Thank God We Aren't Jello!

By Jackie King

Each person has certain God-given talents. Some are born with wonderful singing or speaking voices. Others emerge with nimble fingers, able to play musical instruments or sing on-key. I like to think that I, and many of my current friends, have been blessed with the ‘writer-gene.’ These are all creative gifts and whether realized or not, everyone has been endowed with some variety of this type of DNA. (Perhaps I should add, “IMO,” in order to “CMA.”) J

These talents might include cooking, gardening, decorating or other types of arty knacks that are sometimes considered to be of a practical nature. Nonetheless, these are creative talents.

Along with artistic type endowments, we also have innate or practical talents. I have always longed for the housekeeping/organizing ability. But sadly, I have none. While some folks have files, I’m one of those pitiful types who have piles. If I file something, it’s forever lost to me. If I sort papers into stacks, then I’m able to locate what I’m searching for, although not as efficiently.

Luckily for me, I gave birth to a natural-born organizing guru! My youngest daughter, Jennifer, can find and make order out of any sort of chaos.

My closet, for example.

Yesterday, within two hours, she brought order to the closet-from-hell. My help consisted of standing by, wringing my hands and pleading, “Could we have a ‘maybe’ pile?”

After Jennifer had performed her magic and gone back to her own house and family, I drove to Goodwill and donated a trunkful of clothes for slimmer women, along with matching shoes and purses.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with writing and with Murder Most Foul. I’m about to get around to that.

Yesterday evening I was drawn again and again to admire my homogeneously and color-coded walk-in. How did she do that? I wondered.

Then I realized that this was pretty much the reaction I receive from some of my longtime friends and my relatives about my published books. “However did you make a story out of that?” they say. Or, “Where do you come up with your idea?” Or, “I never thought you’d be able to write a real mystery.” (Translation: one that people would pay money to read.) J

Sometimes I’m not sure how I manage this feat, either. I only know that I feel compelled to keep trying.

Isn’t it wonderful that God didn’t make us like Jello, all in exactly-alike molds? Instead He chose to craft everyone as unique, each with her or his very own and very special talents.

Real people are not an option.

I don’t know about you but sometimes I come across people who seem to beg to be in a book or at least a story. They have some idiosyncratic thing about them, speak or dress in an unusual way or have an approach to life which is very different from the norm. But even if I do try to ‘use’ them in that way, I never really succeed.

People have assumed, for example, that the fourth in my Jack Carston series, Shadow Selves, which is set mainly in and around the fictitious University of West Grampian, must draw on personal experiences. Why? Because I used to teach at the very real University of Aberdeen so it’s perhaps natural to think that the people and things I describe may be based on ex-colleagues or repeat things that actually happened to me or them. But they’re not, except insofar as I know the general academic atmosphere, the demands and privileges of working in such an institution and the small p politics in which some teachers and researchers delight.

In fact, the book was triggered by a visit to an operating theatre while an operation was in progress. It was arranged by a friend who was an anaesthetist and I’ve reproduced some details of what being an observer in such a context was like in the scene where Carston visits the hospital to check their procedures.

The people are certainly fictitious. Books always carry the careful ‘any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental’ disclaimer but I have to say that, even though you’ll find it in my books, it isn’t really needed. I may borrow how someone looks, or copy what he/she wears, but using a real person as a model just doesn’t work for me. I only tried it once, in my early writing days, and I found that my awareness and knowledge of the actual person prevented my character from growing and being himself. As I said, a writer ‘uses’ a real model because there’s something special or unique about that person – he/she is wonderful or despicable. My man was the latter but he wasn’t my character – indeed, as my character tried to react, the ‘real’ person kept getting in the way. In the end, I had to free the character and let his nastiness develop in the way he wanted to express and live it. The only resemblance between him and my ‘model’ was that he turned out to be more charismatic (in a horrible way). But I wouldn’t want to spend too much time with either of them.

So anyone reading Shadow Selves and expecting to recognise x, y or z will be disappointed. What they will get, though, is a sense of the strange world of academia – a rarefied place where high culture and low cunning co-exist and some individuals continue to be blissfully unaware of how privileged they are to be safe in their ivory tower. Oh, and they’ll get a couple of deaths, a stalker and a case of sexual harassment.

Pen Names

I’m always intrigued why authors use pen names. Some take up a new name because their name is too common or too difficult to spell or pronounce. Others take a new name when they write a different type of book. This is supposedly so as not to confuse readers. Although some authors have told me their publisher has insisted on changing names for different series, I personally don’t think this is necessary. I recently received a business card from a fellow author with three names on it. Readers are smart and can appreciate that authors have many writing ideas they want to pursue. Look at the successful adult writers who have bridged into young adult literature without changing their names. I’m about to find out if writing different types of novels and keeping the same name helps or hurts. I’ve been known for the last six years at the geezer-lit guy with my geezer-lit mysteries. Now that I’m branching out into paranormal mysteries as well, I’m keeping my same name. What do you think about an author having different pen names?

Mike Befeler

Theodore Roosevelt And The River Of Doubt

by Leighton Gage

In 1912, after his unsuccessful bid for a third-term in the White House, Theodore Roosevelt was in search of adventure.

Father John Augustine Zahm, a friend, suggested they find it together in an expedition to the Amazon Rainforest. Roosevelt agreed – and arranged financial support from the American Museum of Natural History.

Kermit, Theodore’s son, didn’t want to participate, having recently become engaged.

But he finally acquiesced to his mother’s wishes to accompany the expedition and protect his father.

Upon their arrival in Brazil, it was suggested they join-up with Candido Rondon, the famous Brazilian explorer. (More about him in a future post.) Rondon had recently discovered the headwaters of a river he called the Río da Dúvida (The River of Doubt) so-named because no one had ever mapped its course.

And he was anxious to do so.

Here’s a photo of the initial party. Seated left to right are Father Zahm, Rondon, Kermit, the American naturalist George Cherrie, the expedition’s physician, Doctor Miller, four Brazilians and Roosevelt. They set out on the ninth of December, 1913, reached their objective on the 27^th of February and set out in dugout canoes to explore the river.

By that time, malaria had infected almost everyone in their party, leaving them all in a constant state of sickness. The food ran out, forcing them to live on starvation diets. The Cinta Larga Indians stalked them constantly, and could have wiped them out at any moment. Some had festering wounds. All had high fevers. 

The river was fraught with rapids, and the heavy dugout canoes were often lost, stopping them for days at a time, while they built new ones. Of the 19 men who set out, only 16 returned. One died from drowning in the rapids, one was murdered and one (the murderer) was left in the jungle where he presumably perished.

Roosevelt suffered a minor leg wound when he jumped into the river to try to prevent a canoe being lost.

The wound festered, and he developea fever. Kermit and the expedition’s doctor, had to treat him day and night. He became delirious and would keep on reciting, again and again, the first stanza of Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

In his rare moments of lucidity, Roosevelt insisted that the expedition continue without him because his condition had become a threat to the survival of the others. But they did not. And, although he never entirely recovered from his ordeal, he was able to return to the United States.

Where he lived on for another five years.

They don’t make Presidents like him anymore.

If you have time for it, here’s a link to the only motion picture in existence of the Roosevelt/Rondon expedition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToqblXc05us&feature=relmfu

It’s about fifteen minutes in length, with the trek downriver beginning at about two-and-a-half minutes in. The titles in quotes are Roosevelt’s words, extracted from Through the Brazilian Wilderness a book he later wrote about his adventure.

The Dyott expedition referred to in the titles, and from which some of the footage is taken, took place in 1927. You can read about George Dyott and his exploits here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Miller_Dyott

They don’t make explorers like Dyott either.

The river, now called the Rio Roosevelt, winds for about 400 miles (640 km) until it joins the Aripuanã, which then flows into the Madeira, thence into the Amazon

Review: Steve O'Brien's DEAD MONEY

Steve O'Brien's intimate knowledge of the horse racing world comes through on every page of Dead Money. The book is part of a series featuring attorney Dan Morgan, whose avocation is racing Thoroughbreds. In his filly Dancer, he finally has a horse with the potential to go all the way with a win at Churchill Downs. Vasily, a vicious Russian mobster, wants Aly Dancer for himself and will go to any lengths, including murder, to get her. With the help of his love interest, Beth, and his friend
Lennie David (a mathematician who knows and plays the odds), Dan works against time to unravel a complicated and dangerous scheme.

Dead Money, which is reminiscent of Dick Francis's work, has a cast of interesting characters. I would have liked to see the supporting cast rendered in greater depth, but that's a reflection of my personal preferences rather than a failing of the book. The writing seems stronger and more polished than that of the previous book in the series, a testament to O'Brien's dedication to craft and his growth as a writer.

I enjoyed the book very much and look forward to reading more about Dan Morgan and Aly Dancer.

Mystery bird

by Carola Dunn

We had an amazing afternoon's birdwatching in my son's California garden. It's not huge about 1/3 acre, but it's a bit of a jungle. He's had a bees' nest under a shed for years. The bees are very busy pollinators, helping to produce wonderful harvests of avocados every year. Right now the avocado trees are smothered in blossom and his loquat tree is weighed down with fruit.

There's a dead palm tree that hasn't been cut down because a)something more urgent always turns up and b)a woodpecker has been busy trying to make a big enough hole for a nest. We went outside armed with binoculars and a bird book to try to work out what kind of woodpecker it is. It didn't take long to decide it's a Nuttall's. Now we're hoping it will succeed in nesting and bring up a family.

While we were watching the woodpecker we saw a pair of house finches, a common bird at my feeders in Oregon. A hummingbird zipped past. A phoebe, a small black and white flycatcher, perched on an overhead cable and darted out to catch flying insects, returning to its perch each time with its cry that sounds to some people like "Phoebe, phoebe," (more like Fifi, if you ask me).

Way high in the blue sky sailed two hawks, one pale, one dark, neither of which we managed to identify, though one came quite close before being driven off by crows. A mockingbird sang its beautiful, ever-varying song, until chased away by a rival.

Then we noticed a bird none of us had ever seen before. Several more of the same came to perch in a couple of palm trees. They were about the same size as the mockingbirds and had pale yellow undersides, darker backs. As we pored over the bird book, focused and refocused the binoculars, we realized that they were behaving like the phoebe, only instead of catching almost invisible bugs the intrepid creatures were picking off bees. The bees started to get angry and clouds of them buzzed up, not too close to us luckily. The birds were in a feeding frenzy. We still couldn't figure out what they were. It was a good half hour later that I flipped through the book one last time and happened to spot a photo that matched: the Western Kingbird.

What with one bird and another, they kept us amused half the afternoon.

Birds appear quite often in my books. In my Cornish mystery series, herring gulls are frequent visitors, as they're ubiquitous in Cornwall.  They're as much a part of the scenery as cliffs, moors, the ocean, and the wildflowers, adding to the sense of place. And then there are the buzzards, always on the lookout for dead bodies...

http://caroladunn.weebly.com/cornish-mysteries.html

Cornish mysteries on Amazon

Cornish mysteries at Barnes & Noble

(photos not taken by me--I'm hopeless at bird photography)

Porn is King

By Mark W. Danielson

At a time when the general publishing industry is in dire straits, one genre is not only surviving, it’s thriving.  Sadly, that genre is porn.  The rise in this industry didn’t begin with a colored trilogy, but it certainly turned grey into green.

Most of us who write mysteries spend countless hours making sure every word matters, but the fact is most of our work will be ignored.  Call it the dumbing down of America, but sex sells regardless of content.  Case in point, a recent Sunday morning newscast featured a seventy-something year old grandmother turned porn author who uses Ken and Barbie dolls to explore new sexual positions.  She admitted breaking two of the figures, and said they need to come up with more limber dolls.  She has published 140 graphic porn books since 2007, and will earn more money in a year than most of our combined sales in a lifetime.  It’s easy to get discouraged when you see such success from formula writing, but it is worse when you consider what little thought goes into cranking out 140 novels in five years with the aid of Ken and Barbie.

So, what does the future hold for credible writing?  Quite frankly, it’s no different than before.  Accept the fact that a segment of the population will always be drawn to porn, but quality writing will always sell.  Stay true to your writing, and don’t get fooled into thinking no one is reading real stories anymore.  E-book sales have taken off and there is no turning back.  Television shows like Castle and Blue Bloods prove there are still mystery lovers out there, and they retain their audiences through intelligent plots and great writing.  Porn may be king when it comes to money, but good mysteries will never die.