important part in the plot, and as one of the few things I’m actually qualified to be is a horse-riding instructor, I had the confidence that I could get my facts right.

I think my favourite hobby, stemming from an old job, has to be sailing – especially on a big multihull, at night, when there’s nothing to block out the stars from reaching right down to the horizon on all sides. Fabulous. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to get Charlie onto a boat…

TMC 3) I’ve read in a couple of your interviews that your very first novel was one you wrote when you were fifteen and your dad (God bless him) typed it up on carbon paper (pre-computer days) and sent it off for you to publishers. (Aren’t dads the best?) You got “rave rejections” and clearly showed an early talent. But enquiring minds want to know… what was that first novel about? And what did you learn from it?

ZS 3) Hmm, funny I’ve just mentioned horses, because it was a horsy tale, much inspired by Anna Sewell’s BLACK BEAUTY, which I listed recently as the most influential book I ever read as a child. That book – her only novel before she died tragically young – changed the laws on animal cruelty in the UK, and had a huge effect on public opinion. So, I thought I’d write my own horsy tale, although sadly it lacked the same kind of social comment. In fact, it lacked any kind of social comment! The dusty old typescript now languishes in a box in the attic and my father (God bless him indeed) keeps threatening to dig it out and put in on eBay. No chance!

Bearing in mind it was written back in pre-word-processor days, the publishing houses were not inundated with typescripts, but they were still enormously kind in their rejections. I often wonder what would have happened if it had been accepted, but getting the thing turned down numerous times, however gently and encouragingly they did it, was enough to shatter my fragile self-confidence as a writer. I put that ambition aside and went out and did various other things instead for a few years before I got into the non-fiction side, which satisfied my desire to put words on paper – for a while, at least!

I suppose at a basic level, what I learnt from it was that I could complete a story from start to finish, even if it wasn’t quite the right story. If I’d managed to become a novelist at that early age, I think I would very quickly have run out of things to say. I’d been nowhere and done nothing.

At least, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

(T’s note… I’m so glad you went back to it, though! The world needed Charlie Fox! But I love that you show so clearly how sometimes it’s best to let go of that first attempt, shelve it, learn from it and move on. So many first-time writers really and truly want to do the hard work… but they also want to live the fantasy that the first book is going to be “the one.” I’m grateful to your dad! And if he’s reading this, and wants to make a few extra bucks for an old yellowed typescript he just happens to have sitting around his attic… call me.) 

TMC 4) You live (were born) in the UK, and your Charlie Fox books were initially set there. Now Charlie’s traveling in the US for various books. Tell us a little bit about the difference in the culture between where you live vs. the US — beyond just differences in language. Do you see any significant differences in how a strong character like Charlie is perceived here vs. there? Or, are you finding that with the internet and TV, cultural differences are eroding? (Or something in between?) I’d love a sense of the place where you grew up / where you live now vs. cultural nuances you’ve discovered in your travels in the US. Also, what were the obstacles in setting a book in the US?

ZS 4) I think the main difference between the UK and the States is the scale of the place. We describe our house as halfway up the side of a fell in the middle of nowhere, but in reality we’re only five miles from the nearest small town, not several hours’ drive along deserted arrow-straight road without another human being in sight. OK, so the local population is outnumbered probably ten-to-one by the sheep, but there isn’t that sense of real isolation you  can achieve in America.

Charlie is possibly accepted more easily in the States, because you have more of a tradition of strong female characters. If you think of American TV, you have more kick-ass women in programmes like Alias and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We have Miss Marple. I think we absorb a lot of US culture over here through TV, because if an American series is successful, for instance, we tend to import it as is. In the States, though, it seems that the UK concept is simply remade with an American cast and setting. Apart from villains, of course. At one point, every movie had to have a Brit as the chief baddie. And if he wasn’t a Brit, he at least drove a Range Rover…

(T’s note: Or he was James Bondish.)

I would not like to try and write a book entirely from the POV of an American main protagonist. At least with Charlie, she’s a Brit and she still thinks like a Brit, so I’m constantly looking at a foreign culture through her eyes. She’s always felt apart from other people because of her abilities, and this increases her outsider status. Keeps things interesting!

(T’s note: I’d agree–I love the fish-out-of-water situations Charlie finds herself in, and I especially love seeing the US from the eyes of a non-American. It can be so illuminating.)

We’d travelled a lot in the States before I took Charlie over to Florida for her first American job, and although Florida is a very touristy destination, I wanted a very particular setting for the book – Daytona Beach during the Spring Break weekend. That was probably the first time where the time and place came first, and the story arrived afterwards.

TMC 5) Charlie Fox is one of the best and strongest female protagonists I’ve ever read and I love this series. So much so that I am champing at the bit for the newest book. Tell us a little bit about how Charlie came about?

ZS 5) Funny you should ask that, because I’ve just finished reading a thriller that seems very much in the vein of the old all-action, macho tough-guy style that I used to read when I was younger. There were very few women in the book, and they performed the ‘traditional’ female roles – sex, cooking, ministering to the sick, crying during a firefight, and being unable to take the safety-catch off a weapon. And it reminded me of exactly why I came up with a character like Charlie. I simply couldn’t find one I didn’t want to shake until her teeth rattled!

(T’s note: Exactly! Bravo!)

TMC 6) I see that sometimes in interviews, questions are always popping up about the “gender divide” in the thriller / mystery genre, and honestly, I have to wonder if this is a divide that is perceived by those in the business rather than the audience… meaning, the business perceives it, acts on it, creates a system whereby it’s harder for female led books to be marketed in general, and thus creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve noticed that you (like myself) didn’t perceive a divide and wouldn’t characterize the issues a strong protagonist faces in order to win over an audience. That said, what *do* you perceive as the issues facing a writer who’s writing a strong female character? What sorts of things are you wary about with Charlie, and how do you make us care so much about her.

ZS 6) I think the big problems are that, not only do I write a strong female character, but I have an obviously female name as well, which does seem to put off a certain element of male readers. I still get amazed emails from male readers saying they actually enjoyed reading a Charlie Fox novel, which was often given to them by a female friend/relative. And yet, I don’t know what made them wary about picking up one of my books in the first place. What are they expecting that they did or didn’t find?

I tried not to make Charlie a ‘guy in nylons’ as someone so nicely put it once.

(T’s note: I thought for about a half-a-second to Google ‘guy in nylons’ and then I came to my senses. You are welcome.)

She’s just…a person. She’s competent and resilient, but she’s aware that she has a capacity for violence which worries her in a way I don’t think it would a male main protag. She has a nice dry sense of humour, which I hope makes her more human without slipping into comedic, but at the same time she could kill you with her thumbs.

On the marketing side, I think you’re entirely right. I look at some of the weird overseas covers I’ve had, and wonder where on earth the books are supposed to be aimed. I recently signed a deal for a couple of the books to come out in Russia, and I’m intrigued to see where they pitch those. Just as long as they don’t do the covers in pink…

From a personal standpoint, it annoys me to be pigeonholed purely on gender. I’ve been getting that for most of my life. I think if I was starting again, though, I’d go for a pseudonym that was very definitely non-gender specific. Let people pick up the books with an open mind, and decide what they think afterwards.

(T’s note: I so completely concur.)

TMC 7) Tell us a little bit about how the Charlie Fox novels were created (following what event?), and how you see the series growing? I’m interested in the fact that, as a series character, Charlie *is* continuing to grow and change as a result of events from previous books. Was this planned? A part of your natural inclination?

ZS 7) Charlie came about because of two things. One, as I already mentioned, was because of the lack of the right kind of female characters within my reading sphere. The other was receiving death-threat letters in the course of my non-fiction work. That was a very strange and unsettling experience, particularly as the police never quite pinned down who was responsible, although we had our suspicions at the time. I think I was probably very lucky to come out of it relatively unscathed.

(And that is still so scary — just to think how real the possibilities are. I think it’s made you strong, and savvy, though.)

Charlie’s background came partly from the stories of bullying, hazing and suicide at a training camp called Deep Cut, and the rest of her quirks and qualities simply grew out of her experiences, coloured by my own.

Yes, she has grown during the series, but I felt I didn’t have the option to keep her static. I knew when I started out that she was not going to stay an ‘amateur sleuth’ for long. There’s only so many bodies an amateur can trip over before nobody would ever want to stand next to them in a bus queue, just in case.

I think if Charlie had already been working as a bodyguard in the very first book, with her relationship with Sean rekindled from their army days, there wouldn’t have been the same imperative. As it stands, she needed to come to terms with the past before she could move on, and she’s done this at a steady rate – at least until things start going Horribly Wrong for her on a personal level.

TMC 8) I am the lucky LUCKY recipient of an ARC of the very first Charlie novel, KILLER INSTINCT, which is coming out THIS MONTH from Busted Flush Press. This is a fantastic book and I feel like a total fangirl, squeeing on the sidelines, but I am thrilled that I got to read it. Not only was I surprised to learn that there were four books prior to FIRST DROP, I was frustrated that they weren’t readily available, ’til now. This is *wonderful* news and the covers are amazing. Tell us a little about how this re-release of the four originals came about.

ZS 8) David Thompson at Busted Flush Press has always been an enthusiastic supporter of my work, so I was delighted when he expressed interest in bringing out new editions of the early Charlie Fox books. Because David is a bookseller as well as a publisher, he has his finger on the pulse of what’s likely to sell and what isn’t, so we’re both really hopeful that the books will do well.

And, I know it’s confusing, but there were actually three books before FIRST DROP, and then a fifth between that and SECOND SHOT. (T’s note: oops. But now it’s starting to make sense…) When I thought up the title for FIRST DROP, it related to the rollercoaster Charlie is riding at the start of the book. I liked it because, in coaster terms, once you’ve climbed the initial lift hill and hit the first drop, you can’t stop, you can’t slow down, and you can’t get off the ride – you’ve just got to hold on tight and hope you’re still alive at the finish. It suited the story, I thought, but I never realised it would set a precedent.

However, when the series was picked up in the States, FIRST DROP was where they started. I was already writing what would become SECOND SHOT by that time, which was originally going to be called FALL LINE, because of the ski connotations and the fact that the fall line is the fastest way downhill. Considering Charlie does get shot twice on the opening page of that book, it seemed to fit. But, my US publishers wanted another numerical title to follow FIRST DROP, and SECOND SHOT was the obvious choice.

T’s note: for those of you keeping score at home, here’s the order of the series:

Killer Instinct 

Riot Act 

Hard Knocks 

First Drop 

Road Kill 

Second Shot 

Third Strike 

Fourth Day 

Also, I’d like to point out to the readers here that you can start with Charlie right away and still go back to the earlier books (out of order) and love the series!

TMC 9) You’ve stated in other interviews that your schedule changes daily, and you aim for 30K words per month to try to hit your goals. I’d love to hear a bit more about how you manage to cope with the constant changes and keep track of your story’s details, and how you fit writing 30K in and around a very busy schedule. What was the single most helpful tip that you found while tracking your information? What was the thing you tried which derailed you and you’ll never try again?

ZS 9) We very often find that no two days are alike, so if we’re on the road and I can’t use my laptop, for whatever reason, I usually at least manage to make a few notes about the next piece of dialogue, or work out the basics for an action scene that’s coming up, or even just what information my characters need to receive or get across in the next chapter.

I do try and write about 30,000 words a month when I’m in the midst of a book, and I find that if I don’t have a target, it’s too easy for days to slip by with nothing getting done. Then you find yourself facing an insurmountable amount with a deadline looming. This allows me to pace myself a little better, and make a reasonable amount of progress. It’s only around 1000 words a day, but that’s finished words. I don’t tend to rush through a first draft and then make a lot of major changes in each subsequent draft.

What is the thing I tried that derailed me? Not spending enough time plotting a book before I started on it. Definitely. I don’t find detailed outlining makes a book stale for me, simply that it allows me to interweave a greater number of differing strands of a story more tightly together. And the best thing? Doing a summary of the book as I go, which was suggested to me by my friend, crime writer Lesley Horton. It’s an invaluable way of keeping on top of the story, and then of making any necessary mods afterwards.

TMC 10) Tell us a little bit about FOURTH DAY and when we can expect to see it out on the stands?

ZS 10) FOURTH DAY sees Charlie going undercover into a cult in California, looking not only for answers about the death of a former disciple, but also for the means of her own redemption. She’s pretty unhappy with her life at this point, and the cult’s leader, Randall Bane, proves a charismatic figure who makes her re-evaluate herself and threatens to cause a rift between Charlie and her lover, Sean. It was a fairly harrowing book to write and, having just finished the follow-up, things do not get easy for Charlie in the months that follow. As THIRD STRIKE was about her search for respect from the people who matter most in her life, this was a logical next step and I’ll be very interested to see what people make of it! FOURTH DAY is just out in the UK, and will be out in the States next year from Pegasus.

TMC 11) Who are your heroes? (Not just in writing, but in life.)

ZS 11) My heroes are the people you’ve never heard of, because they just keep their heads down and get on with it. We’ve become such a celebrity-driven culture that people are famous simply for being famous. As for my writing heroes, there are too many to mention, but top of the list come my fellow Murderati bloggers!

TMC 12) What five words would you use to describe yourself. (Can be a sentence, or just five individual words.)

ZS 12) Doing the best I can.

TMC 13) What’s up next for you? What do you dream of doing (doesn’t have to be writing related) that you’d love to try now?

ZS 13) What’s next? Work, work and more work! I’m about to go to CrimeFest next weekend, which should be lots of fun, then I’m over to the States for a mini-tour at the end of June, in time for the Busted Flush edition of RIOT ACT to come out. (Erm, we are still OK to borrow your guest room for a couple of days, aren’t we?) (T’s note: Are you kidding? I’m lining up all sorts of fun things and great food. Can’t wait!) I’m already planning the next book, plus we want to sell our current house and start building another. And we really NEED to get some more motorcycles this summer to do the four corners of Britain, and go and race round the Nürburgring in Germany, and go sailing again. But my biggest dream at the moment is to go to Cambodia to see the Ankhor Wat temple.

(Now… can’t you  just imagine how much fun another interview will be after Zoës travels? I’m making a list of new questions now…) 

 

And now for the commenters — let’s talk about hobbies — what we love to do and what we would love to try. Two lucky commenters are going to get a signed copy of Killer Instinct – as soon as Zoë hits the ground in New Orleans and I can get her signature for you.

God fucking damn it.

By Cornelia Read

 

It’s quarter to two in the morning, and I’m lying in bed in a guest room at my Aunt Julie’s house in Vermont.

Just after midnight, I got the news that my father killed himself yesterday afternoon.

He struggled with mental illness for decades, and he owned nine guns. There is an awful sense of inevitability about all of this.

I am blessed that he and I had become friends again, over the last several years. He’d ceased all communication with me for twelve years before that, and I know his suicide would have been immeasurably harder for me to face had we not made peace with one another.

My heart goes out to my stepmother and to my half sister, who just turned seventeen.

Frederick Harvey Read, I will goddamn miss you.

 

Requiescat in pace.

Me and Dad on Bandicoot off Seawanhaka, circa 1967

Tracking The Changes

by Zoë Sharp

Do you remember those Larson Far Side cartoons you could get – and probably still can, for that matter? The ones with the kid at the back of the classroom, holding up his hand and saying to the teacher, “Please sir, may I be excused? My brain is full.”

That’s me at the moment.

Or, more likely, that my brain is completely empty. It has all leached out of my ears like something from a Tarantino-directed episode of C.S.I.

 

I’ve been tackling rewrites.

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with rewrites. In some ways I love them because I know that what comes out of the other end of this process will be much better than the raw material that went in. Everything benefits from editing. I’m sure you will agree that there are currently a lot of books out there on the shelves that would have benefited from quite a bit more of it than they eventually received.

And in other ways, I hate rewrites because I’d much rather get something right the first time than have to go back and fiddle with it later. I rewrite while I’m still writing. I go back and sweat and worry and adjust and realign as I’m working on my first draft, with the aim that by the time I’ve finished, it shouldn’t need totally rewriting in order to make a reasonable book.

(Please note I said “shouldn’t,” rather than “doesn’t”, though.)

But, inevitably, when someone reads the book with a detailed and critical eye, they’re going to bring up points you missed, discover plot-holes you could lose a family car into, and ask questions you either forgot to answer, or have no clue what the answer should be even if you’d remembered.

I know there is no set method for writing a novel, no ultimate textbook. The best you can hope for is anecdotal evidence of things that might have worked for somebody else, somewhere else, at some other time.

 So, here’s some more, for what they might be worth!

When I received my rewrites for the next Charlie Fox novel, they arrived in the from of a two-page report of general points about the story. This, I’m told by my editor, is surprisingly short – some of the ones she does can run for page after page. She tells me the book is in remarkably good shape, with no structural problems – it’s just a case of expanding on certain elements and improving others.

I come away from the meeting feeling a teensy bit smug.

The rest of the comments, typos or other alterations arrive as a Track Changes document in Word. Confession time – I don’t write in Microsoft Word. I have it on my computer, and I know roughly how it works, but I’m still using Lotus Word Pro, and have been ever since I dragged myself into the latter half of the twentieth century and finally junked my old DOS-based word processing package.

And despite her encouraging remarks, when I open up the document I find she’s made 141 actual comments in the text, as well as numerous small corrections or alterations.

Gulp.

The smug feeling evaporates rapidly.

My first move is dictated by my workload in other directions. Shortly after getting the rewrites back, we leave for a week-long 1250-mile work trip that takes us from the East Midlands way up into the north of Scotland. Although I can manage to work on the laptop in the car, I’m finding that I suffer from car-sickness much more easily than I used to, and I’m now restricted to motorways only. (And when I’m in the passenger seat only!) Unfortunately, there are not many motorways in the far north of Scotland. (Did see a beautiful eagle, though, which if I’d had my eyes on a computer screen I would have missed, so every cloud…)

I take my summary of the book with me, which runs to 34 pages, broken down into chapters, with the time-break between each chapter clearly marked. I read through the comments whenever I have a spare moment on the trip, writing down the changes I need to make as notes alongside each chapter in the summary.

One of these changes involves inserting a definite timeline for events of the plot. I work this out carefully using the time-breaks I’ve recorded on the summary, and get Andy – whose mathematical abilities far outstrip my own – to check it. I have not forgotten that, left to my own devices, I managed to have a nine-day week in THIRD STRIKE. Fortunately, that error was caught in time by an eagle-eyed copyeditor.

By the time we get home, the summary is three-quarters covered in pencilled scrawl, and I think I’ve addressed all the points my editor has raised, even if it’s only to double-check my facts when it comes to kidnap negotiation techniques and assure her that they’re correct!

Now things get probably more awkward than they need to be. I sit at home with a flatscreen hooked up to my laptop, with the Track Changes document open in Word on one screen, and My Original open in Word Pro on the other. I toggle between the two, making alterations on the MO doc, and deleting the comments on the TC doc as I’ve dealt with them. I know, I know, there are probably hundreds of easier ways of doing this, but I need a certain amount of separation or my head implodes.

As a first pass, I correct minor errors and typos. That gets rid of all the red bits of underlining and about twenty comments. Then I start on the more serious changes, ticking them off the summary and deleting them from the TC doc as I go.

Where I’m thinking about making a change, but I’m not completely convinced about it, I leave myself a mark in the text I can search on later. For ease this is usually just an asterisk or a dollar sign. For instance, my editor suggested that a couple of the peripheral characters might be too unsympathetic and I should think about softening them up a little. As I came across areas of the narrative where there was the opportunity to do this, I left myself marks I could come back to. In the end, I decided to modify one character, but leave the other as moody as I’d originally envisaged him. I only put the rewrites in today, so time will tell if she feels this works or not!

As with any method (I assume) there’s still a fair amount of to-ing and fro-ing up and down the typescript, but I’ve found this more or less works for me.

Of course, if anyone has any better suggestions, I’m all ears…

This week’s Word of the Week is scrivener’s palsy, which, quite simply, is the olde worlde name for writer’s cramp.

I’m all over the place today (another long work trip – but lots of writing time in the car!) so please excuse me if I’m a little erratic at answering comments, but I’ll get there…

Living the Dream

by Robert Gregory Browne

I know I promised not to speak about this again, but promises are made to be broken, and someone in the comments said they were interested in this journey, so I decided to share the following, which, I confess, was written for another blog.  You’ve read variations of this story in past posts of mine, so I hope you don’t mind me repeating it.

But since I’m going down to Sony Studios tomorrow to see the final cut of the pilot, I thought it appropriate to post this.  We should know by the middle of next week where we stand for the upcoming season. 

So you’ll either witness me jumping for joy or silently slinking away… 🙂

———————

They stuck the girl in a wooden box and put her in the ground. I know because I was there. I saw the whole thing.

But don’t worry, I wasn’t witness to some horrible crime, although it was a little disconcerting to many of the people there. The woman sitting next to me started to squirm in her seat a bit, and looked genuinely concerned about the girl’s safety.

“I don’t like this,” she said solemnly.

I didn’t really blame her.

The girl in the box was a mere teenager. Beautiful by all accounts. Young. Vulnerable. And looking very alone as they put a pair of goggles on her face and lowered the lid over her, closing her inside. A moment later, they were throwing dirt on the lid, then three men climbed down into the hole, grabbed their shovels, and waited for the assistant director to shout, “Action!”

When the call came, they began scraping their shovels across the wood, then one of them — Dylan Walsh, the one playing Jack Donovan — dropped to his knees and began pulling desperately at the lid, breaking away parts of it to expose the pale hands of the teenage girl inside, which were bound together with rope.

As soon as those hands were revealed, the director shouted “Cut!” And everyone let out a breath.

*

I wrote the novel KISS HER GOODBYE about six years ago. The story of an ATF agent frantically trying to find his daughter after she’s been buried alive by a psychopath, it came at the end of a decade and a half of trying to get my screenplays produced in Hollywood.

I’d spent fifteen years struggling in the motion picture rat race, getting nibbles and bites, a solid sale, sitting through dozens of lunches and pitch meetings, and a few years working as a story editor and script writer for cartoon shows.

It was a difficult existence, with few emotional payoffs. I made money, to be sure, and a few good friends in the process — but I was never creatively satisfied, especially after winding up in the animation ghetto, putting words into the mouths of Spider-Man and Diabolik and the kids from Cyber 9.

It was a living, but not particularly fun.

When the animation gigs finally dried up, I decided to call it quits. The problem was that I wasn’t writing what was true to my heart. I had been putting words to someone else’s vision. Someone else’s ideas. And while I certainly did the best job I could — and took pride in that — the emotional investment in the work was, needless to say, lacking.

So I quit and decided it was time to write something for myself. Thanks to the urging of a novelist friend of mine, what had originally begun as an idea for a feature screenplay soon started taking shape in my mind as a book. A crime thriller with a twist that nobody had ever before seen.

I had never written a novel — or, at least, completed one — but sitting down at the computer every day was pure bliss. I was writing my OWN vision. My OWN idea. And I was no longer restricted by the rules of screenwriting. I could get inside the heads of my characters and tell the readers what the people I’d created were thinking and feeling and experiencing.

The task was liberating.

About three months after I wrote “the end,” KISS HER GOODBYE (then called A Measure of Darkness) sold to St. Martin’s Press. It was the first of the four novels I now have in print. Then, several months ago, my literary agent got an email. A young television producer had read the book and loved it, and wanted to know if the rights were available.

They were, and we optioned them to him. But even though I knew this young producer had a great track record and had just gotten a new show on the air — based on an Elmore Leonard story — I didn’t really expect anything from this. Properties are optioned all the time in Hollywood, and most of those options lapse.

But a few months later, I was surprised by a call from my agent. The book had been sold to CBS as the basis of a TV series and the producers had gotten the go ahead to write a pilot script. This was fantastic news, of course. But scripts are written all the time in Hollywood, and as I knew from my own experience, very few ever actually make it to production.

So again, I wasn’t expecting much — even though the guy who would be writing the script had an amazing track record. I just figured this was the last I’d hear of the project.

Oh, boy, was I wrong.

*

Over the last several years, I’ve noticed a change in both television and movies.

In the old days, television always played second banana to the feature world. If you were in television you weren’t part of “the big show” and the work you did was often considered substandard. And there was certainly some truth to that. With a few exceptions, much of what was on TV in those days paled in comparison to the movies. Television shows were badly lit (shadows barely existed), often poorly acted, and looked as flat as can be.

Think Brady Bunch. Or Gilligan’s Island. Or any of the cookie cutter cop shows. All of which have warm places in many of our hearts, but let’s face it, the writing quality and production values were not equal to what you’d see in the movies.

Yes, there were wonderful, well-written shows at the time (Rockford Files comes to mind), and we could all sit around arguing about which ones were the best, but even the greatest TV series at the time were no match for “the big show.”

This is no longer true, I think. In fact, over the past decade, television has become one of the most consistent producers of quality episodic entertainment. I believe that the best writers, producers and directors are currently working for the small screen and I could point to shows like Law & Order, Nip/Tuck, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Justified, Dexter, The Big Bang and The Good Wife, just to name a very small handful.

Week after week we’re treated to not only amazing writing, but to top notch production values and some of the best acting in any medium. Movie actors are no longer ashamed to appear on TV shows, or even headline them, and TV actors can now find a home in movies.

Movies themselves, however, have begun a long, downward spiral punctuated only by flashes of brilliance. Most of the mainstream features being promoted today are unfunny comedies, overwrought dramas or juvenile action pictures that are all bang and no substance. The target audience is decidedly not adult, unless you venture into the independent world.

Again there are exceptions. There always will be. But I take the position that movies and television are completely the opposite of what they were a decade or so ago. Movies now pale in comparison to many television shows.

So you can imagine that I was pretty thrilled when I got a phone call recently telling me that CBS had loved the script based on KISS HER GOODBYE and had given the green light to produce a pilot.

For those of you who don’t know what a pilot is, it’s a “test” episode that the network watches to help them decide whether or not to go to series. It’s usually the first episode you see if a show is picked up for the Fall.

The producers sent me a copy of the script and I sat down to read it with a feeling of giddy anticipation and outright dread. What if I didn’t like it? What if they had completely destroyed my story? Even though I knew that the person behind the script — Michael Dinner — consistently produced quality work, this was my baby we were talking about here. And I was hoping like hell he’d done it right.

He had. It’s hard for me to describe what it felt like to read that script. All of my set pieces were there. My characters. Much of my dialogue. Even some of my narrative had been used in the narrative of the script — the part that no one but the actors or production crew ever read. This to me, was the ultimate compliment to my work. It was as though Dinner had kept all of the things he felt were great about the book and saw no reason to change them.

What he did change, in order to get the story to make sense as a continuing series — and to cut it down to episode size — actually improved the story, and I have to admit that, about halfway through, I started getting tears in my eyes.

In short, the script was absolutely amazing, and I couldn’t have asked for a better adaptation. It was as if Dinner had somehow channeled my thoughts and knew exactly what to put on the page.

*

Once the pilot was approved for production, everything kicked into high gear. I was not involved in any of this, however. I was simply on the sidelines, getting occasional emails from the producer, Carl Beverly (along with partner Sarah Timberman), telling me about who had been cast for the show.

First Nip/Tuck’s Dylan Walsh came on board. I had been a fan for many years and I knew that Walsh was an excellent actor, especially when he’s allowed to show his darker side. The character of Jack Donovan certainly has a darker side as well, and Walsh is, in my estimation, perfect casting. He’s also damn good in the role.

After Walsh came Terry Kinney, playing the bad guy, Alex Gunderson, along with Donovan’s ATF team, consisting of Michael Rapaport, Sandrine Holt, Sean Patrick Thomas, Lorraine Toussaint, Felix Solis — and Emmy Clarke as Jack’s daughter, Jessie Donovan.

She’s the girl who was put in the box in the ground. A brave young woman, indeed, and an amazing actress.

The producers were kind enough to invite me out to the set, and my wife and I recently went to Chicago to watch the pilot being filmed. Because of my hefty writing schedule, we were only able to make it out for a few days, but I’m sure you can imagine how rewarding it is to see so many people working so hard — and so brilliantly — to bring your creation to life.

Cast and crew greeted us on the set warmly, I got the chance to kid around with the actors, talk shop with the producers and the director and see my book — the book that had originally been an idea for a screenplay — come full circle and be transformed into something alive and vibrant.

The first day we visited, they were filming several scenes at and around a lighthouse, in Evanston, IL. A special shed had been built and attached to one of the buildings and had I not been told it was a set, I would have believed it was the real thing.

For next several hours we watched a large crew of people run around like crazy, setting up shots, tending to the extras and the actors, jockeying lights, and doing what, to me, seemed like an almost impossible task. Yet they did it quickly and professionally and I was pretty much blown away by the whole thing.

I won’t kid you. I again got tears in my eyes — but quickly put on my sunglasses to hide them. It was hard for me to get my head around the fact that this all stemmed from my imagination. I had sat down a few years previously and begun letting this story unfold at my fingertips, not ever dreaming that I’d one day be sitting on a set, watching it all in real-time.

I think most writers dream that their book will sell to Hollywood, but there are so many obstacles in the way, that it usually remains a dream. I’m one of the lucky ones. And even if this never gets past the pilot stage, I’ll always have those days, and the hour of television that come from them, to remember.

And should the luck continue, I’ll look at that credit every week — “Based on the book ‘Kiss Her Goodbye’ by Robert Gregory Browne” — with intense pride.

 

I Need A Hero

 

By Louise Ure

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here at Murderati about the attempted murder I had seen from my living room window. Two men practically succeeded in killing two others with long, black metal poles, breaking limbs, smashing faces and leaving blood and teeth all over the sidewalk. “Russian gangs,” the detective told me afterward.

Many of you – more worldly and less naive than I am, perhaps – were concerned about both my safety and mental health after witnessing such a thing.  The good news is that I am taking more precautions when I leave and return to the house, and I haven’t felt any lingering PTSD effects yet at all.

Then I spotted a little write up about the crime in our free neighborhood newspaper:

 

“Robbery: False Imprisonment

A man and two of his friends were at the man’s home when two men, one of whom the victim knew as an acquaintance, dropped by for a visit.

After about an hour, one of the two visitors pulled out a handgun and ordered the three victims to the floor.

After tying up the victims with zip-ties, the suspects robbed them and fled.

The victims were able to free themselves and called 9-1-1. While one victim stayed at the house, the other two went looking for the suspects. At X Avenue and Y Street (one block away from where they were robbed), the victims discovered the suspects’ vehicle and waited for them.

When the suspects returned, a fight ensued and the victims were able to retrieve some property, as well as disarming the man with a gun.

When officers arrived at the fight scene, they located the two suspects, one of whom was 28 years of age and the other 36, and took them into custody. Both of the suspects were injured, one critically. They were transported to the hospital for treatment. The victims only had minor injuries.”

 

WTF? If the address, date and hour of the crime had not been the same, I would not have recognized this as the attack I witnessed. Yes, they were all Russian immigrants. But the ones with the metal poles are the ones the police are referring to as “the victims?” And my victims were actually robbers?

And what’s this about “disarming the suspect?” Oh, yeah, he “disarmed” him all right – he practically smashed every bone in the guy’s arms – but I sure didn’t see a gun.

It got me thinking, not only about the unreliability of eye-witnesses, but how a villain can turn into a hero and vice versa, in the blink of an eye.

I think that newspaper write up missed a few things. Like the rage these supposed victims flew into and the mortal harm they were willing to inflict to take revenge for the loss of their property. Like the inhuman look on Victim One’s face (the guy I had been calling “Assailant Number One” in my call to 9-1-1) and his willingness to continue attacking the man pinned in the gutter even after I yelled down that the cops were on their way. And how they ran before the police arrived.

I don’t think there are any good guys in this story, just two sets of bad guys. I’ve read a few books like that – in fact I have a few friends who write them – and while I love them, I always feel like washing my hands or taking a walk afterward.

Like the classic 1980’s Bonnie Tyler song … I need a hero, not just a victim or an everyman/everywoman who can play as nasty as the bad guys.

 

 

 

How about you guys? Do you need a hero in your books?

 

P.S. On a separate and much, much sadder note, I lost my sweet dog, Cisco, to cancer this week. I’m glad that he and Bruce are together again but oh, sweet Jesus, it’s quiet around here.