Hemingway on Writing

by Jean Henry Mead

Ernest Hemingway has always been my writing role model. Not only because his work changed the face of writing, but because he was a fellow novelist and journalist. My interest in him intensified when I learned that I was born on his birthday, July 21. A framed photograph of him sits on my office desk, and I was told by Elmore Leonard, during my interview with him, that a large photo of Hemingway hung in his office because he was also most influenced by his work.

The following are a few of Hemingway's quotes:

~There's no rule on how it is to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

~[I'll] work again on the novel today. Writing is a hard business, but nothing makes you feel better. 

~I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

~The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life--and one is as good as the other.

~A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

~Whatever success I have had has been through writing what I know about.

When asked what the best early training is for a writer, Hemingway answered: "An unhappy childhood." Whether his answer was tongue in cheek is irrelevant. I'm sure he meant that emotions such as sadness, anger, rebellion and depression are remembered emotions which contribute to good writing. And writing that elicits reader emotion is the primary ingredient in a successful book.

(Quotes from Ernest Hemingway on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips, Scribner, 1984.)

Mark W. Danielson's Spectral Gallows

Mark, how did your latest novel come about?

Oddly, this story was never envisioned, but rather came to me in my sleep.  What kept me awake was the paradox of how people accept drunken behavior, but shun the notion that the same mental state exists when you have been denied rest.  Exploring this notion gave birth to a down-and-out Vietnam Vet whose haunted past keeps him from sleeping, and has no credibility because of his drunk-like state.  His inability to persuade a friend that the actor who died in 1970 in the basement of Fort Worth’s Scott Theater was hanged, rather than the suicide the police claimed it to be, infuriates him to no end.

Enter Homicide Detective Maxx Watts and partner Blain Spartan where they are instantly drawn in as the two men argue over murder.  Further eavesdropping compels them to visit the Scott Theater where an unexplained voice whispers murder.  Other oddities convince them they must look into this case and resolve the question of murder once and for all.

Not being a paranormal or Quantum Theory expert, I solicited help from real ones.  Their expertise ensured my story was accurate while playing believers and non-believers against each other.  And rather than give the story away, I’ll leave you with some spectral thoughts.  Although I have never experienced anything paranormal, my wife has.  And by coincidence, I received the following from a dear friend who is also one of the most credible people I know.  Read his words carefully, and then try to sleep without thinking about who might be watching.   

“When the grandkids come over, I get turfed into the guest bedroom. There, I have witnessed three magnificent apparitions walking through the walls, completely benign and, in fact, kindly.  They are of Civil War times.  I think they had a house on this spot where our subdivision house is.  They wander around looking puzzled.  A housemaid with ironed folded linens across her arms (you can smell the warmth), she wears what I'd call a little Dutch linen headcap, kind of like the Amish.  She has a spotless apron and red dress.  She goes into the closet and disappears....  There is a boy about 16 years old, wearing a long leather apron that makes me think of a butcher's apprentice.  The apron is workmanlike, with half inch stitching along its edges, I think its cat gut.  Then there's the guy I want to tell you about.

I was again banished to the guest room when I awoke suddenly, sensing someone was there.  It did not bother me, for it had already happened a few times since we moved in.  I opened my eyes and looked where "something" had made a depression in the bed.  And then there he was, this bald man with a rim of spotless white hair, the loveliest blue eyes one could see anywhere, wearing a three piece suit with a watch fob on his waistcoat, a couple of buttons loose for comfort over his paunch.  He was looking at me, puzzled, like, ‘What are you doing here?’  No malice, just bewilderment.

This time I was prepared.  I closed my eyes, slowly counted to ten, and then opened them again.  This time I was spooked as the old chap was still sitting there looking at me!  After that, he literally dissolved, vanishing from sight.  Neither my wife nor I have seen any of them since.”

The above implies that my wife and friend are better spirit mediums than I, but since I cannot explain how Spectral Gallows came to me, wouldn’t it be ironic if the Scott Theater’s spirit subliminally planted it?  After all, the Scott Theater is only an hour away . . .   

_________

Mark W. Danielson is an international airline pilot and novelist.  Spectral Gallows is his fifth published novel, and second in the Maxx Watts detective series.  I encourage you to visit his web site at MarkWDanielson.com for information on his writings and worldly travels.

You can learn more about Mark Danielson and his books at:


http://markwdanielson.com and
http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com

Excerpted from Mysterious Writers blog.
Submitted by Jean Henry Mead

When Life Gets in the Way

By Mark W. Danielson

I haven’t been writing much fiction lately because life got in the way.  To write well, one must be focused on what they are creating, but I’ve been terribly distracted monitoring the construction of our retirement home.  Spectral Gallows, my latest Maxx Watts novel, which is due out this fall, may be delayed because I was severely late in approving the final draft.  In my defense, our builder sucked the life out of my wife and me.  Somehow we managed to survive.

Now that our house is finished and we are getting settled, murderous musings literally come to mind – as in how to kill a builder, and whether to bury him or make him part of the foundation.  In this regard, fiction writing remains wonderful therapy.  Whether I write Building is Murder remains to be seen, but I cannot stop these thoughts from needling my brain.

The benefit of life’s experiences is they broaden our perspective and provide us with tremendous character development.  Tangles with builders, subs, and spouses spark countless ideas for stories, settings and conversations.  You cannot put a price on that.  Even so, writing shouldn't be about getting even.  To live that way means the bastards win, and I never want that.   

Neighbors who have gone through similar problems said it takes two weeks to stop being pissed off.  I’m well past that two week mark and have yet to let go, but I’m getting there.  It’s only a matter of time before we are unpacked and have landscaping.  No doubt our house will grow on us once we hang some art work and stop to smell the roses.

Lately, my computer has been my Jiminy Cricket, keeping me sane.  After letting me pound its keyboard in anger, it will stare back at me and say, “There – feel better?  Now purse your lips together and blow.”  Suddenly, I’m whistling while I work.  Ah, yes.  Plotting murder can be fun . . .       

Historic Poisonings

The discovery of poisons occurred when prehistoric tribes foraged for food; an often deadly experience. Primitive poison experts were people to be reckoned with, and they either served as tribal sorcerers or were burned at the stake, depending on whom they practiced.

Our first written accounts of poisonings are from the Roman era over 2,000 years ago, although the Chinese, Egyptians, Sumerians and East Indians had practiced the art of poisoning for centuries. Cleopatra allegedly used her slaves and prisoners as guinea pigs while searching for the perfect suicidal poison. She tried belladonna and found that it killed quickly but was too painful for her own personal demise. She also tried an early form of strychnine but it caused facial distortions at death, so she chose instead the bite of an asp, a small African cobra, which produced a quick and painless death.

People in some cultures were so afraid of being poisoned that they consumed gradual amounts of various poisons on a regular basis to build up their immunity. Dorothy L. Sayers, in her book, Strong Poisons, had her villain doing just that, as did Alexander Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Food tasters were employed by most royals. If they survived after sampling each dish, the king would consent to eat his meal. The job must have paid well, or a steady stream of prisoners were employed against their will.

The use of poison-tipped arrows during the Renaissance period paved the way for modern pharmacology. Drugs such as astropine, digitalis and ouabain evolved from plant concoctions used for killing both people and animals. And as we now know, thousands of people are killed each year with pharmaceutical prescriptions.

The Roman Borgia family of the fifteenthnth century century was a dynasty of poisoners, according to Serita Deborah Stevens in her book, Deadly Doses. If Casare Borgia was offended by something someone said, the unsuspecting person was invited to attend a party and would leave seriously ill or in the back of a mortician’s wagon. Borgia's poison of choice was arsenic, the favorite of assassins of that era.

Bernard Serturner isolated morphine from opium in 1805, but the formal study of poisons began with Claude Bernard, a physiologist, who researched the effects of curare, a South American poison the Indians used to tip their arrows. Chemical analysis could detect most mineral compounds by 1830, although not organic poisons. By 1851, a Belgian chemist discovered the technique of extracting alkaloid poisons while investigating a homicide caused by nicotine, a very deadly poison. Jean Servais Stas was the first to isolate nicotine from postmortem tissue.

The use of poison as a means of murder declined when modern methods of detection were perfected and physicians began saving many of its victims.

~Jean Henry Mead

Fear of Writing

by Jean Henry Mead

The biggest drawback to a writer’s success is fear. Fear of criticism from one’s peers or condemnation from the general public. Fear of negative reviews or of spending a year or more writing a book that doesn’t sell. Fear of hiring an agent who won’t send your book to the right publisher. The list is endless.

Fear is a natural human response, especially when you step off into unknown territory such as a new genre, new publisher, new editor. Even bestselling authors fear losing their readers. So how does a writer overcome those fears? By believing in your abilities and talents. Persistence or staying power must be a tool in every writer’s bag. Marcel Proust couldn’t finish his epic Remembrance of Things Past until his mother died because he feared hurting her feelings. How many other books have been set aside and never published because writers feared repercussions?

The writing profession kindles fear and involves taking risks but writers have to come to grips with their fears and channel them into their work, such as thriller novelists who produce chilling stories for their readers. Writer Greg Lavoy advises fellow scribblers not to ignore fear. “Whatever is suppressed not only has power over you, but will help create obstacles to continually remind you of what you’re hiding from, where you feel you don’t measure up, and whether you don’t have faith in yourself. Success often has as much to do with finding what is standing in your way as with talent or persistence.”

Plugging in a night light for someone who fears the dark doesn’t eliminate fear of the dark, only the darkness. Similarly, not sending out submissions to new publishers not only eliminates fear of rejection, it eliminates the ladder to success.

The poet W.H. Auden said, “Believe in your pain. Take it seriously,know that it has meaning and utility, and that it grows a powerful kind of writing.” Unfortunately, most of us will do everything in our power to avoid fear and rejection so we don’t learn from it.

Wright Brothers Stripped of Their Title

Gustave Whitehead and his first flying machine, 1901

 

The Wright Brothers were stripped of their “First in Flight” title this week by the state of Connecticut, when the senate passed a bill declaring that Gustave Whitehead flew his “Condor” plane over the town of Bridgeport, Connecticut on August 14, 1901. The plane took flight on wooden wheels and canvas bat-like wings, when it flew an estimated 1.5 miles at an altitude of 50 feet during the early morning. At least that’s what aviation historian, John Brown claims, and the Connecticut senate was shown enough photographic evidence to believe him.

 

The flight in Whitehead’s plane is said to have taken place two years, four months and three days before the Wright Brothers launched their flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. The 59-second flight traveled 852 feet, earning them their title. However, historians have long known that other men had been working on their own flying machines during that period, including German born Gustave Weisskopf (renamed Whitehead).

 

Whitehead's bird-like plane titled No. 21
 

Historian Brown revealed in March 2013 what he calls photographic proof that Whitehead did indeed accomplish the first flight in this country in 1901. He told news sources this week that he didn't know whether this fall’s school books would be reprinted to include the new revelation. But the Smithsonian Museum historians, curators of the Wright Brother’s plane, are understandably skeptical of Brown’s claims. The 1948 contract between Orville Wright and the Smithsonian mandates that The Wright Flyer be called the first real airplane.

North Carolina car licenses plates carry the slogan “First in Flight,” so a verbal battle royal may take place between the two states if Connecticut Governor Daniel P. Malloy decides to sign the bill into law.

House Bill No. 6671 declares that: “The governor shall proclaim a certain date each year as Powered Flight Day to honor the first powered flight by Gustave Whitehead and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry,”

“There’s no question that the Wright Brothers will retain their place in aviation history,” Connecticut Republican state Senator Mike McLachian said. “And rightfully so. They just weren’t first.”

A Moving Story

By Mark W. Danielson

There are two times when everything you’ve stashed over your lifetime is reviewed.  First, when you are attempting to reduce the clutter when moving to another destination.  Second, when loved ones sort through your items when you’ve departed.  Currently, Lyne and I have been completing the first stage as we prepare to leave Colorado for Texas. 

Six years ago, when we combined our households, we each had volumes of collectables and kid things.  At the time, we both sorted through things, deciding what was important and what we could part with.  Even so, we still had enough to fill every storage area.  Now that we are moving, it was time to re-evaluate everything.  No doubt we still have more than we need, but we both gave up plenty to make our downsizing manageable.

Over the years, I have written numerous novels that I have never attempted to publish.  I knew some of them were in hard copy and it was nice discovering them again.  Perhaps one day I will give them a re-look to decide whether I want to publish them, but for now they will remain locked away.  Thankfully, these manuscripts were still fresh with no mice markings or chewed edges.  I also found manuscripts on a variety of storage devices including gigantic 860 floppy disks, next generation floppy disks, CDs, and flash drives.  The problem is I found so many that I’m not sure which ones were “final” versions.  Thankfully, my cataloging has improved since then.

At times my eyes welled as I came across certain personal effects.  An angel ornament of my former dog, kid photos destroyed by a water spill, old Father’s Day cards, drawings and stories from my daughters all brought vivid memories, and as good as it was to re-live this journey through the past, it’s time to move forward.

On June first, Lyne and I will be moving into a rental house where we will stay until the house we’ve been designing for the past two years is built.  We have owned land near Fort Worth for several years, so it will be nice to finally live on it.  Texas will be a fresh start for us.  We will meet new friends and stay in touch with old ones.  Even so, it won’t be easy watching our Colorado home shrink in our rear-view mirror. 

I was living in Lubbock, Texas, in the late ’70’s when Mac Davis sang, “Happiness is Lubbock Texas in my rear view mirror.”  I shared his sentiments when I left Lubbock for California, and felt the same way when I left Beeville, Texas, for California a second time.  Oddly, I never felt that when I left Arlington, Texas, for Colorado.  I’ve lived all over Texas, and my kids spent their formative years in the Fort Worth area, so for me, moving to Granbury is like coming home.  Lyne has never lived there, but is the most adaptable person I know.  Our new house is surrounded by water and backs up to a runway so when it’s completed, we will be able to drop our boat in the water in minutes, or open the hangar door and take off without having to drive anywhere.  We’ll be surrounded by horses and cattle, yet only be thirty minutes from downtown Fort Worth.  While it can be hotter than hell in the summer, the odds of shoveling snow in the winter are minimal.  Lyne has a variety of projects in work and I will be retiring in three years, so we are both looking forward to this lifestyle change.

My current Maxx Watts detective series is set in Fort Worth for good reason.  Not only does this city suit his character, Fort Worth offers plenty of inspiration.  Like Maxx, Lyne and I look forward to adventure what the area has to offer.  Hopefully, our lives will be quieter than Maxx and his partner.

Our Growing Popularity Merits Some Hornblowing

By Chester Campbell

I was out of town the past couple of days and am getting to this a bit late. I thought it would be enlightening, though, to blow our horn a bit. With our great lineup of talent, Murderous Musings has been packing in the readers. While most people decline to comment on blogs, they're definitely out there looking.

We use a program caller Statcounter to keep track of who visits us each day, and the recent results have been outstanding. Looking back at last month, February being the shortest, here are the results:

Total Page Loads (number of times the page was visited): 11,131
Unique Visitors: 7,499
First Time Visits: 7,216

The average day's results were 384 page loads, 259 unique visitors, and 249 first time visits.

The month's biggest day was Monday, February 27. Due to a slight mixup, we had a double feature that day, Mike Befeler's interview with mystery author Robert Spiller, and Ben Small's piece on Range Day Lessons. The record for that day was:

Page Loads - 514
Unique Visitors - 342
First Time Visits - 319.

Thanks to all our visitors who are heating up the blogosphere for Murderous Musings. We hope you'll keep returning for more interesting thoughts by our great group of mystery writers.

Getting Out of the Kitchen

By Chester Campbell

I've always been a big fan of Robbie Burns (his family was a sept of the Campbell Clan) and often quote snippets from his poems. One I particularly like and even put in a book (don't ask which one) is the famous line from "To a Mouse":

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley

You probably don't need Bill Kirton to translate that into "the best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray."

Which is by way of introduction to the fact that I had planned to write something quite scintillating today, but it's simply too danged hot to scintillate. I don't want to be guilty of throwing off sparks and starting a forest conflagration. So I'll confine myself to something more subdued, like a little history lesson. Maybe not as fascinating as Leighton Gage's explanation of why Brazilians speak Portuguese, but historical nonetheless.

Early in the summer of 2008, I thought it would be neat to join this blogging business that had begun to ramp up among mystery writers. I approached my colleague Ben Small, and he agreed it would be a cool thing to do. We needed a lineup of writers to cover the week days. Ben recruited a fellow former Durban House author, Mark Danielson, and I brought in fellow writers group member Beth (now Jaden) Terrell. Scouting around, we found Jean Henry Mead was also interested.

On July 15, 2008, Murderous Musings kicked off with Ben's lighthearted look at why we are so fascinated with murder. He has contributed many humorous pieces over the years. The following month, we added Pat Browning for a Saturday blog, and the six of us (with an occasional guest) kept contributing weekly articles for the next couple of years.

About the time last year's summer began to cool, some of us decided it would be nice to expand our roster to the point we would only need to blog twice a month instead of weekly. So we scouted about and began to pick up an interesting lineup of writers. You can see the shining faces of those we added in the photo montage above and at right. In the process, we became international with Bill Kirton in Scotland and Leighton Gage in Brazil. Carola Dunn is from England but now lives in Oregon. For awhile we also had Yrsa Sigurdartter from Iceland, but she found it too burdensome with everything else on her plate. We also lost Pat Browning along the way.

Our readership has grown steadily over time. So far this month, we have averaged 121 unique visitors a day. Several days brought more than 200. As you can see from the Statcounter figure on the blog, more than 105,775 people have visited Murderous Musings over the past three years. Thanks for coming, and please join us again.

Incidentally, if you're wondering about the title of this piece, it's from the old Harry Trumanism,"if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." And it's getting warmer in my office, so I'm outta here.

Also visit me at Mystery Mania

A Trip Up River

By Mark W. Danielson

I recently wrote about Old Sacramento and the Delta King riverboat. The mid-1800s was a colorful time, and the Delta King was quite a ship for its day. But long before the King came along, getting upstream was a chore. My long-time 95 year-old buddy Paul gave me another glimpse into the past when I saw him the other day.

Paul grew up in Burnside, Kentucky, near the Cumberland River where the river was the town’s lifeline. While some US rivers allowed horses to draw barges up stream, the Cumberland’s steep terrain precluded any such thing. As a result, cargo was floated downstream on disposable barges while their replacements were being built. An apparent early recycler, Paul’s grandfather figured there was a better way to do business so he installed a paddle wheel on the back of a barge and started a business ferrying goods upstream.

At night, or when the visibility was poor, river pilots used sound to determine their position on the river. After blasting his horn, Gramps would listen for the echoes. If the echo was the same on both sides, he knew he was in the middle. If it was different, then he corrected his course until the echoes were equal. In swollen rivers, his shallow-draft barge allowed him to cut corners. Gramps spent so much time on that river, he probably knew it better than he did his kids. In those days, driving a boat was an art form and Gramps was pretty good at it. His son followed suit, although Paul didn’t believe his father was ever a licensed river pilot. In the early 1800’s, life was hard, but no one complained.

Paul’s grandfather was hardly the first to attach an engine to a paddle wheel, though. The first known paddle steamer was built in 1783 by Marquis Claude De Jouffroy of Lyons in France. A double-acting steam engine drove two paddle wheels on the sides of his craft. On July 15th of that year, the Pyroscaphe steamed up the Saône for fifteen minutes before its engine quit. Sadly, political turmoil grounded the Pyroscaphe faster than its failed engine.

Scottish engineer William Symington took the next stab at a paddle-driven steam ship. Following his success in 1788 and 1789, in 1802 he delivered a powered barge named the Charlotte Dundas to the Forth And Clyde Canal Company. In spite of the Charlotte Dundas successfully hauling two 70-ton barges almost 20 miles in 6 hours against a strong headwind, some company directors weary of riverbank erosion sunk Symington’s dream.

Robert Fulton's North River Steam Boat is credited with being the first commercial paddleboat success, which in 1807 ran between New York City and Albany. Whether Paul’s grandfather was inspired Jouffroy, Symington, or Fulton is not known, but paddle-equipped riverboats were soon seen on rivers around the world. The multi-decked Delta King and Delta Queen showboats came much later as follow-ons to these early barges.

Normally such trips to the past are found in books or through the Internet, but they mean so much more when heard first-hand. If you know anyone who has an interesting story, please share it. They are not only fun to read, we can all learn from them.

Super Squirrel

By Mark W. Danielson

Okay, I give up. I've tried being nice to squirrels. I've tried relocating them. My dog trees them and I use my squirt blaster to chase them from my yard, but all is for naught when my neighbors feed the darned things. To make matters worse, squirrel behavior is an evolutionary process that transitions cute little furry-tailed rodents into super squirrels. That's right. Super squirrels. How else could they survive the arctic blasts we've had with minus 19 degree temperatures?

They are called tree squirrels for a reason. They make nests too high for me to do anything while they look down, chattering at me. It's enough to drive the Pope nuts. But that's what they want. Evil against good. The common tale in any mystery.

What concerns me is these super squirrels may teach deer how to become super deer. And why shouldn't they? Deer are just larger rodents. When I find deer nests in my trees, it's time to either move or cut down the trees. For now, I'll simply take my frustrations out on my keyboard.

The New Year Brings New Opportunities

By Mark W. Danielson

Happy New Year! What’s not to like? Optimists put 2010 behind them and look forward to new opportunities. Pessimists grumble about politics and taxes. Call me an optimist; I always look forward to new beginnings, and 2011 looks promising. Two of my older books should be out on Kindle. With any luck, I’ll have a new book published. Attending the San Francisco Writer’s Conference will be a new experience. And transferring two books from my head into computer documents is my goal. Still, I won’t fret if none of these things happen because we also plan to move back to Texas. The move means new opportunities and more people to meet. All we need to do is sell our Colorado property.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve done my share of grumbling, and 2010 provided plenty of opportunities for that. Forget the politics, my personal computer issues led to buying a new one, and along with it came an operating system that wasn’t compatible with my existing printer. Then the new printer had its own quirks. And while I’ve preached about backing up documents, I still don’t always do it. Recently, the new Word program sent a final document to the planet Beakabah instead of my hard drive. That’s right – lost in space. Too bad I didn’t save it to my flash drive before closing it out. Once my ranting was over, I found an earlier version of the document and made the changes as best I could recall. I can’t say the final version is better than the one I lost, but it certainly wasn’t any worse. Needless to say, I saved the replacement document in several forms. Lesson learned – until the next time.

It’s still too early to worry about taxes and I can’t seem to have any impact on ending the war in the Middle East, but I do remain optimistic. Each year flies by and puts me closer to my mandatory retirement from airline flying, but retirement also means I can concentrate on my writing, painting, and other fun things. And along the way, I’ll find more inspiration for writing books and magazine articles. So, welcome January – you’ve given me a new year to celebrate, and along with it, the motivation to create. A positive attitude allows me to better enjoy the wintry months ahead. Before I know it, leaves will spread and flowers will blossom. Birds will chirp outside my window, and if I’m lucky, my new computer/printer combo will work like they’re supposed to.

Happy Musings everyone.

Veterans Day: Better Late Than Never

By Pat Browning

Living in California’s Central Valley I got to know several Americans of Japanese descent who were herded into internment camps during World War II. Some of them simply moved on with their lives after the war and didn’t talk about it. Some of them were still bitter. Some of them had worked their way out of the camps by taking acceptable jobs far away. At least one of them had fought with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the “Go For Broke” regiment.

In 1994, as a reporter for The Hanford Sentinel I interviewed a Valley man who had been taken out of a camp in Arkansas because he could speak and read Japanese. Dick Kishiue was chosen as one of the top-secret “Yankee Samurai” who served as interpreters in the Nisei Military Intelligence Service with army and navy units from the Aleutians to the far islands of the South Pacific.

According to Kishiue, each one traveled at all times with two armed guards so that nervous GIs wouldn’t shoot them by mistake. When the translators were discharged at the end of the war they were told never to talk about their service, and for 50 years they didn’t. At a reunion in Hawaii their astonishing stories finally began to come out.

Kishiue was a farmer, as were so many of the Valley’s Japanese Americans. He was a modest, unassuming man but he was proud of his wartime service. At the time of our talk he still made regular trips to the Bay area for dinner with some of his wartime buddies. He was active in Japanese-American veterans affairs, both locally and statewide.

My feature story won an award in the 1995 California Newspaper Publishers Association contest. It was my fourth CNPA award. In a long lifetime I haven’t come up with much to brag about, but I’m perfectly happy to settle for bragging rights in the case of those awards.

In October, 65 years after World War II ended, President Barack Obama signed legislation awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion, known as the "Go for Broke" fighting units, as well as the 6,000 Japanese-Americans who served in the Military Intelligence Services during WWII. The medal will be on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institute.


The award comes too late for Dick Kishiue to enjoy it. I did a Google search and up popped his obituary. He died in May of this year. May he rest in peace.

The 1951 movie ‘Go For Broke” is in the public domain and you can watch it on You Tube. It’s in black and white and there are a couple of commercials so brief you won’t even have time to get a cup of coffee. There are some familiar movie cliches but when you think about it, war itself is the biggest cliché of all.


Although the movie can be seen on You Tube, that web site is shirty about links. My links come up with an error message. You can go to www.youtube.com and search for “Go For Broke” to find it.

One URL that does work with no problem is the link to Classic Free Movie Downloads -- http://www.classicfreemoviedownloads.com/movies4.htm

You’ll find three largely forgotten films from the 1950s at the site. “Go For Broke” is one. The other two are “The Big Combo” (1955) starring Cornel Wilde in a crime film, and “Vengeance Valley” (1951), a western starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Walker. Just pick your movie and click on the Download Movie link.

“Go For Broke” is a good movie, with music guaranteed to stir the blood, and it’s funny, too. A running joke is the commanding officer’s tour leaflets touting the glories of Italy and France as his men slog from place to place.

Which brings me to TALLGRASS, a novel by Sandra Dallas about the effect of a Japanese internment camp on both the internees and the residents of the nearby town.

The place: The fictional small town of Ellis in southeastern Colorado. The year: 1942. Not really a crime novel despite two killings, and not really a war novel despite the time frame, TALLGRASS is a story of relationships, personal and communal, with a bit of mass hysteria thrown in for good measure.

A snowstorm sets the scene for murder: “The snow, which had started before Christmas, continued all night, a hard, stinging snow brought by a wind that swept a thousand miles across the prairie.” The morning after, a young girl is found frozen in a haystack behind her father’s barn. She has been raped and murdered.

The narrator is Rennie Stroud, 13 years old when the story begins. She draws me into her life and times as easily as if we were sitting at a table in Lee Drug, gossiping while we drink Coca-Cola through our straws.

After the snowstorm murder, local residents are quick to blame someone from Tallgrass, a Japanese internment camp outside of town. Resentment of the “Japs” has run high since a large group arrived and was whisked off to barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences and observed by armed U.S. troops in high watchtowers. Never mind that the internees look and dress like ordinary Americans from California, they are regarded as enemies, possibly even spies.

In spite of its Norman Rockwell landscape, this is no namby-pamby novel. Townspeople find all kinds of ugly if mostly non-violent ways to make the internees unwelcome. One of the best scenes depicts a hostile gathering outside the Tallgrass camp gates that is quietly defused by Rennie’s mother. The solution to the first murder is a bit of a dull thud, but the solution to the second killing is both practical and disturbing. The epilogue moves the story forward to 1974, with a bittersweet ending.


The author recreates small-town America in the 1940s just as I remember my own upbringing. Reading it brought back a lot of memories.

Tomorrow: Introducing author Susan Santangelo, new blogger at Murderous Musings.
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**“Go For Broke” photo from Classic Free Movie Downloads;
**Japanese American family awaiting evacuation in Hayward, CA 1942, photo by Dorothea Lange, Wikipedia.
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Something To Say

By Pat Browning


Growing up, I thought everything had been written. Who could top the King James Version of the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, the novels of Charles Dickens?

In grade school, a teacher stood at her desk and read Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline” to us. I sighed and cried over it, but I thought of it as a fairy tale, not a story about real people. It would be years before I met Cajuns who lived on a Louisiana bayou, the poem made flesh, so to speak.

In junior high school the boys lined up for Zane Grey’s westerns even though the teachers didn’t accept book reports on such novels. I would be middle-aged before I read a Zane Grey book and realized what a good writer he really was.

In high school English class we read Beowulf, the Old English epic poem by an anonymous poet, and Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. Chaucer’s language fascinated me. I still remember “Whan that aprill with his shoures soote/The droghts of march hath perced to the roote.” Translation: “When April with his showers sweet with fruit/The drought of March has pierced unto the root.” Not nearly as musical as the original, and loooooong before my time.

In college I was put into an advanced freshman English class where we each got to choose one book to study for an entire semester. I chose John Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH, probably because the novel and movie were only whispered about in Oklahoma. I fell in love with Steinbeck’s writing and eventually read everything he wrote, but at the time GRAPES OF WRATH had nothing to do with me. I didn’t know any of those people.

The day would come when I moved to the part of California where Steinbeck lived while getting material for his novel. I would end up working on the local newspaper with a woman whose family had come from Oklahoma just like the Joads, and lived in an Okie camp, just like the Joads. She was a good writer and a good friend whose mantra – “The Lord will provide” – comes to mind almost daily.

Tme and fate led me to Dorothy Baker, who was beyond famous when I met her in late l962. Baker had literally been there and done that in the literary world. In Paris she had met and married Howard Baker, a poet, critic and novelist who became a citrus rancher in the rural Fresno area.

The Bakers taught and wrote, together and separately, but it was Dorothy Baker’s 1938 novel, YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, that really made a splash. Loosely based on the life of jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke, it became one of 1950’s hit movies. She was back on the citrus ranch when she wrote her fourth novel, CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING, the story of a young woman who tries to sabotage her twin sister’s wedding.

Baker was a careful writer. CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING appeared more than 20 years after YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN. Reviews were mixed, ranging from “a perfect novel” (London Observer) to “a crushing disappointment” (Time magazine.) To me it was a revelation. Cassandra, the book’s narrator, drove home from Berkeley on the same roads, past the same fields, that I now drove to reach Baker’s house. Suddenly here was a piece of work from a famous writer that mirrored the here and now of my own life.

As a new stringer for The Fresno Bee I showed up at Baker’s door expecting to be awestruck, even intimidated. Instead, I found her company to be as comfortable as an old shoe -- no airs, no archness, no visible trace of vanity. She talked about famous people she had met, good books she had read, her writing technique, how she sometimes sat for hours before typing a single line.

My clipping of that interview is brown with age but still readable. The best quote from Dorothy Baker: “A writer should have a thorough understanding of what the Greeks call the ‘recognition scene,’ that moment when a character has a revelation, an insight that will change the course of his life and the course of the story. It’s a basic technique.”

Toward the end of our chat I confessed that I had written a brief memoir, hoping to turn it into a novel, but I was stuck. She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry. If you have something to say, you’ll say it.”

Life takes its own sweet time. It would be almost 40 years before I finally had something to say and time to say it. FULL CIRCLE, my first mystery, was set in a fictional version of a small Central San Joaquin Valley town. A fictional version of the here and now of my life, as many first novels are, I self-published it in 2001.

In 2008, Krill Press, a small start-up press, picked it up and republished it, after some revisions and a new cover, as ABSINTHE OF MALICE. Best of all, the publisher put it on Amazon’s Kindle, where it has sold almost 400 copies in this month of October.

It was nine years after the book’s first publication before the brief memoir that started it all finally made it into print. “White Petunias,” about growing up in Oklahoma, had been revised periodically because I liked it too much to throw it out.

In 2007 “White Petunias” won second place in its category in the Frontiers in Writing contest sponsored by Panhandle Professional Writers, Amarillo, Texas. In 2009, after more revisions and polishing I submitted it to the RED DIRT BOOK FESTIVAL ANTHOLOGY: OKLAHOMA CHARACTER. In 2010 the anthology finally appeared in print. In the words of the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

And in the words of almost everyone who ever entertained a deep thought, “It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey.”
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Photo of Dorothy Baker by Patricia Cokely (Browning), 1962

Tales From The San Joaquin

By Pat Browning

All smiles after a presentation in Fresno, Calif. are mystery writers (from left) Marilyn Meredith, who writes the Deputy Tempe Crabtree series; Victoria Heckman, whose series features Honolulu PD officer Katrina Ogden; JoAnne Lucas, co-author of VALLEY FEVER, a collection of short stories; Lorie Ham, author of the series featuring gospel singer Alexandra Walters; Pat Browning, author of ABSINTHE OF MALICE, first in a series featuring reporter Penny Mackenzie.

All except Heckman, who lives on the Central Coast and sets her books in Hawaii, write mysteries set in the Central San Joaquin Valley. Meredith lives in Springville, in the Southern Sierra foothills. Lucas lives in Clovis, adjacent to Fresno. Ham lives in the college town of Reedley, near Fresno. Browning lived in Hanford, south of Fresno, for many years. (Photo taken about 2002.)

“The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” -- Okay, so I stole that line from THE MALTESE FALCON. Nice line, but in this case it refers to an Indian legend from Central California and the Yokuts Indian tribes who were the original inhabitants of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Researchers relate the Yokuts Hairy Man legend to the legends of Big Foot and Sasquatch.

I had never heard the Hairy Man legend until I read it in a mystery novel by my good friend Marilyn Meredith. She lives about an hour’s drive from Hanford, where I lived for many years. We did some book signings together and both belonged to the Fresno Chapter of Sisters in Crime. (I miss those days!)

Marilyn and her husband, Hap, have been a team for more than 50 years and are still going strong. Hap knows as much about her books as she does and he’s great at taking over for her when she needs a break at a book fair or festival.

Their long running love story began with a blind date in Southern California, in what sounds like an episode of “Happy Days.” Hap was in the navy at Port Hueneme. Marilyn was a high school senior in Eagle Rock. With two other couples they took the streetcar to Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles, where they danced the hours away. Later they took a taxi to one friend’s house, but the final ride never showed up, so Hap walked Marilyn home, a distance of three miles.

They arrived about 3 a.m., and Marilyn recalls that her parents “were wild.” It had never occurred to her to telephone them. Hap had no transportation at that hour so her parents let him sleep on the couch in the den. A few weeks later, he and Marilyn tied the knot.

They lived in Oxnard for more than 20 years, where four of their five children were born. Hap served in the Seabees, going to Vietnam three times. When Oxnard got too big and busy for them they moved to the foothills, where Marilyn’s forbears had settled in the early 1850s. Marilyn and Hap were in the residential care business until retirement.

But back to the legend of the Hairy Man.

I recently read DISPEL THE MIST, the latest book in Marilyn’s popular Tempe Crabtree series. Tempe is a deputy on an Indian reservation in Central California. Although Marilyn lives near the Tule River Reservation, she says in the book’s Preface that her fictional Bear Creek Reservation is just that – fictional; and while Yokuts tribes inhabited the San Joaquin Valley, the Yanduchi branch in the Tempe Crabtree mysteries is fictional.

However, the Indian legends in this book are real, beginning with How People Were Made. It features the Hairy Man, who outwitted Coyote in a race to ensure that people would walk upright. The book’s cover is designed from Hairy Man pictographs at Painted Rock on the Tule River.

In an interview on the blog of paranormal fiction author Lynda Hilburn, Marilyn says: “The moment I stepped inside the rock shelter and spotted the pictograph of the Hairy Man and his family, I knew that my heroine, Tempe Crabtree, would not only visit this sacred place at night—which I’d been warned against doing—I also knew she would have an encounter with the Hairy Man.”

The book opens on an uneasy note. Deputy Tempe Crabtree and her husband Hutch, the community pastor, attend a blessing ceremony at the new Indian casino. The casino manager’s announcement of plans to build a hotel, golf course and indoor amphitheater gets a cool reception from the guest of honor, Lilia Quintera, a member of the Tulare County Board of Supervisors.

Meanwhile, another controversy brews at a new gated community nearby. Someone bought one of the larger homes and plans to turn it into a residential facility for developmentally disabled women, much to the displeasure of the other homeowners. Lilia Quintera’s niece Suzy, who has Down Syndrome, will be one of the residents.

Following the facility’s open house and a nasty encounter with a pharmacist named Duane Whitney, Lilia Quintera has a fatal heart attack. Tempe is assigned as a temporary special investigator because of her Indian heritage.

Quintera’s parents are suspicious of Lilia’s husband Wade, a trauma unit nurse with a reputation as a Casanova. When he doesn’t show up at Lilia’s funeral, Tempe goes to the house and finds him bleeding from a half-hearted suicide attempt. Suspicion also falls on Lilia’s younger sister Connie, who is Suzy’s mother. Tempe’s investigation reveals that Connie and Wade were having an affair.

Seeking insight into the tangle of suspects, Tempe calls on Nick Two John who has previously instructed her on how to use the supernatural aspects of her Indian culture. He supervises the kitchen at the Bear Creek Inn, owned by his significant other, Claudia Donato. Construction of a new casino hotel will cut into their business but Tempe dismisses any thought of Nick or Claudia being involved in murder.

Nick reminds Tempe that poisonous plants grow wild on the reservation. A few belladonna leaves made into a tea and slipped into Lilia’s cup at the open house could cause a fatal heart attack.

Back on the rez, Tempe sees a coyote and flashes back to her grandmother’s story of how animals scatter to forage for food when People multiply and take over the food supply. Exceptions are Dog, who decides to make friends with People in hopes they will feed him, and Hairy Man, who opts to come out only at night when People are asleep.

A pattern emerges. Grandmother’s stories lead to dreams that become nightmares. A late night phone call warns Tempe to stay away from Painted Rock. Puzzled and curious, Tempe and Hutch go to the rez to visit old acquaintances Jake and Violet. Jake takes them out to Painted Rock, where they see pictographs of animals and Hairy Man. It’s a busy place, with a rehab center and a sweat lodge located nearby, but Jake warns Tempe not to come out at night: “Too many spirits are here at night. Not all of them are good.”

The story builds slowly. This is a small book – 206 pages – and for the first 148 pages Tempe makes a pest of herself, asking questions but without proof that Lilia’s death was anything except a natural heart attack. When the supernatural aspects of Tempe’s Indian heritage kick in the story takes off in a dead run. The killer overplays his hand by luring Tempe out to Painted Rock at night, leading to a heart-stopping denouement.

As Shakespeare so wisely observed, all’s well that ends well, and DISPEL THE MIST ends on an upbeat note, including Tempe’s recipes for Quick Beef Stroganoff and Macaroni and Cheese.

Legends of a big hairy creature, often called Bigfoot, have been around for hundreds of years. In the U.S. sightings have been reported in every state except Hawaii, which has its own legends. The number of reported sightings ranges from two in Delaware to 493 in Washington State.

Readers interested in Bigfoot/Sasquatch legends can read more at The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, http://www.bfro.net/
Marilyn Meredith’s web site is at http://www.fictionforyou.com/
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Photo of Marilyn and Hap Meredith taken at EPICon 2004, the electronic publishing convention at the Westin Hotel in Bricktown, Oklahoma City.

The Seasoned Sleuth: Not Your Mama's Miss Marple

By Pat Browning


Did someone say the first Baby Boomer is old enough to collect Social Security? My, how the time flew.

Savvy mystery writers age their series characters accordingly, making their female amateur sleuths older, although not necessarily slower. They age in real time without turning into cartoons. We’re not talking geezer lit here.

My favorite characters are still the women they always were. They’re survivors. They’ve come to terms with life and death. Call them seasoned sleuths instead of senior sleuths. “Seasoned” doesn’t automatically translate to “old” as “senior” does.

Take Agatha Raisin, the feisty heroine of M.C. Beaton’s long-running series. Agatha’s been hanging around crime scenes since retiring in 1992, but she hasn’t retired her high heels. In LOVE, LIES AND LIQUOR (2006) she’s also wearing flimsy knickers “in the hope of a hot date.”

Agatha hasn’t mellowed a whit despite arthritic twinges that make her think of a hip replacement. After opening her own detective agency, she’s dealing with murder, jewel thievery and romantic entanglements when her hip starts to hurt. For a moment she feels old and sick, but not too old and sick to face someone holding a gun and snarl, “Fry in hell, you bastard.”


Agatha’s polar opposite is the 70-something Charlotte Graham of Stefanie Matteson’s 10-book series. A retired but still glamorous actress, Charlotte ages gracefully and philosophically. In MURDER UNDER THE PALMS (1997) she visits friends in Palm Beach, where fate reunites her with a man she fell in love with more than 50 years earlier.

Their shipboard romance had lasted four days. He went on to become a famous bandleader. They find the old attraction is still there and it’s easy to pick up where they left off.

Quoting: “She had reached the point in life where now was what mattered. Because the next day, the next week, the next year, either or both of them might not be around. Maybe this was what Ponce de Leon had discovered when he’d come to Florida seeking the fountain of youth … (T)hat only by coming to terms with death can you really find life.”


Charlotte and her old flame work together to solve a couple of murders and a mystery dating back to World War II.


In DEAD MAN’S ISLAND (1993) Carolyn Hart introduces her 70-something sleuth, Henrie O, who is more cosmopolitan than Agatha Raisin, more driven than Charlotte Graham. Henrie O is a former foreign correspondent right out of a 1940s movie, with “dark eyes that have seen much and remembered much.” She is, in the best old-fashioned sense of the word, a dame. Think Lauren Bacall.


In a murder mystery set on a remote island off the South Carolina Coast, Henrie O answers a call for help from her first love. At one point she muses, “Loss is the price of love … But it’s kinder to let each generation climb that mountain unknowing. If we knew at twenty what we know at sixty, it would make the climb that much harder and harrowing.”

Six books later (SET SAIL FOR MURDER, 2007), Henrie O is still dealing with ex-lovers, this time on a Baltic cruise. In a scene touching on the dilemma of the older woman, Henrie O sits on a vanity bench to remove a pair of favorite earrings:
(quoting) “I looked into the mirror. When I’d first worn them, my skin was smooth and unlined, my dark hair untouched by silver. I balanced the earrings in my palm, looked dispassionately at my silver-streaked hair, the smudges beneath my dark eyes, the lines of laughter and sadness on my face. I felt caught between past and present. Perhaps the truest sign of old age is when the heart stubbornly looks backward instead of forward.”

But the definitive word on the seasoned woman comes not from a fictional sleuth but from an actress who portrayed the older woman to perfection. The late Bea Arthur starred on TV as “Maude” and as one of the “Golden Girls,” and later took her one-woman show on the road.
In a 2002 interview with reporter Sarah Hampson for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Arthur sings a song from her show:

(quoting) “We’re like birds who are perched on the limbs of a tree/When the time is right we simply fly away/That other birds come and take our places/But they won’t stay/We come and go/It was always so/And so it will always be.”


The song illustrates her answer to the reporter’s question about why she continued to work at her age. Arthur says, “… while we’re here, we have a chance to sing. … In other words, be ballsy, make a point and have an interest.”


That describes the mystery writer’s seasoned sleuth to a T.

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Bea Arthur publicity photo from the Web
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