The Bullet and the Shell

By Mark W. Danielson

I recently read a mass-market paperback by a name-brand author who has eight other books out. It was an easy read until a glaring error shot out my eye. Though blinded, I couldn’t block this slip from my mind. I was tortured, like fingernails dragging across a blackboard. This blunder was so large that a baseball field tarp couldn’t cover it; so blatant, it sidetracked me from the story. A bungle important enough, I had to post a blog on it.

So, what is it that has my feathers ruffled? It’s a scene where the protagonist is staring down a shotgun barrel, the cold steel aimed at his head with no chance of escape. The author has made several references to this shotgun; then someone moves, the gun fires, and the bullet hits. Yes, I said bullet! How can a publisher allow such a mistake? If you’re going to write about guns, then know the difference between a shotgun and a rifle; a bullet and a shell.

Tactical shotguns are used for close-in combat because you don’t have to be terribly accurate to hit your target. Sport shotguns are ideal for bird hunting because they send up a swath of BBs called “shot” that increases the odds of hitting something. Shotgun barrels are smooth on the inside, and have large diameters to feed shells full of round shot. A wad keeps the shot in place until it exits the barrel where the barrel’s “choke” or shape, spreads the shot at a predetermined rate. The farther from the barrel, the more dispersed the shot. For deer hunting, a “slug” replaces the bird shot. Deer slugs and bird shot both have limited range.

Rifles are normally used for long distance; pistols for close-in shots. Both weapons use bullets and have barrel “rifling” on the inside, which makes a bullet spin. The moment a rifle or pistol is fired, its bullet bursts from its casing and starts spinning. This spinning maintains the bullet’s trajectory until it either hits its mark, or gravity and the atmosphere end its flight. Whether it’s a sixteen inch battleship gun or a .22 pistol, the principle is the same.

Ben Small has provided excellent information on guns in his blog posts, and I’ve previously written about the importance of getting the details right. Whenever glaring errors like this occur, the author loses instant credibility. To avoid situations like this, take the time to research areas you are not completely familiar with. Even if only one percent of the readers catch an error, that’s one percent too many.

Writing: Fun, but Frustrating

By Chester Campbell

I've always contended that I don't consider writing books difficult since I enjoy doing it so much. I still go along with that premise, but I'll have to admit that the fifth Greg McKenzie mystery, which I just finished, turned out out to be, well, frustrating.

Being a seat-of-the-pants plotter, I write in a linear fashion. I start with the opening scene and move forward. I tell the story as it unfolds in the characters actions and in my own mind. Writing in this fashion results sometimes in the story getting finished before I'm ready for it to end. I discovered I was woefully short of enough words when it happened this time.

Over the years I have developed a rather terse style, partly as a result of reading Robert B. Parker. It helps speed up the pace. However, it sometimes leads to short conversations. Of course, that's also a reflection of my own conversational style. On the phone, I tend to give the facts as simply as possible and hang up. I'm not good at social chatting. I went back over my PI's interviews and worked to make them a bit more voluble, while sticking to the point of the dialogue.

Then I started looking for places to beef up the plot with new characters and new threads. I found a place for some good misdirection and another for planting a clue. I worked over descriptive passages in an attempt to make them more colorful and polished the red herrings until they sparkled like the pearls in an oyster.

I thought about just asking the publisher to do like some people claimed Parker's publisher did with some of his shorter mysteries. They said the books used larger type and wider margins to make a novelette look like a novel. But, with the revision finished, I had enough words and turned in the manuscript.

I suppose the smart thing to do if I run into such a situation again would be to step back and rethink the plot. Add a new subplot that would give an opportunity to further develop the characters and add new intrigue to the crime under investigation.

I'll keep that in mind as I start work on my second Sid Chance mystery. That one's still in the gestation stage. But it'll be fun to write, I'm sure.

Hoosier Memories

by Ben Small

This is Indiana's Southport High School gym a week ago, during the Semistate Class 4A Boys Basketball Championship, one week ahead of the State Finals in Canseco Fieldhouse.

Yes, a high school basketball gymnasium.Indiana has many like this one.

Basketball is king in Indiana, nothing else compares to it. Kids go through basketball shoes as if they were made of cotton, and nothing, not even a fuel shortage during a blizzard, like occurred in 1977 and 1978 -- scientists were warning of long-term global freezing and the possibility of new glaciers -- sufficient to close the schools, blocked the playing of the game. Games were played throughout the state, despite lack of heat and with most roads closed. Those who couldn't make the games, passed their tickets to those who could, and instead listened to the games on radio or watched them on television. Yes, television, for high school basketball games.

I grew up in Indianapolis to a rich basketball heritage. As a kid, every waking moment out of school, I spent on a basketball playground, or on weekends in the Indianapolis Athletic Club, a downtown club my father belonged to. He'd drop me off on the way to work and pick me up late in the afternoon.

On the playground, we would play pretend scenarios, adopt fake personas, our favorite high school or college player, of course. "Okay, I'm Oscar," I'd say, as I signaled I was gonna drive to the bucket or take a jump shot. "Ten, nine, eight, seven," and I'd start to make my move. "I'm Bailey," a teammate would yell, informing everybody else he was going for the rebound. "Yeah, but I'm Tech," a defender would yell, referring to the largest high school in the state, the hated Tech, which was short for Arsenal Technical High School, an inner-city, blue-collar high school which focused more on manual skills rather than college-prep.

Tech was always a tough out in the state high school basketball championships, the dream game of every Indiana boy.

So we'd play, and as kids were unaware of the irony of our roles. See, Oscar Robertson and his brother Bailey played for Crispus Attucks, the only designated "Colored School" in the state during the '50s. Attucks played those games it could schedule on somebody else's floor. Whites wouldn't attend games at Attucks, so one only scheduled Attucks, if at all, on one's own court. And that was rare: Attucks had the Robertson brothers, the best basketball players nobody'd ever seen, and Ray Crowe, a brilliant tactician, who was believed to be a black fire-breathing dragon. One didn't schedule Crispus Attucks unless one wanted to lose.

As kids, we didn't care about all that racial stuff. We wanted to be Oscar and Bailey because they were the best. Color of skin never entered into the equation.

And then Oscar broke our heart, went to Cincinnati instead of Indiana, and he won the national collegiate championship. Then to the NBA, where he won a championship, too. And in playing pro ball, Oscar did something nobody else had ever done, hasn't done since either: He averaged a triple double for an entire professional season. That's double figures in points, rebounds and assists in one game.

Oscar became The Big O, until Michael Jordan, the unquestionable best ever. His brother Bailey? Some argued Bailey was the better basketball player, but that argument can never win. Bailey injured himself before college and never played again. Ah, the quirks of fate... 

I play basketball to this day, albeit in the pool. And often, as I get ready for a jump shot against my wife, I yell, "I'm Oscar. Three, two, one...."

The Week That Was

By Pat Browning


The last time I saw Buzz Aldrin he was walking on the moon. No kidding. And there he was again Monday night, stiff-arming his way through the cha-cha on “Dancing With The Stars.” Walked on the moon, danced through the stars. What will he think of next?

Before he took to the dance floor, Aldrin was cheered on by a videotape from fellow astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 23 flight engineer T.J. Creamer did a weightless back flip and said, "Buzz, we know you're an original moonwalker but can you still do this move?"

I watched Aldrin’s moonwalk on TV in that long ago summer of 1969. On July 20 I was in Copenhagen with a tour group. The hotel management put a TV screen up on a wall for our group and we watched the telecast in French, from Belgium. Our Belgian bus driver translated, but there was no need. That was truly a time when a picture was worth a thousand words. An estimated 600 million people watched Aldrin do a kind of “kangaroo hop” on the moon.

On the moon. Imagine that! Youth, vigor, the right stuff. Suddenly Americans were the world’s darlings. When we went on to Oslo, little tow-headed, blue-eyed boys on bicycles followed our bus into town, holding out pen and paper for our autographs as we climbed down the bus steps.

Back in the U.S. another big news story was unfolding. When our tour group reached Paris, the astronauts were buried in newspaper back pages and front pages blared a Kennedy headline. On July 18, Ted Kennedy had driven his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island and a young woman was dead.

She was Mary Jo Kopechne, and Ted was driving her home after a reunion of the “boilerplate girls” who had worked on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign the year before. The full story may never be known. Ted apparently panicked and swam away, leaving Mary Jo either to suffocate or drown.

It seemed that tragedy would dog the four handsome Kennedy brothers forever.

Missing from the Life photo is the eldest brother, Joe Jr., a Navy bomber pilot who was killed during World War II. After flying 25 missions he signed up for an experimental program and died when his plane, loaded with explosives for an attack on a German V-2 rocket site, exploded shortly after takeoff.

John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Two days later, with TV cameras rolling, his accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 in Los Angeles after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, is doing life in a Central California prison.

This appalling history may have weighed on the Court when Ted Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. With the prosecution’s agreement, the judge sentenced Kennedy to two months' incarceration, the statutory minimum for the offense, which he suspended. He spoke of Kennedy's "unblemished record" and said that he "has already been, and will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose.”

Ted Kennedy acknowledged that shortly before his death. "That night on Chappaquiddick Island ended in a horrible tragedy that haunts me every day of my life," Kennedy wrote in "True Compass," his much anticipated memoir, published by Twelve." (quote from NYDaily News)

Haunted by scandal and an unraveled marriage, he settled down to work as a U.S. Senator and became known as “the lion of the Senate.” His great cause was health care reform but he didn’t live to see it.

Forty-one years after his moonwalk, Buzz Aldrin is on TV again, and 28 million people watch him do the cha-cha. Tuesday’s online Washington Post runs a photo of Ted Kennedy’s grave at Arlington, with a handwritten note from his son Patrick about passage of the health care bill.

It is the stuff of novels. It is a great What-If for a mystery writer. But not now. Too soon. Memory is too fresh. Give it another 40 years. By then it really will be ancient history.
***
PHOTOS;
1)Buzz Aldrin and Ashly Costa, Dancing With The Stars, from msnbc.com.
2)Aldrin salutes the flag on the moon, Apollo 11 Image Gallery at http://history.nasa.gov/
All photographs on this website are courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, specifically the NASA History Office and the NASA JSC Media Services Center.
3)The Dike Bridge, Chappaquiddick Island; 2008 photo with added guardrails, from Wikipedia.
4)Ted Kennedy’s 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 being pulled from the tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, July 19, 1969; photo from New York Daily News, September 3, 2009.
5)Cover photo from The Kennedys: End of a Dynasty, Life Books, by the editors of Life magazine, October 2009.

J. A. Jance

by Jean Henry Mead

Bestselling novelist J.A. Jance has two recently released novels, Fire and Ice from HarperCollins and Trial by Fire by Simon and Schuster. She's pictured with her dogs, Aggie and Daph, named for Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier.

Judy, when did you first know you wanted to become a mystery writer?

I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was in second grade. I didn't specifically want to be a "mystery writer" but because I always read mysteries it was a natural fit.

Tell us about Fire and Ice and Trial by Fire.

Fire and Ice is the second pairing of my two detectives, Joanna Brady in Arizona and J. P. Beaumont in Seattle. They are working seemingly separate cases but, by the end of the book, they find the two are definitely connected. Beau's parts of the story are told in his first person voice. Joanna's parts are told in the third person.

Trial by Fire, Ali number 5, has her working as a newly appointed Media Relations Officer for the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department. When eco-terrorists burn down a supposedly unoccupied house, Ali is part of the investigation that first must identify the victim before locating the killer.

How did your J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady and Ali Reynolds series come into being?

Until Proven Guilty, the first Beaumont book was published in 1985. When I wrote it, I thought I was writing a one-time book. I was new to Seattle, but the character was a Seattle native. I had to do a lot of research to make that work, and writing in from a male first person point of view was challenging. After writing nine Beaumonts in a row, I was growing tired of the character.

My editor suggested I come up with some other character so I could alternate. When I wrote the first Joanna Brady, Desert Heat, I knew I was writing a series but I used my experiences of being a single parent, of living in the Arizona desert, and of working in a non-traditional job to create her character. Ali Reynolds grew out of seeing a longtime Tucson female newscaster pushed out of her job due to age factors.

What in your background prepared you to write grisly crime and horror novels?

I have the dubious honor of having spent sixty days of my life in the early seventies being stalked by a serial killer, someone who is still in prison as I write this. During that time I wore a loaded weapon, and I was fully prepared to use it. I used some of what I learned from that investigation to create the background for Hour of the Hunter, Kiss of the Bees, and Day of the Dead.

Where do you do your best writing, in Seattle or Tucson, and why?

I write in both places. It remains to be seen which writing is best. And I don't have to BE in Arizona to WRITE about Arizona. It was in trying to turn the landscape around Bisbee into words when I finally realized why with the red shale hills and the limestone cliffs that Bisbee High School's color are red and gray.

Who are your favorite authors and which one most influenced your own writing?

I started out reading Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene. But I read John D. McDonald and Mickey Spillane. Those were the people who showed me it was possible to write a series of books for adults.

What’s your writing schedule like and do you aim for a certain amount of words each day?

Since I'm on a two book a year schedule, I write every day. I don't have a set number of words. I'm also a wife, mother and grandmother. I like having a life.

What are the basic ingredients for a bestselling novel? How long did it take you to reach the list?

I don't know the basic ingredients. I guess I'd say characters and plots. As for when did I make the list? Fifteen or twenty books ago probably, but making the lists is entirely arbitrary and based on decisions that are made far away from the author's effort. I don't think the books I wrote before making "the list" were of any lesser quality than the ones that have.

When did you begin donating a percentage of your bookstore earnings to charities, and which ones?

Very early on. I don't remember exactly. I've been involved with the YWCA, the Humane Society, the Relay for Life, ALS research.

Advice to fledgling writers.

When I bought my first computer--1983--the guy who installed my word processing program fixed it so every time I booted up the computer, these were the words that flashed across the screen: A writer is someone who has written TODAY! Those were words I clung to when I was a "pre-published" writer and that still resonate with me today. Today I AM a writer. I'm working on Chapter 5 of the next Ali book.

J. A.'s website is www.jajance.com. She also has a blog there as well as at www.Seattlepi.com in the City Brights section.

The Sweet Taste of Wine

By Mark W. Danielson

It was the kind of day dreams are made of; sapphire sky, snow-capped mountains, spring flowers, perfect temperature. I don’t visit Ontario, California, often, and when I do, I normally find myself taking walks along its busy avenues. But on this trip, I discovered Guasti Road, which parallels Interstate 10, dividing fields of lifeless vineyards whose vines rival modern art sculptures. Some of these vines defy nature, sprouting new growth from whatever water the sky delivers, despite decades of neglect. Snowy Egrets stroll these mustard-covered fields doing whatever Egrets do. Smaller birds chirp in the distance. Surrounding the area are shark-tooth mountains snapping at the sky. With few cars traveling this route, my walk was tremendously peaceful.

My vantage from the pedestrian bridge crossing Ontario International Airport’s main entry showed several enormous stone warehouses a short distance east. Inside this vast cordoned area of decaying buildings, natural grass, and wildflowers, workers inspected some boarded homes. Around the corner, a rendering of the Historic Guasti District showed how these stone warehouses will be converted into shops and restaurants. Presumably, the boarded wooden homes will also be included in this restoration. With the Ontario Convention Center, two interstate freeways, and the international airport nearby, this redevelopment plan seems ideal, but what’s the history behind this historic area? Further down, an old warehouse sign confirmed this was once the winery, and gave purpose to these lifeless vineyards.

Just east of these giant warehouses lies a mission-style mansion hiding under a small forest’s canopy. I still knew little about this location, but deductive reasoning was pulling this together. Fifty steps further, a sign over the double-wide trailer posing as a US Post Office stated this enclosed area was once the Guasti Vineyard.

Italian immigrant Secundo Guasti originally came to LA as a cook, but after marrying his proprietor’s daughter, purchased 5,000 desert acres 45 miles east of LA for $3,750.00, certain that there was underground water, and that the soil would produce good wine grapes. His hunch paid off, and this vineyard later became California’s largest winery.

Guasti imported entire families from Italy and formed a company town bearing his name. He provided single-family housing for married couples, and boarding rooms for single men. He built a general store where his workers could purchase wares with their chits. A firehouse, school house, post office, and church were also constructed. With his town now a bustling community, he built his mansion in its center to impress visiting dignitaries and board members. But in 1903, the railroad tracks he laid to bring in the crop led to a tragic locomotive derailment, killing thirty two of his laborers. Afterwards, his workers declared the vineyards haunted, and eventually Guasti believed it himself. Many years later, the Haunted Vineyard became a favorite Halloween haunt until 2006 when zoning changes forced its closure.

Following Secundo’s death in 1927, his mansion was sold to Hollywood film director and choreographer Busby Berkeley, but the vineyard continued operations as the Italian Vineyard Company until 1945 when it was acquired by Garrett & Company. In 1956 the Brookside Vineyard Company moved to the Guasti location. Later, the original cooperage building was used by the Joseph Filippi Winery as a tasting room. The Gausti mansion was also a favorite wedding location until it was sold to the development firm of Oliver McMillan in 2006. Unfortunately, McMillan’s ambitious redevelopment plan has yet to break ground.

Admittedly, I didn’t know any of this when I began my walk. On my way back to the hotel, several historical markers piqued my curiosity. The first pointed me toward the Guasti church located a block south, which still holds Mass today. Another stated that in World War II, Italian Prisoners of War were brought to the winery and worked for a weekly jug of wine and some chits to the company store. The next one said the warehouse’s walls were three feet thick and twenty-five feet tall, made from granite hauled from quarries fourteen miles away. As for the haunted vineyards? Well, they weren’t mentioned, and I never saw any ghosts. Then again, the sun was out. When I got back to my room, I spent hours researching Guasti the man, the town, and the vineyards. My walk’s biggest lesson? Had I not been observant, I would have missed out on this important slice of history.

Sarin Gas Attack Stirs Memories

By Chester Campbell

In Dr. Doug Lyle's The Writers Forensics Blog last Saturday, he wrote about the terrorist attack in a Tokyo subway on that date (March 20) in 1995 using sarin gas. It was headline news fifteen years ago as the first case of a CBW (chemical and biological warfare) agent being used in a major city.

The blog brought back memories for me of what might have been. I started writing end-of-Cold-War spy thrillers when I retired. I finished the first one in 1990, the second in 1991, and the third in 1992. Book three brought me a contract with a well-known New York agency. It was the last of a trilogy featuring Burke Hill, a former FBI agent who runs an international PR agency that's a CIA front.

In this book, which has the working title Overture to Disaster, Burke doesn't appear until midway through the plot. It starts out in the Ukraine just before the demise of the Soviet Union. A group of KGB officers steal several mortar shells filled with nerve gas from an army unit, killing a young army captain from Minsk.

At about the same time, a USAF special operations mission to extract a defector from Iran goes bad and the helicopter pilot is falsely accused of responsibility. He is court-martialed and discharged.

The story picks up a couple of years later with the murdered captain's brother, a chief investigator with the police in Minsk, the Belarus capital. He uncovers a plot by the ousted KGB officers to organize dissidents in the new Commonwealth of Independent States, a move designed to usher in a new Soviet-type state. Knowing the U.S. is committed to supporting the independence of the former Soviet republics, the plotters plan a diversion to keep the Americans occupied at home.

A team of Shining Path guerillas is trained in Mexico, where the former Air Force helicopter pilot now lives. This is where Burke Hill joins the story. It all winds up on the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., where the nerve-gas shells make their appearance.

The agency let the manuscript gather dust on the shelf for a couple of years. When it finally went out, a Tor-Forge editor liked the story but said it was dated. What makes it so sad is that if they had found a publisher early on, the book would have come out about the time of the Tokyo subway incident Dr. Lyle wrote about. With that hook, the book could have really taken off.

Maybe (probably) I'm dreaming, but it just goes to show how the luck of timing enters into this peculiar business. I pulled up the the manuscript today (I still have all my old unpublished stories in the computer) and I still think it's a great story. I think I'll do a little revising and try it again.

Maybe my luck will change this time around. And the title? It refers to the 1812 Overture played by the National Symphony on The Mall behind the Capitol at the climax of the Fourth of July celebration. Makes for a rousing finish.

Chester Campbell's Website