Salute to a Dying Breed

By Chester Campbell

Tom Brocaw may have exaggerated a bit when he called those who fought in World War II "The Greatest Generation," but if nothing else, they were a resilient lot. They left the battlefields and the canon-blasted skies to steer America onto an unparalleled path of progress. Of the 16,000,000 men and women who donned uniforms in the early 1940's, only about two million remain. It is estimated that they're dying off at the rate of 1,000 a day.

Back in January of 2005, a physician's assistant and retired Air Force captain who was now taking care of veterans for the Veterans Administration, began looking for a way to give World War II veterans a chance to see their new memorial, which had just been opened in Washington, DC. A private pilot who belonged to a large aero club in Dayton, OH, he gathered a group of fellow pilots who agreed to fly veterans to the capital free of charge. The first mission that year took twelve veterans in six small planes. It was a great success.

The movement grew rapidly and began using commercial aircraft. Other communities were interested, and the Honor Flight Network was created. Groups in cities throughout the national are involved now, and at the end of 2010, more than 63,000  veterans had been flown to see the World War II Memorial  at no cost to them.

I had the privilege of joining the second Music City Honor Flight a week ago. A chartered U.S. Airways Airbus A320 left Nashville after breakfast with 102 World War II veterans, plus a guardian (escort) for each three, a nurse and a physician. The breakfast was served from tables set up in the U.S. Airways gate area and included entertainment by a country music band. The State Adjutant General and the State Commissioner of Veterans Affairs were there to see us off.

We were divided into red, white and blue groups, and after landing at Reagan National Airport, we boarded group buses for the ride through Washington to the World War II Memorial. It sits between the towering Washington Monument and the impressive Lincoln Memorial. Designed in an elliptical shape, the memorial features a pavilion at each end, one commemorating the war across the Atlantic, the other the war across the Pacific. Tall pillars fan out from the pavilions representing the U.S. states, territories and District of Columbia. At the center on one side is the Freedom Wall, 4,000 gold stars honoring the more than 400,000 Americans who gave their lives in the war. A pool of water with towering fountains at each end  fills the inside of the ellipse.

Although most of the Memorial is quite solemn as you would expect, there's one frivolous note. On the back side at each end of the center wall, chiseled in the granite, is the familiar World War II character who showed up wherever American servicemen traveled. It's the familiar "Kilroy was here."

After wandering about the massive structure, now maintained by the National Park Service, we boarded the buses for the drive back across the Potomac River, where we viewed the Marine Corps Memorial. It features a large sculpture representing the flag-raising at Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. From there we stopped at the new Air Force Memorial, dedicated in 2006. Its soaring steel spires represent the "bomb burst" maneuver performed by the Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration team.

Our Washington visit ended at Arlington National Cemetery, where we watched the solemn, precision ceremony known as Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I filmed most of the ceremony with my camcorder. You could set your watch by the movements of the guards as they march twenty-one steps, turn facing in the direction of the tomb, pause, do an about face, pause, switch their rifle to the opposite shoulder, turn again and repeat the march. At change time, the Sergeant of the Guard comes out with the relief soldier, faces the audience and shouts a brief greeting, including instructions for total silence. He salutes the tomb, then gives marching orders for the guards to change roles.

We boarded our flight back home, filled with memories of the day and the fellow veterans we had met. On landing in Nashville, we were greeted outside the gate area by a throng of people who formed a walkway for us to move into the terminal. They were decked out in red, white and blue and called out "thank you for your service." Many of them were school-age kids, some bearing cardboard signs.

If you know of a World War II veteran who would like to take part in this program, taking a no-cost trip to Washington to view the memorials, they can fill out an application at Honor Flight.com.

Building a book buzz, with help from some friends

by Susan Santangelo

Sometimes I think that marketing a book is harder than writing it. My second Baby Boomer mystery, Moving Can Be Murder, has been out for just 2 weeks, and I'm trying to reach as many readers and reviewers as I can. We've all been through that, right?

One of the blogs I subscribe to is Lori's Reading Corner, written by Lori Gondelman. It's not just for mysteries, although she features many of them, and her reviews and postings are always interesting. She had a post this past week from the reader's point of view about how to help a favorite author build readership. I thought some of her ideas were really helpful. For example: Word of mouth is huge. If you read a great book, spread the word among your friends. Loan it out (only to trusted people, of course). Buy an extra copy and donate it to your library. Make it "social" -- Facebook the book link from Amazon and B&N. Write a review of the book on these sites and also on Goodreads. "Like" the book on Amazon. Tag the book on Amazon. Near the bottom of every book page is a list of words that help readers find the book they're searching for. Click on a book tag to add more that you think might be helpful.

I'm sure other folks have additional ideas about marketing -- after all, I'm pretty new to mystery writing. But if we share ideas, and promote each other too, it's a win/win. And best of all, these ideas won't drain the gas tank!

Lois Winston: Author, Agent, Artist

by Jean Henry Mead

Lois Winston is an award-winning author and designer as well as an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Her latest book, Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

Lois, as an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency, what advice would you give fledgling writers seeking literary representation?

If I had to pick one piece of advice, it would be: Don’t submit until your manuscript is ready to submit. Too many unpublished authors make the mistake of thinking their work is ready for submission when it’s far from ready. They start their agent search the moment they type THE END, without first learning how to write a publishable manuscript. Today, it’s harder than ever to sell a manuscript. Editors are doing the work of four and five people. They don’t have time to mentor writers with promise. The manuscripts agents submit must be near perfect. Likewise, agents aren’t in business to mentor writers. So before a writer wastes her time and ours, she needs to make sure her manuscript is the best it can be.

Tell us about Anatasia Pollack and your crafting mysteries.

Anastasia Pollack is a women’s magazine crafts editor, a reluctant amateur sleuth, and the star of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, was released in January and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews called it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.”

When Anastasia’s husband permanently cashes in his chips at a roulette table in Vegas, her comfortable middleclass life craps out. Suddenly, she’s juggling two teenage sons, a mountain of debt, a communist mother-in-law, AND her dead husband’s loan shark. And that’s before she becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a coworker she discovers hot glued to her office chair.

How important is humor to the mystery genre? And who, in your opinion, has best combined the two?

Humor is very subjective, which is one reason it’s so hard to write. As a writer of humorous fiction, I know that not everyone is going to “get it.” I just hope that more people “get” my humor than don’t get it.

Some people don’t think humor belongs in mysteries. However, I believe that it’s easier to get through anything if you have a sense of humor. A good humorous mystery doesn’t make fun of murder and death. The humor lies in how the protagonist approaches life and deals with all the caca thrown at her.

Personally, I love Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series because Stephanie never fails to make me laugh. Being favorably compared to Evanovich by several reviewers has me floating somewhere over the rainbow. Another favorite series of mine is Lisa Lutz’s Izzy Spellman books.

You’ve received some great reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Book List and Kirkus, among others. How important are reviews to a writer’s career? And do bad reviews really damage a book’s success?

Great reviews certainly give a boost to an author’s career, but many books that have received mediocre or even lousy reviews have gone on to become bestsellers. Word-of-mouth is the author’s best friend. If people like a book and talk, tweet, and blog about it, other people are going to buy it, no matter what the critics have said.

How do you manage to balance your design art with your writing and agenting job?

LOL! I thought I was doing a pretty good job of juggling my designing, writing, and agenting careers until last Saturday at a conference when someone said, “See you next week.” Huh? As far as I knew, I had nothing scheduled for this weekend. Turns out, I’d agreed to speak at a SinC meeting and had completely forgotten about it. I guess the scheduling gods were looking out for me, because if this other author hadn’t said, “See you next week,” I would have stood up several dozen mystery writers.

I’ve decided I need a personal assistant, but first, I need to be making enough money to afford a personal assistant. Either that, or I need to win the lottery -- which means I’d better start buying lottery tickets. I wonder which has better odds.

You’ve won an amazing number of awards. Which one means the most to you? Why?

The award that means the most is the one I didn’t win. I was the first runner-up in Dorchester Publishing’s inaugural American Title contest. Even though I came in second, I was offered a publishing contract. That first sale launched my career as a published author.

How important is blogging? In your own experience, has it increased book sales?

It’s very hard to quantify how successful blogging or any social networking is in regard to actual book sales. All author promo is a crapshoot, whether it’s blogging or giving away tchotkes and doodads with your name and website printed on them. For that matter, even the promo done by publishers and independent PR firms is a crapshoot. What works for one author may lay a ginormous goose egg for another author.

In an ideal world, authors would sit at their keyboards and write while their publishers handled all the promo. However, today’s world of publishing is a less than ideal world, and authors are expected to flak their books. In the three years between publication of my last book and my current book, much changed, especially the way authors use social media for promo.

I knew it was time for me to have a blog, but I didn’t want to compete with all the well-established author blogs already populating the blogosphere. So I decided Anastasia should blog, not Lois. Since Anastasia works as an editor for a women’s magazine, it seemed like a natural extension that the magazine should have a blog. Thus was born Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers -- http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com . Mondays through Thursdays the various editors of the magazine blog. Fridays are Book Club Friday with Anastasia hosting guest authors who talk about their books.

Has Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers resulted in more book sales for me? I don’t know. What I do know is that every week I have more visitors to the blog and a growing following. Hopefully, that’s extrapolating to more book sales.

How has writing changed your life?

Writing has enriched my life in so many ways. I’ve discovered a talent I never knew I had. I’ve met many incredible people, some of whom have become extremely close friends. My life would be wanting in so many ways without these supportive, wise, and knowledgeable women. I’ve also enriched my mind, accumulating knowledge that I otherwise wouldn’t now have. And I’ve learned that it’s sometimes possible to have dreams come true if you work hard enough toward your goals and don’t give up on yourself and those dreams.

Thank you, Lois.

You can visit Lois at her website: http://www.loiswinston.com/,

Her blogsite http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/ and

Twitter: @anasleuth but she says, "I’m planning to become the last person on the planet not on Facebook."

State of Fear

By Mark W. Danielson

Right now, the South is experiencing record floods. Memphis is currently battling its problem with dignity and determination. Volunteers are tirelessly working to sandbag existing levees and create new ones. But as the water recedes in Memphis, the rising water will hit Vicksburg and every city along the Mississippi until it spills into the Gulf of Mexico. I have witnessed the flooding first-hand on my flights in and out of Memphis. In many areas, it is difficult to make out the river itself. In the spirit of Spock’s “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, The Army Corps of Engineers blew holes in levees upstream to minimize the damage downstream. It appears it was the right decision, but for those living in the flood plain, the Army’s decision must have been horrendous. The media reports that this flood may wipe out the South’s fertile soil for years. Thus I introduce you to our current State of Fear. As Michael Crichton wrote in his book of the same title, there will always be a state of fear. Give it a week and the media will spread new fear and the South will be once again be forgotten.

No doubt this flood will impact the farmers’ ability to plant, but the season is early. Time will tell whether there can be a planting this year. As for the soil being ruined, I can only think of how the annual Nile River floods brought essential nutrients until it was dammed. Nowadays, these nutrients must be provided by man. Unless the Mississippi is bringing contamination along with its nutrients, the soil may have long term benefits from this flood.

Blaming everything on Global Warming inspired Crichton to write State of Fear. Those who have read it know it is the best non-fiction fiction book that’s ever been printed. For those who haven’t read it, it is probably worth your time. The world is in a constant state of physical change. People are Earth’s only inhabitants that are in a constant state of fear.

I have touched on this subject before and reiterate that fear is what mystery is all about. Fear of what will come next. Fear it might happen to you. The media is successful in presenting images that capitalize on this just as mystery authors capitalize on instilling fear in its readers. Sometimes fear is good, but it’s best to keep it in perspective. In the case of the floods, accept the fact that this major climatic event is no different from the devastating 1927 flood. On the positive side, authors like John Grisham may find this flood inspiring for a new mystery.

How to write crime and mystery (or maybe not)

by Bill Kirton

I think I’ve mentioned before that I write things other than crime but since there are still crime novels of mine to be released later this year, and crime is still the main part of my output, and – by no means least – since this blog is supposed to carry ‘murderous musings’, I thought this time I’d offer some hints to would-be crime/mystery writers. Not that I have the formula for writing a masterpiece but simply to open areas which might get you asking yourself some questions. I’m not a fan of creative writing courses and, at every opportunity, I trot out Somerset Maugham’s observation. ‘There are three rules for writing the novel,’ he wrote, then added ‘Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are’. But there are ways to get the creative juices flowing (and of avoiding clichés such as that one but I’m lazy). Here’s one.

Where do you start? Serial killer? Gang warfare? Sado-masochistic practices in a nunnery? It’s a list that easy to extend. But my suggestion would be to prefer the ordinary to the extraordinary. If you start with pools of blood and a trail of smeared footprints leading down into a crypt, it’s dramatic, scary and can be thrilling. But what if it’s a park bench on a sunny day? A woman’s sitting reading a book and eating her lunch sandwiches. Children are playing, old women are feeding ducks, couples are strolling along. The woman’s bag slips from her lap. She bends to retrieve it and sees a red filament. It’s a tiny, barely noticeable trickle of blood which is oozing onto the path in front of her bench. It’s coming from a tissue which someone has wrapped around something and thrown away. The normality of the context brings the frisson closer. Until we see the blood, it’s a familiar scene, reassuring, normal – one which carries no threat, so the intrusion of a macabre element is more sinister. The shock is greater.

So try this. Tomorrow, go through at least part but preferably all of the day looking for clues, plots. Rather than think from the point of view of the murderer, set yourself up as a victim. Notice how many ways you could be murdered – not by any grandiose scheming, bombs, guns, etc. (although that’s not as unlikely as it used to be) but by the normal trappings of the way you live.

For example, toothpaste is a threat. Who has access to your toothbrush? What could they put on it to get rid of you? There are some toxins of which even a tiny drop would be very effective. Who knows about any vitamins or medication you’re on? How easy is it for them to tamper with it? Who knows what foodstuffs you prefer? Or where you shop? Could anyone have found indications of necessary medication in the rubbish you’ve thrown away? Who’s watching your movements in and out of the house? Are there any places on your route to work where you’re particularly vulnerable? Why is there a ladder against the neighbour’s wall? What’s in the box they’ve put out with their wheelie bin? And so it goes on through the day. Multiply all these questions by the number of people who have access to the various items and locations and you have a complex set of relationships – which generate lots of ideas. In my case, the answer to most of these questions is ‘My wife’ but fortunately she doesn’t read this blog.

So keep asking yourself these things and, each time you come up with an answer, always ask ‘But why would the person want to do that?’ Even the simplest action has reasons behind it and consequences. Ask what the reasons are and what’ll happen afterwards and you’ve got the beginnings of a story, or maybe the story itself.

See? It’s a nice game to play with yourself. And once that central departure point is set – the toothbrush, the bottle of vitamin pills, the tools in your garden shed – possibilities and consequences multiply. And you can start jigsawing together clues, red herrings, suspects and, most of all, characters. And pretty soon you’ll have the makings of a plot because, at least in my way of working, plots arise from characters, not the other way round.

Try it, and when you write the best seller as a result of using this technique, send me just a tiny percentage of the profits.

It's Not The Indian, It's The Arrows....

By Shane Cashion

For those of us in the Midwest, golf season is once again upon us. I had the good fortune to play twice last week: once in a tournament to raise money for the St. Louis Police Department’s soccer team, and once with my uncle. To see me play, you wouldn’t know that I’m obsessed with golf, but I am; although, I don’t really care to watch golf on TV, and I certainly don’t follow any of the players. I’m basically obsessed with playing golf and buying golf equipment. I buy golf clubs like some women by purses.

Unfortunately, I seem to lack the judgment and discretion necessary to understand that the claims made by golf club manufacturers are largely just puffery. When they say their clubs will improve my slice, I hear cure my slice. So I rush right to the golf shop to test them out. What’s strange, and probably fraudulent (might be a case there), is that the virtual golf screen you test your clubs with never displays errant shots. The ball always travels down the center of the fairway. Of course back at the range or on the course the clubs immediately betray me, sending my ball hooking violently to the left, or slicing wildly to the right.

Truth be told, part of me wishes that my ball would go awry every single time I hit it. That way, I’d eventually just quit. But it doesn’t. Now and again it actually goes straight. This is evil because it gives me false hope, tricking me into believing that I’m getting closer, and that if I just find the right club, a club that’s tailored perfectly for the vagaries of my swing, I’ll be in business. Aspirational business. Senior Tour business.

Because I don’t have the patience for lessons (and don’t want a man touching me from behind) I’m vigilant about finding the right equipment. Presently, I carry 27 clubs in my golf bag. PGA rules allow for 14. I cut the dividers out of my golf bag with a small hacksaw to accommodate them all. Below is a quick inventory of what’s in my bag.

I carry three 3-Hybrids and three 4-Hybrids. One I swing with a steep sweeping motion, like a broom; one I swing like a conventional iron; and one I swing with a modified chopping motion that draws curious looks. I thoroughly researched each of the hybrids before I bought them. Since each club benefits me in its own unique way, I can’t leave any of them at home. I have to carry all of them with me every time I play.

As for irons, 3-9, I carry what are purported to be the most forgiving clubs made by a manufacturer that is NOT recognized as a game improvement clubs manufacturer. I don’t want people to think I need the help. It’s important that I look the part of a serious golfer. Because I am.

Now, somewhat paradoxically, I carry three drivers with obscenely large heads, probably the largest heads on the market. Remember those big red plastic baseball bats that were like Popeye’s forearms? That’s what my drivers resemble. Although they are equally enormous in size, they vary in loft degrees. If I’m playing well, I’ll opt for a lower loft. If I’m out of control, I’ll opt for a higher loft.

I also carry numerous wedges of varying degrees: 48, 52, 56, 60, and 64. Eventually I’d like to have a wedge in every degree available. I don’t want to ever have to take half swings or three quarter swings. It would take years to acquire that sort of proficiency.

When I get close to the green, I call for my handy dandy chipper. It’s a medieval amalgamation of a putter and a wedge that invariably draws snide remarks from my playing partners: “What are you, a hundred? You know that’s illegal on tour? I mean have you ever seen anyone on TV use that stupid thing?” Well I’m not a hundred, and I’m not on tour (yet), and I’m not afraid to use that baby from as far away as twenty or thirty yards from the green. It’s probably my favorite club.

Once I’m safely on the green, I turn to my two putters. Anyone who has played golf is familiar with the saying: Driving’s for Show, Putting’s for Dough: truer words were never spoken. In order to increase my chances of scoring well and capturing those elusive skins, I carry a traditional Teardrop putter and a 2-Ball putter. I alternate back and forth between the two, sometimes on the same green, depending upon the distance from the cup. My playing partners hate the delay, naturally, but remember; it’s MY score that goes next to my name, not theirs!

As for balls, there’s no point playing 27 carefully selected clubs if you’re just going to use any old creek ball. After extensive research, I play moderately priced no-spin balls. I find that by eliminating as much spin as possible I’m able to mitigate the frequency of stress inducing slices. They’re also a wonderful complement to the brush tees I play.

Ultimately, as my game has developed, I’ve come to realize that I’m not some seer of great golf shots. It’s literally impossible for me to predict what clubs are going to work on any given day. As such, I carry almost two full sets of clubs every time I play. What’s more, I’m not afraid to add additional clubs to my arsenal. I only wish they’d make twin bags and a roof rack on the golf cart to accommodate them.

The Amazon

by Leighton Gage                                                             

Father Gaspar de Carvajal was a Catholic priest who visited the coast of South America in the middle years of the sixteenth century and wrote a book about it. His work begins in a perfectly believable fashion. They were, he said, following the coast, keeping it on their starboard (right-hand) side. One day it turned from south to west. The water around their ship went from blue to brown and a current began to push against the bow, both signs that seemed to indicate they’d entered an estuary. Five days of steady sailing ensued, still with no sign of an opposing shore. The sailors began to have doubts. If they were on a river, it was huge, larger than any in Europe.

Then, on the morning of the sixth day, their ships were suddenly and viciously attacked. The assailants were a host of natives in canoes, natives who (according to Gaspar ) were all women, set on capturing our men for the purpose of procreation.

Mind you, the crew had been at sea, without women, for many months by then. They might have welcomed some feminine company, had not Gaspar, wise man that he was, claimed to have been in possession of superior knowledge, i.e. that the ladies weren’t after a lifetime of connubial bliss. They were after a date and dinner – with the seamen as the dinner.

Fear of cannibalism strengthened the crew’s resolve. The attack was beaten off. The women disappeared into the jungle, never to be seen again. And not one member of the crew accused Father Gaspar of being a mean-spirited Baron Munchausen of sexual angst for inventing the story. (Okay, I made that last part up.)

Gasper, too, made something up: a name for the place where it all happened, He called it the Great River of the Amazons, later (shortened and Anglicized) to become the Amazon River.

He was, of course, inspired by the legend of a similar tribe of warlike women in the mythology of the Greeks. But who needs tall tales, and myths, when it comes to the Amazon?

I don’t. For me, the truth is impressive enough.

The Amazon is the oldest river in the world. Ten of its branches are larger than the Mississippi. Its length, from source to mouth, is almost equal to the distance between New York and Berlin. The total volume of the main river, and its tributaries, far exceeds that of the next five largest rivers on earth. The amount of water that it dumps into the sea could fill Lake Ontario in three hours. That amount of water exceeds, daily, the total volume of what flows out of the mouth of the Thames in an entire year. Almost one-fifth of all the river water in the world flows past the Amazon’s banks. As it pours into the ocean, fresh water pushes salt water back a hundred miles into the open sea. A thousand kilometers upriver, the depths in mid-channel continue to exceed 115 meters (350 feet), more than enough to completely submerge the Statue of Liberty. If every person alive in the world today were to dump a four-hundred pound bag of dirt into the ocean, the total would not add-up to the amount of silt the Amazon carries into the South Atlantic each year. When the river rises, the resulting flood inundates an area twice the size of Austria.

There are more species of fish in the Amazon River than there are in the Atlantic Ocean,

bigger fish than can be found in any other river, fifteen times as many species as can be found in all the rivers of Europe.

Twice a year, between the months of February and March, the Atlantic Ocean waters roll up the Amazon in a great tidal bore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pororoca) that the Brazilians call the Pororoca. It generates the longest waves on earth, sweeping along everything from piranhas to tree trunks. One Brazilian surfer, Picuruta Salazar, managed to ride one of those waves for 37 minutes. It carried him for 12 kilometers.

Most of the river is lined by jungle, a primeval rainforest hardly changed from Father Gaspar’s day. Within it are to be found more varieties of butterflies than anywhere else,

half the world’s bird species, one-third of all the types of living creatures on earth. And almost three hundred varieties of mosquitoes.

One word of advice: Should you add The Amazon to your bucket list, center your visit around Santarem, not Manaus.

Santarem is a rather pleasant place as far as isolated jungle cities go.  Manaus…isn’t.

Want to know why?

Read the book I set there. It's called Dying Gasp.