Graduation Day

This is Diversity Friday, though a decided dearth of diverse dramatists may have dried up the design before it achieved critical mass. Digging deeper into the depths of alliterative depravity, the blog takes the day off from writerly interests for a family outing, as today The Sole Heir becomes a doctor, as in M.D.

I try not to make this blog too much about me; asking people to suffer my opinions already tests the limits of both human endurance and compassion. Today I get to swell my fatherly chest a little as I take a few minutes to tell the world how proud I am of this young woman. People have asked me for years what my favorite age is for her when I look back and I have always said, “However old she is now.” Never has that been more true than today.

Congratulations, Dr. Blewett.

The Journal

I think it was William Goldman who said he never kept a notebook because he’d remember any idea worth writing. I subscribed to a similar position for many years, with no more than random notes in a Word file and saving online newspaper articles for anecdotes that might be of use in Penns River. Then The Sole Heir™ bought me a wholly unexpected Christmas gift: A Novel Journal.

It’s a nifty idea. A nicely-bound, sturdy journal with a difference. Each “line” is actually miniscule text of an actual author’s work. She bought me Arthur Conan Doyle; the first story I wrote between the lines of was “A Scandal in Bohemia.” I appreciated the gift but wasn’t sure how much use I’d get from it. After all, I was never much of a note taker. I made a point to use it to show my appreciation and found it much more useful than I’d expected.

Among the benefits of plotting in advance is that I rarely get stuck. When I do, my habit is usually to either take a walk, take a nap, or take a shower. Even then, the idea won’t work itself out until I noodle it out with pen and paper. Something about the physical act of writing unlocks a portion of my creativity. Maybe it’s the ability to draw lines and cross things out without permanently deleting them. Maybe because I’ve been writing by hand longer than I’ve been typing and the process doesn’t seem as mechanical. Could be the tactile sensation of pen on paper. I don’t know. All I know, or care about, is that it works.

What I learned with my first few dutiful entries in the new journal was I enjoyed the new process. Not resorting to longhand only because I was stuck made it more fun. My imagination loosed itself to play more easily. The journal became less a warehouse to save fragments of ideas than a place to work them out once I decided they were worth keeping. Some entries are several pages long.

It’s become my go-to source anytime I need to think creatively. Flipping through it now I see notes on what questions to ask at the Bouchercon panel I moderated last year; a temporarily set aside proposal for a detective fiction class I’m thinking of teaching; random ideas for future Penns River books, or even just characters or subplots within a larger story; the noodling out of the core idea for the story I plan to read at an upcoming Noir at the Bar; blog posts; and notes on the work in progress. The most recent entry is for a character in a future Penns River book that grew into a plot as I wrote it. Soon as I’m done here I have a potential ending for that story I’ll get down.

What the journal allows me to do that I hadn’t before is to let ideas ripen. Most of us are aware that teachers use repetition of concepts as frequently as they do because one never knows which other influences have worked on a student so that today becomes the day something you’ve said fifty times before makes sense. I have ideas in here I’m started to noodle and given up on. I have little doubt that at least some of them will find more fertile soil should I stumble across them in six months or a year. Or five. They’re not going anywhere.

This new concept works so well for me I’ve expanded on it. Last summer The Beloved Spouse and I took a road trip west that included a stopover on Dodge City KS. There I bought a small journal at the Boot Hill Museum specifically to take notes on the research I plan to do this summer for a Western I still hope to write. Earlier this year TBS and I went north to visit TSH at medical school and went to the Mark Twain Museum, which sold the Twain counterpart to the Conan Doyle journal I like so much. Arthur is filling up, so I brought Mark home with me.

There’s not a lot of stuff in my journal by many writers’ standards. It’s not like I feel compelled to make a notation every day. (As anyone who has read my books can tell you, I don’t come up with things worth writing down every day.) Still, it’s become a trusted companion that I rarely go away overnight without. 

Summer's Best Reads

It’s been a busy summer, what with The Sole Heir finishing her Masters, then helping her

move to Connecticut for medical school, and going back to see her receive her first white coat and stethoscope. I also switched up on my reading habits, and did some truly recreational reading. Not that reading is ever other than recreational for me, but I took the time to read a lot of baseball analysis as a combination of relaxation and palate cleansing. With Labor Day hard upon us, I stand ready to get back into writing and taking a more workmanlike approach to my literary pursuits. (Every time I use my name and “literary” in the same sentence, Cormac McCarthy throws up in his mouth a little and has no idea why.) Here’s what I’ve been up to that’s worth passing along.

Give the Boys a Great Big Hand, Ed McBain. I’m in the tank for McBain as much as ever, so anything of his is likely to make my recommended list. This one is fairly early in the 87^th Precinct series (1960), but many of the things that made him wear so well are evident, not least including working a little set piece humor into the investigation. Everything kicks off when a patrol officer notices a box left behind at a bus stop and finds a human hand inside. From there, everyone gets involved.

Bank Shot, Donald Westlake. Dortmunder steals a bank. Not just robs; steals. The real bank is undergoing renovation, so business is conducted out of a trailer that’s up on blocks, and Andy Kelp’s nephew, Victor, has the great idea to drive it away, then take the money at their leisure. Dortmunder isn’t crazy about the idea, and he’s even less enchanted with Victor, who is 1.) a putz, and 2.) a former FBI agent. Dortmunder is unaware Victor plans to write a book about the theft. As usual,everything imaginable goes wrong, and a few things only Westlake could have imagined. Great fun.

The Writers Guide to Weapons, Ben Sobieck. Much delayed by the publisher, and worth the wait. I wrote about this in detail right after I read it. Any writer—crime or otherwise—who needs to use weapons in a story should be familiar with everything in this book.

The Bill James Guide To Baseball Managers: From 1870 to Today, Bill James. Now a consultant for the Boston Red Sox, James coined the phrase sabermetrics for the study and analysis of baseball statistics. Others may have better mathematical chops, but no one combines analysis, insight, and a gift for writing like James does. Here he breaks down the evolution of the job of baseball manager from its origins through 1997. No seam head should skip this book.

Knuckleball, Tom Pitts. Artfully weaving a series of baseball games between the Giants and Dodgers into the investigation of the killing of a San Francisco cop and the effects on his partner and a family caught up in it, Pitts sets up a plot twist made all the more effective by its slow reveal. It’s less of a “I never saw that coming” than it is a “Oh, my God, he’s not going to…” and all the more effective because of it. Pitts handles the novella form effortlessly, making another argument for e-books as providing the perfect platform for a renaissance of the form.

Dig Two Graves, Eric Beetner. No one—with the possible exception of Dennis Lehane—that make me think “what a great movie this would make” more than Beetner. This is a classic revenge tale, with layers of variations. Recently paroled Val wants his vengeance on former partner Ernesto for more than ratting him out. In the tradition of the best noir stories, Val’s first bad decision leads him into a series of bad options from which no good choices are available until he meets a worst case scenario ending. Don’t think Walter Neff’s worst case; this is more of a Vic Mackey ending.

Belfast Noir, edited by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville. As free from anthology disease as any I can remember reading. (Anthology Disease – Some of the stories don’t measure up to the general standard.) A wide variety of styles by a wide variety or writers. Among the best of the Akashic noir series.

The Dog of the South, Charles Portis. Portis is a national treasure. His books have the quiet, left-handed zaniness of Wes Anderson’s best movies, with a cast of screwballs not found elsewhere. Best known for True Grit, Portis cares little for period or setting. Anything and everything is fair game. In The Dog of the South he tells the story of a man hunting his wife and the man she’s run off with to Texas. Or Mexico. Actually, it’s what was then (1979) called British Honduras. The narrator is as reliable as a somewhat delusional nitwit can be. Everything is deadpan, not a joke in the book, and more pages than not have a laugh out loud sequence. 

Gaelic Karma

My life has a tendency to balance out, for which I am more often grateful than frustrated. During my tenure at Castle Voldemort, I once received a nice bonus at work. Several years later, during a stint playing in a community band, I decided it was time to buy a new trumpet. Within a few weeks another windfall came to me, almost exactly what the horn would cost. That’s how I roll.

I should have expected as much when The Beloved Spouse and I failed to score any autographs for our copy of Books To Die For at Bouchercon. With thirty-plus authors ready to sign, we waited for the line to thin before queuing up. Little did we know demand for signatures would be so great most of the authors had to leave for other commitments by the time we got within hailing distance of the signing area, and we bailed ourselves. So it goes.

The Sole Heir has somewhat better karma. Things tend to drop right for her. Today’s tale shows how her good fortune balanced things out for me, without her even knowing about it.

Last week was my birthday. (I’m now in what I call my Ketchup Year: 57.) She bought me a book from my Amazon wish list (Down These Green Streets, so there’s a Declan Burke angle here, too), but, as she told me during the unwrapping, there was a story behind it.

She had the choice of buying the book new, or used. Daughter of a fledgling author, she opted for new, thinking new is better for a gift, and the authors get paid. When it arrived, she noticed it lacked the sheen a new trade paperback has, and the edges were less than crisp. The pages had obviously been turned. This was not a new book, and she was not amused. Short on time before my birthday, she was about to send it back, but thumbed through it first.

Turns out someone at Amazon made a mistake: she’d scored an autographed copy. Ten contributors had signed, including Declan Hughes, Colin Bateman, and Ian Ross. (We’re still decoding the others.) She gave it to me as is, with the offer to swap it for a new one if I preferred.

Like hell. They’ll pry this copy from my cold, dead fingers.

This was better than balancing out. Books To Die For is just as good, signed or not. Having the unexpected signed copy of Green Streets, and a story to go with it, puts me well ahead.

And the kid’s only half as Irish as I am. Go figure.