A Cure for Lunacy in My Back Yard

I am not a good gardener, in that I don't like to weed, but I do love spring flowers and their fragrance. I inherited several peony plants with my house, and at the beginning they were all laden with flowers every spring--gigantic, luscious blooms like the ones pictured here. Over the years, though, they grew less and less, and this year we had the worst crop ever: limp and barely present flowers without much fragrance.

My father says this is because I am letting the other plants choke the life out of the peonies; but I'm not sure this is the answer. I miss the burgeoning loveliness of a whole bush of peonies in full bloom. People walking down the street used to ask us which plant was emanating that wonderful scent.

While pursuing the mystery of the declining peonies, I looked them up in my handy Bulfinch's guide, and found that they were named for Paeion, a legendary physician, since they were among the earliest medicinal flowers. They are the symbol, however, of SHAME, since "necklaces of seeds were worn to counter shameful diseases like leprosy, lunacy, epilepsy and chronic nightmares, and the roots were also worn by children to help them cut their teeth." Hmmm. If I don't whip my peonies into shape, we will not be protected from leprosy--and am I mistaken in thinking that my lunacy is growing in proportion to the plant's decline? :)

Peonies were also said to be like mandrakes, in that when someone tried to uproot them, they cried so horribly that the uprooter would die. They solved this by suggesting that dogs should pull them out (although they don't mention if the dogs were immune to the shrieking).

In any case, if anyone can answer the mystery of my declining peonies, I would be grateful for your gardening advice.

(Source of quote: Todd, Pamela. A FLORAL TREASURY: THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. Bulfinch, Little Brown: 1993.
Image:http://www.techspot.com/gallery/data/500/peonies-768.jpg)

The Mystery of Cruelty, The Mystery of Hope

Today marks the birth date of Anne Frank, the young German-Jewish girl who hid for two years from the Nazis in a room above her father's office in Amsterdam. Anne was born in 1929. During her time in hiding, she kept a world-famous diary that chronicled her hopes and fears, as well as her daily habits. The basic mystery at the root of Anne's diary notations was reflected in her disbelief of what was happening to Germany, to humanity.

Despite her fears and sadness, Anne Frank clung to hope, a tendency even she herself did not fully understand:

"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more." (July 15, 1944)

As the world knows, Anne and her family were betrayed and arrested, and nine months later, at the age of fifteen, Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen.

A wonderful website is devoted to Anne at www.annefrank.com

photo:http://www.lpm.uni-sb.de/LPB/AnneFrank/bilder/anne_frank.jpg

Taking a Writing Day

This is the first day of my vacation; aside from cleaning out my sons' closet, I don't have any big plans--EXCEPT for this: my writing has fallen by the wayside, and summer will be the time to reclaim it. Today will be a writing day.

Wouldn't that make a neat holiday? A day on which everyone was encouraged to sit and think and write? I wonder if that would improve the state of things, or if it would just rile things up. Kafka wrote that "a book should be an ice pick to break up the frozen sea within us." I think writing can have the same effect.

So I'll work at pulling ideas from my own frozen sea.

(image:http://www.creatifusa.com)

Celebrating One Year in the Blogosphere

On June 3rd I officially marked one year of blogging on Mysterious Musings. Hurrah! In that time I have chatted with many new friends via the comment section and interviewed a total of 88 people. I began blogging rather reluctantly, but I am a convert to this form of expression and communication.

I hope that those of you who read it will keep reading and let me know what you'd like to discuss. Thanks for your visit! Here's your glass of cyber champagne: Y

Craig Johnson on Creating Walt Longmire, Writing from the Heart, and Loving Wild Wyoming

Craig, I just finished The Cold Dish and thought it was wonderful: compelling, beautifully written, spiritual—and exciting. And now I have many questions about you and your book.

It seems like this book would have taken a long time to write. Do you write full time?
I’m one of the fortunate few, who get to write full time. That wasn’t particularly the case when I started The Cold Dish, but after it started selling I was able to hang up my rope, saddle and tool-belt. I built the ranch where I live myself, and I’m pretty glad I did it when I did ‘cause I don’t think I’d have the time to do it now.

Is Absaroka County a real place?
The series is about Walt Longmire, who is the sheriff in a rural county in northern Wyoming and has been for twenty-three years. Absaroka County is located alongside the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, which is strangely reminiscent of where I live in Johnson and Sheridan Counties, but it is fictitious. My ranch is about eighteen miles from Buffalo, Wyoming, the town from which I modeled Durant, and every time I drive in I get this Capra-esque feeling that I’m in Walt’s world, seeing the place as he would see it.

Your protagonist, Sheriff Walt Longmire, has a cool name. Did you construct it to hint at something about Walt—-as in, “he has long been mired in trouble?”
You know, I’ve been waiting three years for somebody to ask that question. My hat is off to you, Julia. Yes, it’s another metaphor for Walt. When we first meet him in The Cold Dish, he’s pretty depressed about his life, but by the time he’s into the investigation, he’s starting to come out of it. Of course, that’s what makes the ending so bitter-sweet.

Speaking of trouble, Walt seems reminiscent of some detectives of the hard boiled school—like if Lew Archer or Philip Marlowe went to Wyoming. Do you like reading detective fiction?
I’ve read a lot of the ‘golden era’ of crime literature, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Dorothy L. Sayers, but currently I try to stay well-read in all genres. I think you can fall into a trap writing and reading in a single genre. That’s one of the nice things about writing for the contemporary mystery audience, they expect a great deal--character development, arc of story, social conscience, humor, and plausible plot lines… I really enjoy all these approaches, because they raise the bar, and I don’t think that bar can ever be high enough.

Here, here. At the center of the story is Walt’s friendship with Henry Standing Bear. What came first in your imagination—the bond between these men, or the mystery itself?
Their friendship is based on a mutual trust and respect to which the society of the contemporary high plains should aspire, but to which it unfortunately doesn’t always. The friendship is the core of the series, and even though I think each book should have a distinct and interesting plot, I feel that they’re character-driven, with an aesthetic that draws you into the story through the characters.

Did you do any research on a Cheyenne reservation?
I’m fortunate enough to have good friends on both the Crow and Cheyenne Reservations and am lucky enough to be one of the only white men ever asked to raise the center lodge pole in the Cheyenne Sundance, which is quite an honor. Indians are incredible in so many ways, their integrity, their humor, their spirituality… They are the bedrock of what I consider to be the west, and excuse the pun; it would be criminal to leave them out of the books.

Walt has a deputy, Victoria Moretti, who has an interesting relationship with him. Am I allowed to ask if this will ever be a romantic relationship? (Or maybe it has become one—I’ve only read book one).
Because of the strength of the men’s friendship and since the books are told from Walt’s perspective in first-person, there is a propensity for the narrative to be overly masculine, so Walt’s under-sheriff and chief counterbalance is Victoria Moretti, who is everything that Walt is not—female, young, urban, technologically advanced, and profane. Actually, there are a lot of female characters who look after Walt, enough so that my wife calls the novels sneaky-women’s-issues books cleverly disguised as masculine-adventure mysteries. As to the question of whether the relationship between Walt and Vic will go anywhere? Read on…

Your book has subtle literary references, and your bio identifies you as someone with “a background in law enforcement and education.” Does that mean you were once an English teacher?
I’ve taught on a collegiate level, which is only slightly less intense than being a police officer. I love to read, so it was easy to think of Walt as a reader. I think when you’re writing first-person, you kind of have to keep the narrator close to the vest. I’ve been accused of being Walt, but I think he’s more of what I’d like to be in about ten years—-and I’m off to an awfully slow start. In a cinematic-Cimarron sense, he’s a hold-over from an earlier time—-a kind of man exemplified by some of the characters that Gary Cooper played—courageous, quiet, humble and kind.

He did remind me of Gary Cooper! One of my favorite descriptions in the book—and one of the funniest—is Walt’s description of Henry’s truck, which he despises. Did you ever have a vehicle you despised?
I’ve got four trucks, one car, and three motorcycles—-so, you can see a problem here, right? I bought the one you mentioned for a thousand bucks down in Denver. They said it had been used at a Christmas tree farm-—they didn’t tell me it had been used to harvest the things. It’s a tank. It may be ugly but it can be twenty degrees below zero at the shop, and I can go down there and pull the choke and pump the gas and she fires right up. I immortalized her as Henry’s truck, Rez Dawg. I think she’s symbolic in my life as well as in Henry’s, an analogy for something so deep within me that I wouldn’t know where to begin to describe it.

I like the covers of your books. Are you pleased with them?
I love the covers of the books, but guess what? They’re changing. Sales for the series have been really good, but not astronomical, so Viking/Penguin wants to go with a change and make the covers more acceptable to a larger, urban audience—-so, I’m going to argue, right?

I guess. You live in a Wyoming town with a population of 25. Could you live in a big city?
I’ve actually lived in a lot of big cities, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Louisville… I’m not metro-phobic, I love cities, but I always knew I’d settle down back in the west and away from it all. I’ve never written as much as I do in Wyoming-it speaks to me.

I was in Wyoming once, and I was forced to go horseback riding on an evil quadriped named Shiny, who spent most of the trail ride trying to ignore me and the fact that my saddle was slowly falling off. Is horseback riding a Wyoming staple? I don’t remember anyone on horseback in the book.
Sorry, it’s a state tradition to put all the tourists on Shiny . . . I grew up riding, but Walt seems to not enjoy it so much. There is a scene on horseback in the latest of the books, Kindness Goes Unpunished. It figures that it would take place in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia and not in Wyoming. It’s my contrary nature, I guess.

Kindness Goes Unpunished is a terrific title!

Your book describes the beauty of Wyoming, and Walt mentions at one point the distinctive nature of Wyoming sunsets/sunrises. I believe this, since I live in the Midwest, where I barely notice the sun at all. Are these beautiful events attributable to the largeness of the Wyoming sky, or is there something else that makes the sunsets memorable?
I think that when you’re a westerner, you ignore nature at your own peril-—everybody knows somebody who had a brother or uncle who went out to feed cows in a blizzard and never came back. It’s harsh but representational of the culture. There’s always the summer, though, and that time in the afternoon when the sun hits the breaks of the Powder River or the Big Horn Mountains just right . . .

Parts of your books also remind me of old westerns. Did you watch those as a kid (or an adult)? Were you ever influenced by people like Zane Gray or Louis L’Amour?
You can’t write about the west and not be influenced by those guys. I think it’s important to acknowledge the iconoclastic aspects of the genre you work in, taking advantage of a high-context relationship with the reader for all sorts of reasons, laughs, for one. I write contemporary novels, but they’re set in the west, so I better know about the west in a non-fiction and fictional sense. I’m probably more influenced by western writers like Walter Van Tilberg Clark, Wallace Stegner, John Steinbeck, and Dorothy Johnson.

Walt and many of his acquaintances know a great deal about guns. Do you have a lot of gun knowledge, or is this something you had to research?
Both. I grew up with a father that knows a great deal about guns, but I also do a lot of research. The hard part is convincing your wife that you really need a Sharps buffalo rifle for research . . .

I can see how that would be a challenge. :)

You seem to have experienced a couple of whirlwind years in the publishing world. What’s been the most surprising to you about the whole book scene?
The closest town to my ranch in northern Wyoming has a population of 25, where PD stands for prairie dog, and if you’ve got a loud voice you’ve got a town meeting, so I enjoy seeing anyone, anywhere. I think I’ve been most surprised by how much people want to visit you, get your signature and make a connection—I understand that and treasure it. I enjoy the emails; the reading/signings—I feel privileged to be part of an age where there is an ease of communication. If I didn’t enjoy people and being a student of human nature, I don’t think I’d be writing for a living—and if I did, I wouldn’t be very good at it. I truly enjoy listening.

A lot of The Cold Dish takes place in the outdoors. Is Wyoming too beautiful a place to waste time indoors?
I like the outdoors and have spent the majority of my adult life in it, but curled up next to a fire with a good book is an awfully nice way to spend a snowy, windy evening . . .

Walt has an intensely spiritual experience. Do you have ghost stories of your own? If so, can you share one?
I’ve had a pretty varied life, and I’m not to the point where I can explain all the things I’ve experienced—-the things I’ve seen out of the corners of my eyes—-that’s for sure. There are stranger things, Horatio, than have been dreamt of in your philosophies . . . I think the trick in those mystical situations that are described in the books is in allowing the reader to interpret along with the characters—-did that really happen or did I imagine that? I’ve been out there on the ragged edge, where you’re talking to people who aren’t there.

I love the Shakespearean parallel. Will the Walt Longmire series be a long one?
That’s what Viking/Penguin tells me. I love the characters and the place, so I don’t ever see not writing them.

SOME BONUS QUESTIONS:

Why did you set the newest in the series in Philadelphia?
When I first started the books as a series, everybody told me that you can’t take the characters out of their environment. As with most rules, I chose to ignore that one and went east. It’s all a question of context and the west within the context of the west is one thing, the west within the context of the east is something very different. I wanted to see what would happen in the development of the characters and their relationships when the playing field was different. I figured I’d either put a finer point on it all, or it would be like a bad episode of McCloud. There were lots of opportunities with Kindness Goes Unpunished to have Walt work in a strange environ and still be effective—he’d be the last to admit it, but he’s a world-class detective. I also wanted to meet Vic Morretti’s family, but the main thing was to define Walt’s relationship with his daughter, Cady. I have two daughters and a new granddaughter—-so family is paramount to me. It is to Walt as well and further defines his sense of community.

Uh--excuse me: there was no bad episode of McCloud! "'Preciate your confidence, Craig!"

Why is there so much humor in your books?
I’m a whore for laughs. Seriously, I think that laughter makes the poignant moments more powerful. George Bernard Shaw said, When the mouth is open with laughter you can insert a bitter medicine. I think my mind is working best when I’m laughing, and it is my assumption that the reader’s is as well… I think it’s my job to engage the reader with every tool I have. So, I think that I can do both—-leave ‘em laughing and crying. There was an old rancher who explained cowboy humor to me, which isn’t so different from cop humor, by the way. He said, “Everything’s funny till you’re dead.” Then he paused for a moment and continued, “ . . . and dead can be pretty funny, too.”

Good point. What do you enjoy most about the process?
I enjoy research; the responsibility of ‘getting it right’ is a challenge but a welcomed one. The rewrites are also an epiphany—the time when a good book can become a hell of a lot better. I think that’s where most young authors mess up—-not realizing the value of a rewrite. There’s a funny story about the painter, Matisse. He would sell a painting in Paris and people would come home to find their door open and the artist in there touching up his work. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything I was completely satisfied with—-there’s always something more you could have done. On the down side are hotel rooms and the frightening moment when you wake up and can’t remember where you are. I’m fortunate enough that my wife is able to accompany me, but I miss my horses and my doges when I travel, and I miss the ranch. I need all that to keep me grounded—-the place is my touchstone.

What’s next?
It’ll be out next March and it’s called Another Man’s Moccasins, the fourth installment of the Walt Longmire mysteries. And, it’s two mysteries for the price of one. I talk with a lot of western sheriffs and to a man they said the worst case they have to deal with is the body dump, where a car stops up on a lonely stretch of highway, the trunk opens and a body is thrown out and the car drives away—-there you are with a victim, no ID, no crime scene, nothing. That is what happens to Walt. It’s summer in Absaroka County and the Highway Patrol comes and gets Walt, takes him out to a culvert by the highway, and shows him a dead Asian girl whose neck is broken. Walt knows she is Vietnamese, and it reminds him of his first homicide investigation at Tan Son Nhut air base in Vietnam, circa 1968—-a story he told Vonnie about in The Cold Dish. The subsequent investigation takes Walt back to his days as a Marine Investigator and, believe it or not, the two cases are related.

Cool! I hope to be caught up with the series by then. Thanks so much for talking with me, Craig!

Ken Lewis on The Challenges of Chiefdom, The Pain of Transition, and The Rewards of Writing

Ken, thanks for chatting with me!

I love the title of your book, Little Blue Whales. I haven’t read the whole book yet, though—what does the title refer to?

Hi Julia, and thanks for having me on as a guest. The title of the book has a double meaning, actually. Blue whales, as you probably already know, are the largest creatures on earth. In the novel a small plastic toy blue whale is used to lure the victims down to the beach in hopes of seeing the real thing.

The irony is that blue whales are true creatures of the deep and as a rule never venture in any closer than seventy miles or more of the Oregon coastline, while other more common species, like grey whales, sometimes beach themselves in shallow coastal waters during their winter and spring migrations.

Your novel is preceded by a beautiful quote from Richard Rayner: “Wisdom is what we glean, if we’re lucky, with our minds from the twisted root of the past—so that our hearts can ignore it and proceed at once in the opposite direction.” What made this an important quote to give the readers before they start the book?
Richard Rayner’s 1997 novel, Murder Book, is one of the best pieces of crime fiction I’ve ever read. A murder book is a large, three ring binder which contains all of the investigative reports, evidence sheets, witness statements, crime scene photos, etc. which have been compiled in a homicide investigation.

The story focuses on Billy McGrath, a very flawed L.A. homicide detective who gives everything of himself he has left in order to solve one last big case, even as his personal life is disintegrating all around him. I finished reading the book only months before starting my own novel and when I read that passage—on page 120 of the Harper Collins paperback edition—I finally knew what it was I wanted to write about. So often in life we learn our most important lessons the hard way, and we know what the consequences may be for repeating those same mistakes, but in the end our hearts always seem to lead us forward more often than our heads do. I wanted to write about that…about a tragically flawed man whose past has made him believe he can never truly love, and about the equally flawed woman he falls in love with anyway. In Little Blue Whales police chief Kevin Kearnes is that man, and Britt McGraw is the woman he falls for.

Police Beat says that your book captures "...the real world of police officers...gritty, imperfect, and much more fragile than one would imagine." You have a background in law enforcement. Could you have written this book without that experience?
No, I don’t think I could have written this exact book because it is very much about the way real police officers really are--the good, the bad, and the ugly. When I entered law enforcement almost thirty years ago the police in this country had reached almost folk hero status, and today I consider the quintessential American cop to be almost iconic in our culture. But what people don’t know about “real” police could literally fill a book, and that was one of the goals I set out to accomplish in the writing of Little Blue Whales.

You are a police chief in Rogue River, Oregon, but you have been “a patrolman, a deputy sheriff, a detective, [and] a patrol sergeant.” Was it always your goal to be a chief of police?
Are you kidding? Of all the different jobs and ranks in the police department, being the chief is the absolute worst! Being a chief was never a conscious goal of mine, but not ever having to work graveyard shift again, and always having weekends off, was. So I guess it did kind of work out for me in that regard. Seriously though; I feel good about having earned my way to the top by applying myself and learning all the other jobs and skills in law enforcement it takes to eventually become a chief.

Well, I've learned something today. :)

You state on your website that you were a writer first, but that you entered law enforcement because of “the overpowering allure” of this profession. What is alluring about police work?
The question probably should be; what isn’t alluring about police work? Every person you meet, every scenario you deal with, no matter how similar to other events and people you have already come across on the job, will have a slightly different slant to it. It is both fascinating to see, and to some degree be directly involved with, the entire spectrum of human behavior from the absolutely macabre to the positively wonderful (sometimes all in the same day) every day you go to work.

There is an extended water metaphor in your first chapter. Will water images be important to the theme of this mystery?
You know, until reading your question just now, I didn’t even realize there was! But you are very right. Rivers and oceans are a definite theme in the book because water bears things along on its surface, and water sometimes pulls things down. Water gives life and at times, takes life away. The novel is set on the southern Oregon coast where the western continental land mass ends and the Pacific ocean begins. For Kevin Kearnes, the ocean represents a dead end he has reached in his life long race to outrun his past; he can literally run no further. But what he doesn’t know when he arrives in the small coastal community of Cutter Point, OR to take the position of the town’s new police chief is that this life long race has unwittingly brought him full circle, and he is about to come face to face with the past he has so long feared

How did you come up with the idea for Little Blue Whales?
I had to. I was desperate. In 1998 I found myself, by my own accord, going through a divorce and living in a new town on the Oregon coast 600 miles away from my five sons, who were all still living with their mother in Washington state. In almost twenty years of being a husband and father I had always been able to use the rationale of having to fulfill those roles first as my excuse to never seriously begin writing a novel. I moved to Brookings, OR in July of that summer and one August night, on my birthday, I was having dinner alone in the bar of a restaurant down on the beach called Smugglers Cove, watching the sun set over the ocean. I don’t think I had ever been so depressed before in my life.

I missed my kids so much that it hurt, and the new job I had accepted, at first so seemingly perfect, was turning out to be the job from hell. I was watching the sun sinking lower and lower into the water, wondering just how much worse my life could actually become…and that was the instant the idea for the book came to me. I remember thinking: ‘Oh, that’s how some police chief’s life in a similar situation could get even worse! Really worse!” The main plot, theme, characters, and locations began flooding into my brain and I remember asking the only other person in the room, the barmaid, if I could borrow something to write with. The barmaid’s name was “Britt.” She brought me a blue ink pen and a stack of cocktail napkins and for the next hour, non-stop, I wrote the outline to “Little Blue Whales.” I still have those ink stained cocktail napkins in my dresser drawer, but I never saw Britt again.

But that was the easy part! I “thought” about the novel over the course of the next year and didn’t actually start writing it until August of 1999. I finished writing it in late February, 2006.

Wow! That is a romantic tale.

Writing was, for you, a dream deferred for a time. How long did you dream of writing a book before you actually wrote one?
I am somewhat embarrassed to answer this question, but to be honest? Twenty seven years.

Your writing is very poetic. Have you written poetry?
Ha ha! No, not really. I wrote a couple of poems for my wife, JaNell, a few years ago when I was trying to convince her to marry me; but that’s all. Maybe I’ve always been sort of a poet--who just didn’t know it?

Okay, I take back the poetry question. :)

As a career policeman, do you find that your attitude about humanity is optimistic or pessimistic?
I think it is probably a little bit of both. I take humanity in the form it comes to me, and after all these years of wearing a badge, I know better than to try and classify human nature in terms of absolutes. In fact, as a cop, my own personal belief is that human beings are capable of acting absolutely terrible, absolutely wonderful, or absolutely anywhere in the middle of those two extremes.

You have a new book that came out in December called The Sparrow’s Blade. This is an interesting contrast of images. How do you come up with your titles?

Hey, I only wish The Sparrow’s Blade, had already been out since last December! I’m still writing it, and I believe what it says on the website is that it is due out in December, 2007. But that’s OK, because if you would have checked my website a month ago the available date then was listed as October, 2007. That was a little overly optimistic, I’m afraid, and the date had to be moved forward a bit.

As far as titles go: For me; having the perfect title and the perfect cover art concept is a must…before I even begin the actual writing of a book. They act as a kind of “north star,” something I can get a constant visual fix on in order to move the characters and story unerringly in the direction I wish to go. I spoke earlier in the interview about how the title for Little Blue Whales evolved, and the cover art for this book actually depicts a key scene in the story. In The Sparrow's Blade, which is the sequel to Little Blue Whales, the title refers to an ancient samurai sword carried by a Japanese pilot who dies in the only successful attack on mainland American soil in WWII. That pilot, venerated by his unselfish, heroic act for the Empire of Japan, comes to be known as “The Emperor’s Sparrow.” The story, based loosely on an actual event, the September, 1942 bombing near Brookings, OR by a Japanese naval military plane, revolves around what has become of the sword—-now a priceless war relic some sixty- five years later, and worth over a million dollars—-and the people who are willing to die themselves, if need be, in their efforts to reclaim it.

Pretty cool. Having read the first chapter of Little Blue Whales, I sense that being a parent has given depth to your characterizations. Would you say that this is true?
Yes, I would. I certainly have my own regrets about falling short as a parent. Being a writer allows me the ability to try and make amends, in a way, to my sons. To tell them how much I love them and always did love them. And to hopefully show them how to avoid making some of the same mistakes I made as their parent, as two of them are parents with their own children now. The theme of the bond, and the strength of love between fathers and sons, runs undeniably and shamelessly through both books. And that’s something I am quite proud of.

There are probably a million heartbreaking stories from your police career—but what’s the most heartwarming one?
About three years ago a local guy had just gotten out of prison after serving time for killing a motorist in a drunk driving accident. This man was on parole and he and his two children were living with his elderly mother at her house. On Christmas Eve day I responded to a call of a disturbance at their residence. His mother was the one who had called. When I arrived on scene the mother told me her son had “gone crazy”; yelling, screaming, swearing, and that he had kicked the dryer in her laundry room, putting a large dent in it. I was very wary, thinking he was probably drunk or on drugs and that I would have to arrest him for violating his parole, and he would go back to prison. But when I found him in the back yard he was stone cold sober--and crying.

He was angry, and humiliated because it was Christmas Eve and he didn’t have any money to buy his two little girls something for Christmas. I must have been doing some last minute Christmas shopping myself that day or something, because for once I was actually carrying money with me. I talked with him for a minute about controlling his anger and how important that was going to be in the future if he wanted to avoid going back to jail. Then I gave him two twenty dollar bills and drove him down to the shopping center, which was getting ready to close in about half an hour. I felt so damned good, being able to do that! And not just because I had the forty dollars to spare, either. It was because even though I was there for all the wrong reasons, it turned out to be that I was really there at exactly the right time in this family’s life and for all the right reasons. Things like this don’t happen very often on this job but when they do, they tend to stick with you for a very long time. And besides, I am an absolute sucker when it comes to Christmas! I began writing The Sparrow’s Blade on January 1st of this year, when they were still playing Christmas music on all the radio stations. The book opens during the Christmas holiday season and I am hoping and praying it is finished and published in time for Christmas this year.

That's a great story! How can readers find out more about you and your mystery novels?
You can visit my website at www.kennethrlewis.com and read an excerpt there from Little Blue Whales and you can send me an email at author@kennethrlewis.com. You can also check out my Blog and reviews at my book’s site on www.amazon.com

Thanks so much for chatting with me, Ken!
You are very welcome, Julia. I’ll let you know when The Sparrow’s Blade is finally out and maybe we can do this again! It was fun.

(Photos of Oregon provided by Ken Lewis)

Toads

In honor of my upcoming summer vacation (ahhh), I am posting one of my favorite poems by Philip Larkin. And this fellow on the left could not be a better visual enhancement to the verse. :)

TOADS

by Philip Larkin

Why should I let that toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison--
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits;
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts--
They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines--
They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets--and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on;

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way to getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.




(Image:http://www.lazytd.com/ranch/walter-2.JPG)

Nostalgia in the Grass

This evening I escaped my house (which was hot) and sat outside on the patio, where a fresh little breeze was blowing. Somehow our house retains all the heat and mugginess and cool air doesn't make it inside. So I sat outside breathing in the air, enjoying the idea that this is my last week of work until August.

Then I noticed that my lawn needed mowing. Once I notice something like this I can't relax until the job is done; I dragged out the mower, primed it, and yanked the cord until the machine sputtered to life. The grass was slightly damp--it had rained earlier--and I didn't want to risk grass stains, so I took off my shoes and mowed the lawn in bare feet.

Boy, did that take me back in time! When's the last time you walked in wet grass in bare feet? I felt like I was ten again, and I remembered how wonderful damp grass feels, and how good it smells when you mow it. Better yet, I ran my cutter over a hidden patch of wild onions, which added their own special aroma to my little summer revel.

I once read that of the five senses, smell is the one most linked to memory. I believe this, especially after an experience like today's, when just smelling freshly-cut grass transported me to the days that I frolicked on my parents' lawn, leaping through a sprinkler and then pretending that my towel, which I tucked into my bathing suit, was the train of a beautiful gown. Never mind that my feet were green from the wet grass (as they were today); for that time, I was royalty, and summer lasted forever.

I think I'm a farm girl at heart, because there's just something about the smell of grass, of earth, that makes me happy. It's aromatherapy, and it's free. Give it a try.

I am the High Priestess

I saw this little game on Anne Frasier's blog and of course I had to play. My results are explained below. I'm not sure exactly why I earned this card, although I did say that the moon was my favorite celestial body. You can play, too! Share your results.

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

The Mysteries of the Mind

Did anyone happen to see this fellow on 60 Minutes recently? He's a 27-year-old savant from England named Daniel Tammett. Daniel has a unique brain, capable of incredible memory feats to which the rest of us could never possibly aspire. As the 60 Minutes website puts it, "Daniel Tammet is unique among savants, because he is blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability." He has Asperger's syndrome, but apparently unlike some with Asperger's he has the rare ability to describe and assess his own thinking.

As a remarkable demonstration of Daniel's capabilities, he was asked to memorize the longest version of PI in existence--which Daniel and his colleagues found on a supercomputer in Japan. This version of PI had 22,514 digits. Daniel studied them, absorbed them, then went to Oxford University, where a team of people sat waiting to record the event, and recited them from memory. It took him more than five hours, and, as Morley Safer pointed out on the show, "He didn't make one mistake."

Daniel is careful not to let himself be used as a sort of circus act for people who are curious about his abilities--but he did do one other incredible thing. He was challenged to learn Icelandic, which is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn (and close to what the Vikings spoke). The catch? He was to learn it in one week.

Daniel went to Iceland and worked with tutors for a week, then went on an Icelandic talk show--and spoke about his experiences, in Icelandic.

For me, Daniel's story holds the utmost fascination because it suggests the deep potential of the human brain. Daniel said that when he memorizes numbers he sees not digits but "landscapes." What an amazing idea, and what does it suggest about the possibilities buried deep within the brain's tissue? This, for me, is one of the most fascinating mysteries of life.

You can learn more about Daniel at http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/44/brain_man

Today's Thought: The Silver Swan

It is unknown who wrote the poem "The Silver Swan," although it's said to have been written around 1600. I love it, though, and it's one of a cluster of poems that I've memorized. It keeps things in perspective for me with its timeless (and ironic) theme.

THE SILVER SWAN

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached, unlocked her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:
Farewell, all joys; O death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans today live, more fools than wise.

(Image:http://www.treknature.com/images/misc/)

Calling All Librarians

I love this cartoon. How undersung are the world's librarians, the true search engines who never give us error messages like "access denied." Whenever I'm doing research and I call a librarian with some bizarre question, she or he will always say, "That's interesting. Let me get back to you." And they always do.

So hurrah for librarians everywhere!

Note: Are you a librarian? Would you like to receive some info about my new book, Madeline Mann? If so, e-mail me at julishka@sbcglobal.net and I'll send it out!

If you're not a librarian, stop by your local library this nice May Day and enjoy its special atmosphere.

(image: www.speedbump.com/librarian.html)

Talk of Anniversaries and Synchronicities

 

Today is the nineteenth anniversary of Jeff's and my marriage. (There we both are, squinting in the sun). Birthdays and anniversaries are weird things, because when you're forced to contemplate them you end up saying things like "Gosh, it doesn't seem that long--but then again it does." And of course that doesn't really mean anything.

As ever, we were too broke to do anything really lavish, but we went on a date yesterday, and that was fun. Sometimes it's nice to remind yourself why you married a person, especially when you have to spend your evenings sternly discussing the consequences for what the children did THIS time. :)

As I perused the net looking for other anniversaries on this day (all I found was Kirk and Anne Douglas, who married in 1954), I realized some ironic comparisons.

For one, I graduated from high school on this date in 1983; five years later exactly (but not by design), I got married. Then, while I was celebrating a ninth anniversary with my Jeff Buckley in 1997, another Jeff Buckley died.

It was the birthday of both John F. Kennedy and Bob Hope; it was also the day that, in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and his sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit of Mt. Everest--they were the first to do so. It also happened to be Norgay's birthday. He was born on May 29, 1914.

I suppose we all have our Everests in life, but Tenzing's birthday accomplishment would be pretty hard to beat.

Memorial Day

On this solemn Memorial Day, I invoke the words of Abraham Lincoln:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.

C.S. Lewis on the Ultimate Mystery

"You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it."


C.S. Lewis

Ahhh, Saturday!

I think I'm going to emulate my dog today; he's always relaxed. I'm hanging out, making my to-do list for the day, listening to Dolly Parton sing "The Grass is Blue," and generally being glad that the work week is over. True, I won't be able to sleep quite as much as the ol' Beagle does, but there's that lovely lassitude that one can allow on Saturday morning, even while doing chores.

My senior students graduated last night, which was bittersweet; I think they'll appreciate Saturday most of all, because they had an emotionally exhausting week, and Saturday is the day they can take off all the graduation finery, put on the sweats, sit around, and say AHHH. At least that's what I'm going to do. :)

While I do that, I'm going to read more of Craig Johnson's THE COLD DISH, which is so far fascinating both in story and style. I've never read writing quite like his before, and he's got me hooked.

Have a relaxing Saturday, anyone reading this blog!

Michael A. Black on Learning the Martial Arts, Taking the Stairs, and Being a Cop

Hi, Mike! Thanks for talking with me.
My pleasure, Julia.

First, I have some questions about your website. (www.michaelablack.com) Along with some cool book covers and synopses, there are some photos of you looking –shall we say—intimidating. In one you are apparently kicking a man’s throat out, and in another you are shooting the biggest gun I’ve ever seen. Not to mention the one that shows off your substantial muscle. Is being tough a necessity for a cop?
It helps, but being tough isn’t really about muscle as much as it is mental strength. It’s about being able to make those tough choices and do the right thing, even when you don’t want to. You see a lot of things as a police officer that’ll break your heart. You’ve got to develop an emotional toughness or it’ll destroy you by inches. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly tough or intimidating. I’m just your average guy. By the way, in that picture of me kicking I was breaking a board at a martial arts demonstration.


Cool. Have you ever had to beat someone up? I would think all that training would come in very handy if someone tried to mug you or something.
I was bullied quite a bit when I was a kid. I was a bit younger than the rest of my classmates, and very shy, too. There were several punks who got their supplemental income by beating me up and stealing my lunch money. This continued until my dad, who’d boxed in the navy, taught me the rudiments of the sweet science and then enrolled me in judo classes. My parents also bought me a set of weights for my grammar school graduation. The bullying tapered off, but continued a bit when I entered high school. Finally, at the end of my freshman year, a big upper classman picked a fight with me. It was like all the anger and humiliation I’d suffered through my entire life suddenly burst through. I beat the holy hell out of him. After that, no one ever tried to pick on me again.

As far as adulthood, between being an MP in the army and being in police work for most of my adult life, I’ve been in a lot of physical confrontations. The worst one that comes to mind was with this big ex-con who’d just gotten out of the joint and decided he didn’t want to go back. I was by myself, trying to take him into custody and the battle was on. We were fighting on the upper level of a shopping mall. I was in plainclothes, so the security guys didn’t know I was a cop. I was on the offender’s back trying to get a chokehold on him, and he rammed me into the banister trying to knock me off. Luckily, I managed to hold on and took him down a few seconds later. As I held him on the floor, I remember seeing the security guys talking on their radios, afraid to move in. When I finally saw the uniformed officers running down the corridor to assist me, I felt one of the settlers in the old western movie holding off the Indians: the cavalry has arrived!

I have knocked people out in the ring, and a few times out of the ring, but I take no pleasure in hurting others. I used to spar with my buddy, Mike McNamara, who’s also a copper in Park Forest. He was a world-class professional kickboxer. Sparring with him was always a reminder that it was better to leave the rough stuff to Ron Shade.

Good point. Okay, okay, I’ll stop asking tough guy questions. Let’s chat about your books. What came first: you the writer or you the police officer?
Well, I’ve been writing all my life. I wrote my first short story in sixth grade. The hero was a private detective, and the villain was a crooked cop. Kind of ironic how that turned out, isn’t it? As far as being a published writer, I endured fifteen years of rejection slips before that happened, so I guess the cop came first.

What’s a reality about being a Chicago cop that people might not know?
I’m actually a cop in Matteson, a suburb of Chicago. I entered police work because I wanted to help people. To make a difference in someone’s life, even if it’s only being there to show them some compassion in a moment of crisis for them, is very rewarding. There were times when I’d walk out the back door of the station after a hard shift feeling ten feet tall. It’s still all about helping people. I think most cops feel this way.

Two of your books, Freeze Me Tender and A Killing Frost, have wintry titles. Is this a recurring theme in your fiction?
Actually, spring is my favorite season. I got the title for A Killing Frost from Shakespeare. “The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.” King Henry VIII, act 3, scene 2. That book, which is going to be released in mass market paperback in October from Leisure Books, is actually set in the fall (my least favorite season). Freeze Me, Tender is set in Vegas in August. You can’t get much hotter than that. The title is an allusion to the theme of the story: what if the king of rock and roll had been cryogenically frozen after his death. What if he really didn’t die. The protagonist, a reporter, journeys to Sin City to find out if it’s really Colton Purcell (my name for the King) suspended in that vat of liquid nitrogen. My second Ron Shade book, Windy City Knights, is set during the winter, though.

You and I both like those Shakespearean allusions. In your first book you introduce Chicago private detective Ron Shade. He’s in a slump, and to boost his spirits he buys a Camaro Z-28. Do you recommend that I do this when I need to boost my spirits?
The gas prices have been going up; you and Shade might be better off with a couple of those new hybrids.

Sad, but true. Ron Shade, with his loneliness, his tough assignments, and his former lovers, reminds me of Philip Marlowe. Were you influenced by Chandler?
I read Chandler when I was in college and was struck by what a good writer he was. He made the smooth narrative style seem effortless. I certainly would list him among my major influences. He was a master prose craftsman. I should also mention Joseph Wambaugh. I was facing the draft back in 1971 and read his first novel, The New Centurions, about the LAPD. It influenced me to go into the Military Police and into civilian law enforcement after my discharge. I got a signed copy of his latest book, Hollywood Station, for a Christmas gift. I can’t wait to start it.

What other mystery writers are heroes to you?
Wow, there are so many good writers in the mystery field it would be hard to list them all. Dashiell Hammett, certainly influenced me a lot, as well as Ross MacDonald and Stephen Marlowe, who was gracious enough to give me a blurb for Windy City Knights. John D. MacDonald perhaps influenced me the most of any writer. Sara Paretsky has been very nice to me, and gave me a lot of great pointers when I was starting out. My personal hero and great friend is my “brother,” Andrew Vachss. Knowing Andrew is like being in the presence of American royalty. He does in real life what the rest of us only dream about doing. There are so many other fine writers, I can’t list them all here. The only exception I will make is including my writing partner, Julie Hyzy. She’s the best writer I know.

Julie is a class act, too. What are you reading now?
Let’s see . . . I just picked up Elmore Leonard’s newest book, Up in Honey’s Room. I can’t wait to start it. I also have my buddy, Sean Chercover’s Big City, Bad Blood, on my to-read list, and Sam Reaves' new one, Homicide 69. Prior to that I’ve read so far this year are Andrew’s Mask Market, James Reasoner’s Texas Wind, Sue Grafton’s S is for Silence, Robert B. Parker’s Hundred Dollar Baby, Marcus Sakey’s The Blade Itself, Mark Winegardner’s The Godfather Returns, Tom Keevers What the Hyena Knows,, Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, and Julie Hyzy’s Deadly Interest. I wish I had more time to read. It’s one of the greatest pleasures in life.

You have lots of neat photos on your site, including a series of The Loop in Chicago. Is photography a hobby? When do you find the time to do all that you do?
I used to take pictures all the time. I still do a lot of photography. I try to research the locations I write about, and it helps if you have a few things captured on film to jog your memory. When I was writing The Heist I spent quite a few days walking and driving around Chi-town. I actually discovered the culvert that goes under the railroad tracks by the old Wisconsin Steel works that I used in the climax.


There are pictures of stairs on your home page. Is this symbolic? Are we supposed to question the nature of ascending and descending and determine that it’s all an illusion? Or do you just like stairs?
Well, in my Shade series, Ron has an aversion to elevators and always considers it great leg training to take the stairs instead. I’ve always enjoyed running up flights of stairs, too. When I was a kid delivering packages in the Loop, I walked everywhere and always took the stairs instead of waiting for elevators, if I could manage it. I suppose, in a way the stairs symbolize the ups and downs of Shade’s life, which I put in the first book.

Cool. You write short stories as well. Which form comes more naturally to you: the novel or the short story?
I started out writing short stories, then gradually expanded to novels. What many people don’t realize is both are completely separate art forms. I’ve heard it said that writers who start out writing short fiction can make the transition to novels, but those who start out writing novels often have difficulty writing short stories. For me, which form to use is more intrinsic. There are certain ideas that I get which would be better as a short story, and others that would be more suited to the novel length. Incidentally, Julie just won the Derringer Award for her short story in These Guns for Hire, an anthology about hitmen. I had a story in that one called “The Black Rose.” I also have “Chasing the Blues” in the upcoming Chicago Blues anthology edited by Libby Fischer Hellman. It’ll debut in October and we’ll be doing a bunch of appearances.

We'll watch for that. What are you writing now?
Honestly, I just finished a novella called “The Falcon’s Granddaughter” for a contest. I have to write a Hercules short story for a buddy of mine, which will round out an anthology of mythological heroes. I just finished polishing the second novel in my police procedural series, and Julie Hyzy and I just completed a collaborative novel featuring Ron Shade and her character, Alex St. James. We had a blast.

That is a great idea. What’s the next big conference where readers might get a chance to meet you?
I hit just about every conference there was last year, so this year in was in resting mode. I have a couple booksignings scheduled. I’ll be at Printer’s Row in Chicago in June. I haven’t committed to any other ones except Magna Cum Murder in Muncie, Indiana in October. My buddy, Dave Case, and I will be doing a two-day crime scene presentation at a library near Cleveland this summer, but the dates aren’t set yet. Hopefully, the Midwest Authors’ Fair will be in Aurora again this year. That’s always a great conference.

If Steven Spielberg said he would make one of your books into a movie, but you could choose which one, which would you choose? Is that like asking you to have a favorite child, or would one make a better movie than the others?
I’d have to go with Freeze Me, Tender. But I’d only let Mr. Spielberg do it if I could play Lance Fabray, one of the beefy Colton Purcell imitators. Of course, if he’d let me play Doc Atlas, he could film Melody of Vengeance as well. He’d have to stretch his Dreamworks CGI to turn me into leading man material, though.

All you need is intensity, and you're leading man material.

How can readers find out more about you and your books?
Well, as you so kindly mentioned, my website is www.MichaelABlack.com. My website expert, Beth Tindall at Cincinnati Media.com, does a great job keeping it updated and all my books are featured on it. I also have a couple of short stories on the site that people can read for free. And when A Killing Frost comes out in October, it’ll be everywhere--- Book stores, airports, drug stores . . .

I hope it sells like hotcakes. Thanks, Michael!
You’re welcome. Thank you, Julia for this opportunity. Take care.

The Wind's Will

My eight-year-old son is marking down the days on a little calendar he made himself. He has, I believe, nine days left of school. Of course I want him to value education, to be even a little reluctant to leave his classroom and teacher behind--but who am I kidding? I did the same thing. Summer is the siren that sings annually to promise children an eternal freedom, an endless fun, an escape from drudgery.

I was trying to plan some book events for the summer, and one of them involved choosing between one-day attendance and an overnight stay. My son's opinion was quick and honest. "Go for the one day," he said, holding up a wise finger. His desire to be with me squashes some of my ambition, and our plans for the summer are basically these: lie around; have fun; go to some movies; have family time.

Amidst that lazy, sultry few weeks, I need to get myself in gear. Madeline Mann comes out on August 1st, and I have yet to contact everyone in the world. Based on what I see of my sons and the way that they're gearing up for laziness, almost as if they're about to hibernate, I don't think I can count on much help from that quarter.

But that's okay. As Longfellow so aptly wrote: "A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Happy Birthday, Arthur Conan Doyle

The great Conan Doyle was born on this day in 1859. He is most famous for creating Sherlock Holmes, a detective he eventually wanted to destroy because, as Doyle put it, "He takes my mind off better things." Doyle believed that Holmes did not represent his best work, but the public felt differently, and when Doyle killed off Holmes in 1892, there was much hue and cry. By 1901 Doyle could stand it no longer, and brought Holmes back with The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was set in a time that pre-dated Holmes' "death." (Paraphrased from The Great British Detective, Penguin Mentor, 1982).

Borntoday.com has this great quote in honor of Doyle's birthday:


Holmes: "I followed you."
Man: "I saw no one."
Holmes: "That is what you may expect to see when I follow you."

Holmes was the penultimate classical detective: superior, always successful, ever preferable to the bumbling police inspector, Lestrade. This formula, created really by Poe but expanded by Doyle, has been a classical model since the nineteenth century, and holds up well in Doyle's fiction.

While I greatly enjoy The Hound of the Baskervilles, I'm also a fan of Conan Doyle's short mysteries, and an especially good one is "Silver Blaze," in which Holmes goes to the moors to solve the mystery of an inexplicable death and a missing racehorse.

Doyle himself would have written his destiny differently, perhaps, but of course none of us can control how we will be remembered, and Doyle's name will always be synonymous with Sherlock's.

In Defense of Vicarious Cruelty

In the world of mystery writing, I suppose we authors do indulge in some vicarious cruelty, in that we might kill off people who remind us of people we don't like. It doesn't hurt anyone, because it's fictional.

To my surprise, though, this doesn't only happen in the world of books. Today my children earned some Playstation time by doing some morning chores; imagine my surprise when I heard my husband, in the next room, say, "It's not nice to torture, son." Wow. I don't think my parents ever had to share that particular wisdom with me. Mind you, these are PG games, but I guess Graham was given the option to do something bad to a "bad guy." He's bad, therefore it's okay. Hmmmm . . .

On another occasion my older son was playing an educational computer game. He's actually learning things about history, including terms like serf, vassal, fiefdom, tariff. He is the lord of his own kingdom, and the way that he is able to build and expand his empire is, of course, by taxing his people. However, he was given the choice of being a benevolent or a cruel ruler. He was able to choose "no tax," "mild tax," or "severe tax." Naturally, my son chose "severe tax," and one of his serfs knelt in front of him begging him not to do so. I intervened here, suggesting that he NOT tax his people into lives of misery, but he just chuckled and told me that he needed to build a bridge, and this would fund it.

I suppose this would prepare him nicely for a career in politics, but I'd prefer to think of him as a compassionate boy. Still, who am I to judge? I spend my evenings trying to think of someone to kill, and then daydreaming about who would be most likely to kill him. Perhaps sometimes this vicarious cruelty lets us work out that ol' original sin and then allows us to be nicer in real life.

Or so I would like to think. :)

(image:http://www.pelnet.com/perso/gallinet/Meluzine/Images/vassal.jpg)

Thought for the Day

EPIGRAM

"Oh, God of dust and rainbows, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be."

--Langston Hughes


(image:http://www.wighat.com/photo/hawaii/images/coastline_rainbow.jpg)

Remembrance of Libraries Past

I recently asked my 8-year-old son if he had remembered to return his library book at school.

"Yup," he said.

"Did you get a new one?"

"Yup. My Father's Dragon. We have to take out chapter books now," he said with studied casualness.

But I could hear the pride beneath the words--chapter books! Such a big boy endeavor. Graham had been furious when his older brother learned to read. He, at five, still couldn't, and it frustrated him beyond belief. I doubt he remembers that frustration now, but his joy in being able to interpret what were once inscrutable symbols is evident.

It made me remember my own grade school library--just a tiny place, and for many years my mother was a volunteer librarian there. When my class would march down for library time, then, my mom had already selected several volumes she thought would interest me (and she was always right). Through that teensy library I discovered, of course, Nancy Drew, but also Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, and Trixie Belden, and some series I can't remember about three stewardesses living in an apartment together and doing wonderfully independent things while enjoying the city. (I don't remember what city).

I discovered P.G. Wodehouse through a book for children called Mike at Wrykyn, and I never gave P.G. up after that; I also discovered a delightful book called Andrew, The Big Deal,by Barbara Brooks Wallace, which I found recently in a vintage book shop and bought at once, and I read it to my children now (but would read it to myself just for the pleasure).

The more I read, though, the more I read mysteries, and that was thanks to the wonderful plenitude of books by people like Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, Velda Johnston. That genre helped me discover people like M.M. Kaye, P.D. James, Martha Grimes, Patricia Moyes. And on and on.

My mom and I still have book exchanges. When I handed her my entire Boucheron sample bag she was in heaven.

And my sons, hopefully, will have book exchanges with me. :)

(image:http://www.ywgs.edu.hk/~library/images/mainLibrary.jpg)

Nancy Drew, Where Are You?

Like a billion other girls, I loved Nancy Drew growing up. My sister and I collected the yellow-spined books, requesting them at every Christmas and birthday, saving our own money to buy more, more, more. They were terrific. They had hard backs and chapters like big people books, and they always bore art that attested to the life of a glamorous, independent young woman. Nancy was cool.

I remember being excited, and then vaguely offended, by the series with Pamela Sue Martin, back in the seventies (alternating weekly with the well-coiffed Hardy Boys, Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson). The series, it seemed to me, kept very little of the Nancy books intact, and that did not please me as a reader.

Imagine my surprise to see the first commercial for the movie called "Nancy Drew." I had the television on mute, so I had no idea that this flick was even a mystery until the very end, when the words NANCY DREW flashed on the screen. Until then it seemed like any other generic teen movie with lots of close-ups on a star with reddish hair. Hmmmm. Not impressed so far.

Nancy has lasted this long because people stuck with the formula--although I have no idea if the Nancy of today sells as well as the Nancy of my era, or the early Nancy who had her birth in the 30s. I know that Nancy was reinvented a few times, but she still presented the same basic image: young, smart, independent, mystery-loving. I sure hope that this movie doesn't taint that image.

My new book, Madeline Mann, has been touted by my publisher as a book that people would enjoy if they grew up reading Nancy Drew. To me, this is high praise indeed. Would that I could enjoy Nancy's longevity, her name recognition, her sales. But for now, the comparison is flattering enough.

Here's to Nancy: long may she reign.

(image:http://images.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/10/07/nancydrew/story.jpg)

That Marlowe Magic

Here's Bogey playing Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. It's a great picture, although Humphrey Bogart is the last person I would have cast as Marlowe, who I picture as an entirely different guy when I read Raymond Chandler's books.

It doesn't really matter who plays him, I suppose, as long as they try to capture that Marlowe mystique, that Marlowe manner. But to be honest I don't think any actor has quite captured it. My mother-in-law once insisted that Robert Mitchum did, but he was a particular favorite of hers; I have to disagree even with that assessment.

But I'll bet there's a man out there who can capture what Chandler created on the page, that magical Marlowe combination of grit and style. Oddly, one of my favorite Marlowe lines is sort of a throwaway line--it doesn't have anything to do with the plot, but it has everything to do with why I love Marlowe. It's in The Long Goodbye, when a lackey of the gangster Mendy Menendez approaches Marlowe and they have this dialogue:

"In the morning I shaved again and dressed and drove downtown in the usual way and parked in the usual place and if the parking lot attendant happened to know that I was an important public character he did a top job hiding it. I went upstairs and along the corridor and got keys out to unlock my door. A dark smooth-looking guy watched me.

'You Marlowe?'

'So?'

'Stick around," he said. 'A guy wants to see you.' He unplastered his back from the wall and strolled off languidly."

Marlowe's narration is perfect enough, but it's that quirky "so?" that won me over the first time I read this book. My husband loves it, too, and we say it to each other all the time. It's what I like to think of as the Marlowe attitude, and I've decided to adopt it this Monday as I face the world: my students, my colleagues, etc.

"You didn't get all our research papers graded?"

"So?"

(image: http://www.dialmformax.com/images/bogart.jpg)

The Great Multi-Tasking Dilemma

This weekend I'm still trying to finish grading papers (I have twelve left); I'm also preparing the house for my son's Communion reception. This is a multi-layered task, as it also involves mowing the lawn, watering flowers, finding places for a lot of clutter, picking up food, etc. In addition, I'm supposed to use this weekend to put together some Madeline Mann publicity packets (a little at a time is my motto) and write some essays to apply for scholarship aid for my Master's Degree.

Sadly, it's always sort of like this--lots of balls in the air. My husband recently read an article which suggested that if people continued to multi-task with the ferocity that we Americans do now (especially American young people, I think), that human brains would eventually be capable of more multiple shallow thoughts, but less deep thought on any one issue. There's a frightening prediction. I try to remind myself of that when I sit making my endless lists of WHAT MUST BE DONE TODAY. :)

There's a wonderful story by the German writer Heinrich Boll called ACTION WILL BE TAKEN. It's a satire about people's tendency to multi-task and how ridiculous that really is. I think I'll have to re-read it today so that I don't go a little crazy. Or I can turn to the ever-wise words of Robert Frost, who advises in his poem "Take Something Like a Star" that one should find something large, permanent, miraculous to focus on when life gets out of control:

"So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far
We may take something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid."

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Where Have You Gone, Fred and Ginger?

Today is the birthday of the great Fred Astaire. Even after all this time I miss Fred Astaire. I loved him when he danced with Ginger Rogers, and I loved him when he danced alone, or with a chair, or a broom, or whatever prop he thought might be amusing. There were all sorts of dancers in Astaire's time (Gene Kelly is the particular favorite of my father's), but Astaire, I think, was considered the leader of the pack.

What's interesting is that he wasn't a handsome fellow by most people's standards--he had rather an odd face. I bought him as the leading man in every film he made, though, and it was because Fred had grace, wit, and charm. Fred had charisma. When my students learn the word "debonair" in their vocabulary books and want an example of what it means, I always ask, "Have any of you ever heard of Fred Astaire?"

It became a family tradition of ours to watch Fred Astaire movies on New Year's Eve, back when I was a kid. We'd make milkshakes or sundaes or some ice creamy treat, and we'd lose ourselves in Top Hat or The Gay Divorcee or Daddy Long Legs. I'd be thrilled by Fred's antics as he tried to win a lady--or win her back. I'd gasp at the misunderstandings of these farcical films and swoon over the romance of the dance scenes--long, long dance scenes in which Ginger's dress frothed over her ankles like something made of the lightest whipped cream and Fred lifted her effortlessly into the air again and again, looking deeply into her eyes. Fred Astaire made me believe in romance, and I'm a hopeless romantic to this day.

But who could ever replace Fred Astaire? Thank goodness for DVDs of old movies.

Try Not To Envy My Glamorous Life

I took the day off of work today so that I can catch up with my grading; therefore I am sternly only allowing myself about five minutes for blogging. The research papers are, refreshingly, quite good, but they still take forever to grade. In between clusters of papers I am trying to clean my house (no small task, I assure you) because my littlest son makes his First Communion this Sunday, and we shall have people over. Naturally there is the desire to prove to them that I do not live in a filthy, sloppy environment, which means I must clean my filthy, sloppy environment.

My husband and I are darting around, wondering what to do first, intimidated in the way that, perhaps, some ancient workers were when they looked over the plans for the Pyramids. The dog and cat keep winding around our legs, confused as we are.

So back I go to the sheaf of papers, and perhaps I'll multitask by vacuuming while I read.

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Michael Allen Dymmoch on How She Became a Mystery Writer, A Blogger, and a Student of Life

Hi, Michael. Thanks for chatting with me. Of course I have to ask this first: How many people, when meeting you at signings, say, “But I thought you were a man?” Do you ever feel a kinship with George Eliot or George Sand?
“I thought you were a man.” or “You’re a woman!” used to be common reactions. I guess the word is out because I rarely get that anymore. I don’t know enough about George Elliot or George Sand to feel much for them. I majored in science and came late to literature, and I have to confess that I’ve only read one book by Eliot, none by Sand.

Your current book is Death in West Wheeling. What’s it about? Do you have other books set in West Wheeling?
Death in West Wheeling is a police procedural complicated by a Chinese fire drill. Homer Deters, the protagonist, is a well trained law enforcement officer, but his investigations tend to be hindered by eccentrics and events beyond his control. I hope readers will find the story amusing.

Everyone loves a good eccentric character! Library Journal said of your first book, The Man Who Understood Cats, that it “shines with unexpected talent.” Why do you think they didn’t expect you to be talented?
Maybe most of the first novels they get are written amateurishly or poorly edited?

You have four novels with cat references in the title (well, two are cat, one is “tiger,” and one is “feline.”) Do you like cats? Is there a significance to the repeated theme?
Actually all of the books in the John Thinnes/Jack Caleb series were submitted with cat titles. Incendiary Designs was supposed to be called Cats Burning (no actual cats were injured in the production of that story) but St. Martin’s refused to publish it under that title. In those books, cats are a metaphor for detectives, who have a great deal in common with feline hunters.

Cool. What made you start writing mysteries? When did you start?
Just for the hell of it, I took a screenwriting course and had to write a screenplay about something. I’d seen a bad police/buddy film and decided to try to write a better one. That became a screenplay for The Man Who Understood Cats, which no one in Hollywood would look at. On Barbara D’Amato’s advice, I novelized the story and entered it in the Malice Domestic contest. After the story won the contest, my editor asked if I was going to write a sequel. What can you say to that but “yes”?

Good for Barbara D'Amato! And now I’m dying to know what the bad buddy film was. You can tell me at the next MWA meeting. :)

You blog with some other big-name writers at The Outfit: A Chicago Collective. How did you happen to start this blog?
I was lucky enough to be a friend of Libby Fischer Hellmann’s. She wanted to start a blog, but didn’t want to have to update it too often. She decided to join with other writers so we could all benefit from blogging without taking too much time out from out real writing jobs. Libby graciously asked me to join, and had the connections to convince the others to participate. I’m honored to be with Libby in the company of Sara Paretsky, Barbara D’Amato, Sean Chercover, Marcus Sakey and Kevin Guilfoile, great writers all.

That is good company. When you’re not writing mysteries, what do you like to do?
Life has too many wonderful diversions—dinner and great conversations with friends, movies, plays, TV (on DVD), the Art Institute, The Field Museum, Millennium Park, the El (fantastic for watching people as well as for getting around). I’m also a compulsive recycler and enthusiastic (if unskilled) gardener.

You mentioned, in our last conversation, that you once drove a bus. It sounds incredibly stressful. Was it a learning experience?
Everything is a learning experience. Driving a bus isn’t a bad way to make a living if it’s not a school bus. That would be stressful.

What other interesting jobs have you had?
I’ve worked in a veterinary hospital, a medical research lab (briefly!), a print shop, a library, and as a truck and snow plow driver, babysitter, newsletter editor, and recycling center volunteer. I’m not sure any of them was interesting, but unless you’re brain-dead, you can learn something from everything you do. And the wise (wo)man takes power where it’s offered.

You are a very wise woman, and I am learning from you!

What are you writing now?
I’m currently working on another stand-alone novel, and a sequel to Death in West Wheeling.

Whose mysteries do you like to read?
Where do I start? I have 1500 mysteries in my personal library. I tend to prefer police procedurals like Homicide 69 (Sam Reaves) and the darker stuff like God Is a Bullet (Boston Terran) or Rain Fall (Barry Eisler), but I adored The Book of Lost Things (a fairy tail for grownups by John Connolly), and crazy stuff like 47 Rules for Highly Successful Bank Robbers (Troy Cook) and Dirt (Sean Doolittle). And I couldn’t put down Nancy Pickard’s The Virgin of Small Plains. My main criterion is that the book be well written.

When friends of yours come to Chicago, where do you like to take them? What Chicago sights are not to be missed?
A Chicago River boat trip, sightseeing on the free downtown trolley, The Field, Navy Pier (which has a great, free, stained glass museum), The Art Institute, Harold Washington Library, a drive up Lake Shore Drive, The Chicago Botanic Garden (in the north suburbs), one of our great restaurants...

How can readers find out more about you?
The Outfit will be appearing at the Harold Washington Library on August 7 as part of the “City of Big Readers” program (June 1 to August 30). Come and introduce yourself. Or visit my website MichaelAllenDymmoch.com
Or read my books.

Sounds great. Thanks for chatting, Michael!
Thank you, Julia.

The Pensive Pine: Nature's Mystery

"The loud wind through the forest wakes
With sounds like ocean roaring, wild and deep,
And in yon gloomy Pines strange music makes,
Like symphonies unearthly, heard in sleep;
The sobbing waters wash their waves and weep,
Where moans the blast its dreary path along,
The bending Firs a mournful cadence keep."

--WILLIAM DRUMMOND


Once again I have consulted my Bullfinch Flower Guide to learn about the pine tree, Nature's fragrant and wonderful creation which should be lauded in all seasons, not just Christmas. There is a long mythological tradition relating to the pine tree, which is a symbol, in flower world, of pity. "It is dedicated to Bacchus and also to Pan because Pitys, one of the many nymphs that Pan loved, was changed into a pine tree to escape the embraces of Boreas."

There was also a mythological tale of young lovers who were changed into a pine and a vine, so that they could forever embrace.

And of course I must mention that in Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST, it is in a pine that Sycorax imprisons the delicate Ariel, and only the power of Prospero can set Ariel free to work his dainty magic on the island, and in Prospero's heart.

The smell of pine is in my top ten fragrances of all time, but now that I know this, I shall always think of it as the smell of pity.

(Quote is from "Forget Me Not: A Floral Treasury," by Pamela Todd, Bulfinch Press, 1993).

Captain Jack's Existential Nightmare

This is our fish, Captain Jack. He's had a surprisingly long lifespan, considering that some of the goldfish our boys won at the school carnival, despite my desperate attempts to keep them alive, did not last more than a couple of days. Captain Jack's going on two years in the bowl, and the other day, perhaps because we were discussing Waiting for Godot, I suddenly wondered how anything could be more of an existential misery than a fishbowl.

First of all, there's the circular nature of the environment; does he ever wish he could dart down a side alley, I wonder, or swim straight rather than in that eternal round? Can fish become insane?

Second, there's the little castle and shrubbery. We put it in there so that he wouldn't be bored, but he has to be sick of that view by now! When I tire of a room in my house, I paint it. What can Jack do? Swim away? No, poor thing. Just keep going in circles.

Third, there's the hope of freedom, which I suppose he gets every time I scoop him out to clean his world. He sits in the little waiting bin, perhaps wondering if this time he'll be dumped into the ocean, or a bigger tank, or something else, anything else, and then Bloosh! He's back in the bowl--same castle, same rock.

Poor Captain Jack. You see what reading Beckett has done to me?

An Outing With The Boys

Today the boys are taking me to see Spiderman Three. Mind you, when I wanted to see The Queen and Music and Lyrics there were no takers; but for Spiderman, we manage to get out as a family. :)

It should be interesting to see how they manage to maintain tension in the film, since certain things were resolved in Spiderman Two. I do enjoy the story, and my husband has loved the whole Spiderman saga devotedly since he was a tike reading the comic books.

In any case, I haven't been inside a movie theatre in months!

A Calendar Powerhouse

Today is notable in that it is the birth date of both Karl Marx and Soren Kierkegaarde, two giants of philosophy and original thought. Kierkegaard, who noted as his primary influences the names of Socrates and Christ, said famously that "Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth," but also pessimistically noted that one should
"Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth --look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment."

Karl Marx wanted the proletariat to rise up and confront the bourgeousie. In his famous Communist Manifesto he wrote " The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." Marx saw the workers as manipulated by the rich to achieve their own ends.

I find myself relating to young Karl Marx, not only because I sometimes feel like a struggling prole, but because Marx was often broke and had difficulties finding funding for his writing. Hmmmm . . .

So why the photo of Monty Python game card with Terry Jones pretending to be Karl Marx? Why, because it is ALSO the birthday of Michael Palin, the Pythoner who is famous for such lines as "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" and "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay, I sleep all night and I work all day." Palin is known as the "nice one" in the Python troupe, and now makes his living traveling the world for a tv series currently called "New Europe with Michael Palin."

I love Palin for a little-known series called "Ripping Yarns," which I found quite funny.

One more thing: it's also the birthday of Tammy Wynette. So stand by your man in her honor.

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