... his fevered imagination

Horrfied to Discover Verbal Dirt Sprinkled Through My Book

2008-12-21T09:41:00.001-08:00

Consider the following sentence from my technical book:

There will be cases where we want to exert more control than these simple calls will allow.

Ignoring the context of this sentence, I've come to realize that it contains a terrible plague that has infiltrated all my writing. I have a weird aversion to writing in the present tense. This shows up most frequently in the use of the word will.

I have will sprinkled through my book like dust. It serves no useful purpose. It just sits in sentences and makes the gears grind. Here is the fixed version of the sample sentence:

There are cases where we want to exert more control than these simple calls allow.

This is much clearer than the first sentence. The two uses of the word will served no purpose. The sentence meant the same thing either way.

I wonder if this comes from writing fiction. We rarely use the present tense in fiction.

That Charles Dickens Guy Can Write!

2008-12-14T07:25:00.000-08:00

I've just finished reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, in what I hope will be an annual tradition for me. And, ironic as it sounds, I have to say that the guy can really write.

Of course this seems like an odd thing to say about an acknowledged master of the English literary tradition, but I find that I enjoy reading very few of these so-called masters. Most classics are pedantic, or slow, or reflect more of the author's need to talk than of actual story telling.

There are those who argue that today's story telling is different, that we, in our Sesame Street induced, short-attention span culture simply cannot sit back and enjoy the lengthy prose of our talebearers.

Baloney.

Great storytelling hasn't changed since Homer finished the Iliad, and Dickens's story captures all the essential elements of great story telling.

First, there is the opening sentence:

Marley was dead, to begin with.

That is a great opening. There is conflict built right into it along with curiosity. Who is Marley? How did he die? Why does this fact start the story? All these thoughts drag the reader right into the story.

We then learn, in the same paragraph, that we're going to get an odd point of view. The story will be told in the first person of the storyteller, but the storyteller is not in the story. Instead, the storyteller will follow Scrooge. We see this form of storytelling in the next part of the opening paragraph in once of my favorite descriptions in English literature:

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Now you know that your in for a fun ride with a storyteller who doesn't take himself too seriously.

Dickens shows a fantastic sense of pacing in the rest of the story. First, he jumps quickly into the arrival of the Ghosts. He only uses one or two scenes to establish that Scrooge is a, well, scrooge. He shows us the cold clerk Bob Cratchet, the Nephew, and the men asking for charity, and that's it. He finishes his description of Scrooge going up a dark staircase to his room. This is another one of my favorite descriptive lines:

Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.

After that, Marley's ghost arrives (having already been in the door knocker) and we are off to the races.

The Ghosts of Past and Present provide descriptions of parties that still inspire a sense of celebration and merriment. Though I'm of Spanish/Italian descent, these English parties bring back memories of my own Christmas Eves and parties today:

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley." Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.

And again, another party description in the Ghost of Christmas Present, this one at Scrooge's nephew's house with an especially funny story about Scrooge's nephew's friend Topper making a play for a plump young woman:

But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After awhile they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blindman's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself amongst the curtains, wherever she went, there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him (as some of them did) on purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck, was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it when, another blind man being in office, they were so very confidential together behind the curtains.

I have an inkling about who "another blind man" is in the last sentence. But perhaps I have a dirty mind.

By the time we get to the Ghost of Christmas Future the story is rolling and Dickens doesn't belabor the point. The Ghost is showing Scrooge the reactions to the death of an old miser and the reader obviously knows the dead guy is Scrooge (there are no other characters and its too late to add new ones.) But the conflict is in us waiting for Scrooge to wake up and see it for himself.

When Scrooge does have is final epiphany Dickens demonstrates one last bit of mastery. The end of the story is mercifully short. I've seen so many books that spend far to much time on the denouement, as if the author can't bear to stop writing. Scrooge does the following:

Buy's Bob Cratchet a turkey
Asks to be invited to his Nephew's party (with Topper, et all)
Gets into work early, scares poor Bob and then gives him a raise.

That's it. Dickens doesn't waste time philosophizing. Instead he just shows us the new Scrooge and sends us on our way with a nice final paragraph:

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total-Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Give A Christmas Carol a read when you get a chance. It's published at the link at the top of this posting.

A Nice Piece of Essay Writing

2008-12-13T04:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes simple things can evoke the feeling that this author "really gets it."

Here's a nice piece that I saw in the Christian Science Monitor this morning. It's simply about a woman's attempt to keep warm all winter. I read it as my house made its morning struggle from a sleeptime temperature of 66 degrees up to 70. I was wearing pajama bottoms, a T-Shirt, a long underwear shirt, a beige shirt made of some waffle-like material, and my trusty Worcester Tornadoes hoodie. The hood was up and I was drinking hot coffee, warming myself on the mug. Then I read this:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1212/p09s02-coop.html

Michael Lewis: Our Best Non-Fiction Writer

2008-11-29T03:43:00.001-08:00

Michael Lewis is my favorite non-fiction writer. I first discovered him with Liar's Poker, but then went on to enjoy The New, New Thing, Moneyball, and The Blind Side. His latest book is Panic.

Lewis has an amazing ability to take arcane financial and technical issues and break them down into stories about people. Then, in the course of telling you stories about people, he explains the arcane financial or technical issue. I think he's caught on to the fact that everything interesting in life really boils down to the people involved.

In this article The End, Lewis discusses the unraveling of Wall Street through the eyes of a trader, Steve Eisner, who got very rich by seeing the madness unfolding in front of him and betting that the market would all come tumbling down. I'm a big fan of first paragraphs. Here is the first paragraph from The End:

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

Lewis tells the story with simple prose and clear descriptions that allow anyone to see how the destruction of Wall Street came about because of a mass ability for people to not only delude themselves, but to not care that they were deluding themselves.

When my brother posted this story on Facebook he wrote "Don't read on a full stomach." I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. When I read this story over breakfast I literally threw up in my mouth a little.

Now that's great writing.

The Power and Danger of the Dark Side

2008-11-01T09:58:00.001-07:00

Recently Larry David wrote of how he cannot continue to subject others to the ravings and paranoia of his "current condition", that condition being the state of waiting for this election to be over.

I, too, have been subjecting those around me to a similar rash of ranting, emotional outbursts, and sweeping condemnations of all things Republican. I'm not fit for polite company, but the nightmare is almost over.

Some have argued that I see this election as a battle between "good" and "evil" and, in my sanctimonious state, have decided that those who vote for McCain are "evil." If it were only that simple. This election is about something much more insidious than simple evil. It is about the Dark Side.

Both liberal and conservative traditions have powerful, positive visions of America. Neither of these traditions channels the Dark Side:

Positive liberals believe in an America where we are our brother's keeper. Liberals see the great wealth of this country as an opportunity to do good and to help others. They see the United States as a force for positive change in the world. They see us as a country that could stop the genocide in Darfur and they consider our intervention in Bosnia to be a success. They see America as an inclusive place where people of all persuasions can find a home.

Positive conservatives see America as a bastion of personal liberty. Conservatives celebrate our freedom to create wealth. They know that money is not created by "society" but by entrepreneurs. Conservatives believe that America's best times will always be ahead of it because America's people have been guaranteed the freedom to succeed. They see America as a place of powerful traditions that bind us together in mutual success. Internationally, they see see America as a force for good that will not back down from a bully.

These two positive visions of America often do battle. They spar over tax rates and regulations. They debate over foreign policy. They fight over the deficit. But in both cases, Liberals and Conservatives are trying to promote what they see as what is best in America.

But, then there is the Dark Side. The Dark Side is neither Liberal or Conservative, though both sides can easily carry its banner. The Dark Side is powerful and dangerous. History has shown that it can quickly channel the population towards its evil ends.

The Dark side tells us that there are people who are the others. It tells us to fear the others if they are powerful and hate the others if they are weak. The Dark Side tells us to say, "I've got mine, you get yours." It says that there is a limited pie and that life is nothing but a scramble to get as much of that pie into our mouth as possible.

The Dark Side tells us that the world is dangerous, that people hate us, and that the liberty we hold dear is hanging by a thread. It tells us that the others among us will connive with our enemies to bring us down.

The Dark Side drove the Nazi revolution in Germany when the others became the Jews. More recently it has lived in Serbia and Croatia, Rwanda, and, naturally, the Middle East.

For the past seven years, the Bush administration has embraced the Dark Side. After September 11, Bush took advantage of our pain to bind us together in fear. He used the Dark Side to justify torture. He used it again to invade Iraq. He used it to destroy lives curtail liberties -- all in the name of defending democracy against the others. You were for him or against him, and woe be to those who were not for him.

Then he lost control of the Dark Side.

Soon immigrants (illegal or not) found themselves targeted as the others. Those would would take our jobs and eat our resources. Those who would take our piece of the ever shrinking pie. And when Bush tried to say, "No. We need to help these people." it was too late for him and the Dark Side pushed him aside.

Economically, the Dark Side perverted entrepreneurship. It convinced Wall Street bankers that deregulation was not a license to create wealth, but a license to hide bad investments. It said, "Screw em all and get your bonus!" The others became foreign investors and customers. The others became the saps who would refinance the bad mortgages. Bush had taught us all to marginalize the others and his folly destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth.

But then Barack Obama came on the scene with a message of hope and unity. John McCain promoted honor and integrity. And, at the beginning of the general election, I was happy because I thought that both candidates represented what was good about their tradition. John McCain had spoken out against torture, and Barack Obama had said that we are not Red States or Blue States but United States.

But then, seeing that he was losing, John McCain, was seduced by the Dark Side.

McCain worked tirelessly to link Barack Obama to William Ayers, a domestic terrorist. He laid out the dots where a black man with a Muslim name was associate with terrorism and left it to his surrogates to connect them, to say that Barack Obama was one of the others.

McCain allowed his campaign to release mailers that had the word "Terrorists" as the headline and then opened up to a picture of Obama. He argued that people "didn't really know" Barack Obama and implied that we should be afraid of him. He allowed supporters to suggest that Obama wasn't a citizen. And again he invoked the other.

At that point, John McCain lost me completely. I believe he is unfit to be President, because I believe that you cannot dabble in the Dark Side. The Dark Side is not an aerosol can of power that you can spray into the air for temporary effect. The evils unleashed don't dissipate like perfume. They fester like anthrax.

Instead, as George Bush learned, the Dark Side is a disease that cannot be put back into its bottle. John McCain almost learned this lesson. When his supporters called out "Terrorist!" and "Kill Him!" at campaign stops he looked surprised. Then he spoke out to defuse what he had created. But, when he looked the Dark Side in the eye, he blinked.

When confronted by a supporter who said she feared Obama because, "He is an Arab." McCain responded, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man..." because the Dark Side had taken hold of John McCain and, without thinking about it, he had said that an "Arab" cannot be a family man. Then he was booed at his own rally for defending Obama. The anthrax was out of the bottle.

What would it mean if McCain won on Tuesday? It would mean that America's unique place in history would be tarnished. It would say that Americans are just like everyone else in history in embracing the fearful notion of the other. It would mean the Dark Side has won.

And so I'll continue to be emotional when it comes to calling Obama a Terrorist, or labeling parts of the US as pro-American. I'll continue to be horrified when a member of the House of Representatives says, "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out if they are pro-America or anti-America." I'll continue to speak out when someone claims that Barack Obama is not a US Citizen. Because all of these attacks stink of the Dark Side.

And I'll pray that on November 4th, America rejects the Dark Side and steps back into the light.

Learning about Writing on Tapes

2008-09-25T04:03:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to a set of lectures on writing called, "Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft" and it occurs to me that I can practice these sentences in my blog. So the next few posts will show examples of different ways of extending sentences to provide more meaning and depth.

Even though I plan to write in what's called a "tough" style, employing simple, declarative sentences, and eschewing literary aspirations. I figure that it would be good to put more tools in my tool chest.

Writing that's simple and moving

2008-08-12T04:05:00.000-07:00

A 9-year-old finds refuge in suburban Atlanta | csmonitor.com

I found this story in the Christian Science Monitor while eating my morning almond butter sandwich. It's quite touching and it made my nose tickle with emotion. In doing so it illustrates something that I try to bring to my writing.

The writing in this story illustrates the point made by Archer Mayor: "Don't show off. Don't screw up." The author of the story (Mary Wiltenburg) tells it with simplicity and detail. There are no literary flourishes. No inside jokes. No self referential comments. She stays out of the way and lets the people speak for themselves.

For example:

This Fourth of July, Bill eats dinner on his favorite spot: the black metal stairs at the back of the building that look out over all of Indian Creek. From his perch, he gnaws a small roll, surveying the comings and goings in the parking lots below.

The writing is nice, simple, clear, and, to me, moving.

Writers Plot: And She Had That "New Mother" Glow

2008-08-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice blog entry about what it takes to get published and the fact that my writing group member Sibylle Barrasso is getting her first book published. It's called Dark Waters.

Sibylle's an excellent writer and the book prompted the reviewer from Library Journal to say:

Barrasso's approach to the PI genre might be considered a softer version of Sue Grafton, but her touch is as deft.

Writers Plot: And She Had That "New Mother" Glow

We're all cheering for Sibylle and her book.

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child

2008-08-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

I recently flew from California to Boston -- a process that, despite all its delays, is still slightly faster than wagon train.

As is usual in the summer, we got stuck on the tarmac waiting for thunder storms to get out of the path between us and Boston. We were put into what flyers affectionately call "The Penalty Box." This is where planes go to wait to take off when the airport needs the gate for someone else. The plane taxis out somewhere on the airport and sits there for as long as it takes.

As we entered the penalty box, I started reading the climax of Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child. The next thing I knew, the plane was flying at 30,000 feet. I was so engrossed in the book that I'd missed the taxi out of the box and the takeoff.

This is exactly the kind of book I hope to write. I want to take someone away from a tedious situation and make time fly. Therefore Bad Luck and Trouble and all of Child's books are essential reading.

How did he do it? I think it's because Lee Child is the master of the simple declarative sentence. You don't have to work to read his writing. It just enters your head and draws pictures. Here's the opening to Bad Luck and Trouble:

The man was called Calvin Franz and the helicopter was a Bell 222. Franz had two broken legs, so he had to be loaded on board strapped to a stretcher. Not a difficult maneuver. The Bell was a roomy aircraft, twin-engined, designed for corporate travel and police departments, with space for seven passengers. The rear doors were as big as a panel van's and they opened wide. The middle row of seats had been removed. There was plenty of room for Franz on the floor.

The helicopter was idling. Two men were carrying the stretcher. They ducked low under the rotor wash and hurried ...

Child painted this whole opening, and the whole book, with simple sentences. The most complex sentence was the description of the Bell helicopter. There were several clauses here, but each was simple in itself. None of them presented the reader with a challenge.

This is the lesson that I take from all of Child's books. Be simple. Be clear. Tell a story. Or, to quote another writer I know named Archer Mayor: "Don't show off. Don't screw up."

I hope to do it as well as Child one day.

Reading Notes on my Blog

2008-08-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

Great writers are great readers, and I have started to keep up my end of the bargain. I've been reading mysteries and having mysteries read to me in my car.

But, I haven't been taking notes on my reading and that's bad. So, I'm going to be writing my notes from the books I read in this blog. Writing them in the blog will force me to organize and express my thoughts and this will force me to learn.

But enough about me. What do you get? Reviews, of a sort, and perhaps a different view of a book as I learn as I go. I hope you enjoy these posts.

Rejection

2008-08-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today I decided not to subscribe to Poet & Writer's magazine.

It was surprisingly satisfying to write a rejection slip to a magazine instead of receiving one.

The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot | Fast Company

2008-06-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I read two things that helped me recapture what I love about mysteries and helped me see that I'd much rather write mysteries than thrillers.

The first was this year's Edgar Winner Down River by John Hart. This is a fantastic book. It's well written, emotionally strong, and it comes together the way all great mysteries do. When I read it I realized that this is what I want to create in my fiction.

The second was an article in FastCompany magazine: The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot | Fast Company. While the article discusses the Boyd (or OODA) loop in business, that is not what I connected with mystery writing. Instead it was a thought experiment created by the OODA founder Colonel John R. Boyd. Here is the experiment as described in the article:

Imagine four scenarios: someone skiing, someone power-boating, someone bicycling, and a boy playing with a toy tank. Break down each domain into its component parts: For skiing, there would be snow, chairlifts, skis, hot chocolate, and so on. Within their domain, the parts have directly identifiable relationships with one another. But scramble together the parts from the four domains, and suddenly it's hard to determine any relationships at all. We are thrown into chaos.

Now ... take one part from each scene: From skiing, select the skis; from power boating, the motor; from bicycling, the handlebars; and from the boy with his toy tank, the treads. What do these elements have to do with one another? At first, seemingly nothing -- because we still think of them in terms of their original domains. But bring the parts together, and you've used your creative pattern-recognition skills to build ... a snowmobile!

This experiment shows how we construct great mysteries and the joy of reading a great mystery. Every great mystery delivers clues to us over the course of the book. But it delivers them in a context other than the context of the mystery. One clue may come from a conversation with a loved one. Another may come during an argument with a nemesis. All of them are delivered in a way that causes the reader to keep them separate.

The joy of the mystery is the same as the little charge we get when we discover that all those parts create a snowmobile. "Of course!" we say, "I should have seen it all along!" But in reality we are happy that we didn't because there's nothing more disappointing than a mystery we solve before the sleuth.

Writing NonFiction

2008-06-24T05:17:00.000-07:00

My fiction writing has taken a turn for the non-existent recently as I've worked to complete a large technical project. I've discovered that my non-fiction writing has the same level of thought that I have in fiction though I never noticed before. There are three stages to preparation:

Start writing either the chapter or a technical example that I'll be using as an illustration in the chapter.

Realize that I don't really understand the topic that I want to write about and that even if I did understand it that I don't know how to explain it.

Swear violently and keep working on understanding what I want to write about. All the while fretting because I'm not writing anything.

Finally, I find that I figure out the topic well enough to explain it clearly. Once again, a chapter that I thought would be "simple" turns out to be not so simple, at least for me.

I hope it will be simple for my readers.

Disappointing Jesus Christ Superstar

2008-05-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Jesus Christ Superstar was my first experience with musical theater. I remember listening to the album annually at my aunt's house and getting swept away in the music and the story. I still enjoy the music on my iPod.

So I was very excited to, after thirty years, finally see Jesus Christ Superstar live at the Opera House. What a disappointment.

The Jesus of Jesus Christ Superstar is supposed to be a visionary torn between the political desires of the mob and his own messianic urges. He's supposed to be young, tortured and angry.

Instead we got Ted Neely who's 65 years old this year and has been playing Jesus Christ since 1973. This means that he's been Jesus Christ longer than Jesus Christ. It shows.

The Jesus of the current play is a cross between Bill Clinton and the Dali Lama. A 65-year old man can't help but project the perspective that comes with age so Jesus spent his time working the rope line in the play, hugging, blessing, and comforting his followers. These blissful moments were interrupted by moments when he would uncharacteristically shriek at people. The show tried to make up for the tired performance of Jesus with a strong supporting cast and a lot of flashing lights.

Of course its my own fault. If I had done more research I would have realized that I was walking into a nostalgia tour targeted to an audience that wanted to relive their 20's. They applauded the moment Neely walked on stage, backlit as if in a Michelangelo painting.

But the play had problems beyond the aged Jesus. It immediately deserted the spirit of the writing by having Jesus bring a guy back to life during the overture. The play originally had left Jesus's divinity ambiguous. Judas didn't buy it but Peter did. The audience was left to work it out. Not in this production, He brings people back to life, people! He's God! it seemed to shout.

The show had other problems too. They added a pointless song. In the Last Supper scene Jesus and the Apostles posed as if they were in the painting (the audience applauded for 30 seconds.) Caiaphas sang as if he had swallowed a frog.

It's quite sad. When Jesus Christ Superstar was written it spoke to a generation that was disaffected with its country an its parents. Its message of radicalism gone bad resonated with the people of the time.

The show could have spoken to us today. What if the Romans were dressed in American Army Uniforms? What if the Priests were dressed as Imams? What an impact it would have made if an American Army colonel (Pontius Pilate) stood in front of an angry middle eastern mob chanting "Crucify him!" How well would that have resonated with the plight of a world power that gets stuck in a local religious struggle?

The show could have been so much more. But apparently all it was supposed to be was a swan song for Neely and I guess it accomplished that.

Discovered a New Way to Improve the World

2008-03-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

A quick sidelight from writing and books. I've discovered a non-profit organization that I think people should know about. Kiva.com allows individuals to fund microloans to entrepreneurs in impoverished countries.

For example, my first contribution went to a $325 loan for Yaa Manu, a married mother of five in Ghana who sells rice. She needed to expand her inventory.

These types of loans are repaid over 95% of the time and allow us to help people help themselves. I've included a banner for Kive on the right side of this page. I hope you'll take a look.

Terminated has Transformed

2008-02-22T07:32:00.000-08:00

Well, it's finally happened. I've written enough of the new book that I now know that it is no longer the original book, "Terminated."

"Terminated" was supposed to be about the dynamics of power in companies. I had started with that basic theme and then added ideas I'd had over the years. I think it's still thematically strong even though it has its problems (the ones that make it unpublishable.)

But this new book seems to be about something else. I'm back to writing it extemporaneously with some outlining. I'm groping around trying to find the right combination for me. Things have changed significantly. Tucker is no longer an exec, he is a software engineer. The industry is different. I think the bare bones of the mystery is the same, but now I'm seeing that this will change.

The file I write in is called "Discovery Draft.odt" Now I just need to find out what I'm discovering.

OK. I Give Up

2008-02-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

Well, my experiment in rewriting the Terminated book without an outline is going nowhere. I simply cannot make this work.

The problem is that I am forced to think about too many things at once. I'm trying to write a scene with dialog, but the scene needs a climax, plus it needs to impart information, and introduce characters. All of these together paralyze any writing.

The problem is that I can't see the whole story so I can't pull any of this into context. My dialog is becoming an exploration for what should happen and characters start repeating their sentences back to each other and engage in pointless squabbles.

I think I may have taken the wrong lessons away from my first attempt at Terminated. Those who read past page 80 said that the couldn't put the book down and that they found it thoroughly enjoyable. They just had trouble with the first 80 pages.

But the last 160 pages were just as outlined as the first 80 pages. So I don't think the problem was in outlining it. I think the problem was deeper and more structural. Terminated (the original) was about, as one agent put it, "A depressed character in an obscure industry." So the first 80 pages was spent describing his depression and his obscure industry.

Also, the stakes that were set out in the first 80 pages were lame, "Why is Moray merging with Bronte?" Who cares. After page 80 the stakes were, "Who killed the poor girl?" and "How will Tucker escape Cross Eyes?" These are much more compelling stakes.

So, while extemporaneous writing will work for me in a short story. I think I need to go back to outlining if I'm going to get a novel done with any confidence.

Yay! I won!

2008-02-01T12:01:00.001-08:00

I won a writing contest this month in the monthly Mystery Writers of America newsletter (New England Chapter.) The contest was to come up with the best start to a story given the phrase "Things were going to be different in 2008."

Here's my entry:

Things were going to be different in 2008. For one thing, Remy would be dead. He hummed as he admired his noose. It had seven turns, just as he was taught in Cub Scouts. The other end of the rope ran over the beams in the old cabin and was
tied to the foot of the wood-burning stove.

Plenty of ballast.

Remy heard a car door slam in the driveway and climbed onto the rickety television table. He put the noose around his neck and got ready to kick the table out as soon as his witnesses arrived.

I say again. Yay!

Today is Patry Francis Day

2008-01-29T04:59:00.000-08:00

There is a lot more to being a successful author than writing a great book. There's getting it published and promoting it.

But, what if you were to be diagnosed with aggressive cancer just as your first book hits the newsstands? This is what has happened to Patry Francis and the result is Patry Francis day, January 29th.

One of Ms. Francis' friends had the excellent idea to help her promote the book she can't promote by getting others to post blog entries about the book on January 29th.

So here is my contribution to Patry Francis day:

You can Patry Francis's blog at http://www.patryfrancis.com.

The City on the Edge of Forever

2008-01-26T05:48:00.000-08:00

I recently had the pleasure of rewatching the Star Trek classic The City on the Edge of Forever. This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award and its easy to see why.

The main story is that McCoy accidentally injects himself with a drug that drives him mad. Caught in a paranoid delusion he beams down to the planet and jumps through a time portal right in front of a landing party that was sent to capture him.

At that point, the Enterprise disappears because history has been changed and Kirk and Spock need to go back in time to set things right.

Like all great fiction, you can sit down and watch this episode over and over again starting at any point. The fiction is woven so tightly that it catches you immediately. The writing is much better than that of most Star Trek episodes -- even if it is a bit melodramatic. For example, in this scene McCoy thinks he's in a simulation of the 1930's. I especially enjoy his metaphor for 20th century surgery

It turns out the writing is not a surprise. This script was written by the science fiction great, Harlan Ellison. Even though I'd seen these episode countless times, this was the first time I watched it as an author and storyteller. The structure is amazing.

The most striking thing for me is the complexity of the story. Most Star Trek plots are simple. There is an overriding goal that involves saving the Enterprise, one of the main characters, or a civilization. In The Next Generation shows there would also be one subplot that may connect to the main plot and provide a counterpoint. (Usually it was Data exploring his humanity or some such.)

In The City... Ellison creates several plots and weaves them together:

Main Plot: Find McCoy and Fix Time
Sub Plot: Heal McCoy -- he's pretty messed up.
Sub Plot: Spock tries to make a tricorder work with "stone tools and bear skins."
Sub Plot: Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler
Sub Plot: Edith Keeler nurses McCoy

Unlike simpler episodes, all these plots tie together tightly. You can't remove one of them without unraveling the whole show. So whether you're watching Kirk hold Edith's hand, McCoy talk to a bum, or Spock stealing tools, it all relates to the main story while making its own point.

Then there is the thematic irony in the story. Edith Keeler (played by Joan Collins) is the ultimate Judeo-Christian do-gooder. She feeds the hungry and tends to the sick. She agitates for peace in a time of war. She leads a Nation to adopt a pacifist philosophy and as a result, as Spock says, "Edith Keeler must die."

OpenOffice Writer is Pretty Good!

2008-01-19T07:10:00.001-08:00

I have made it my quixotic mission in life to become a Microsoft-Free person as soon as possible.

It's not that I have a moral objection to Microsoft or large companies. I love Google, and they are the next Microsoft. Instead, I'm leaving Microsoft for a much simpler reason. Their products suck.

Microsoft is trapped in the innovator's dilemma. Faced with cheaper rivals who can deliver sufficient functionality, they keep coming out with more complicated solutions. I think the problem with Microsoft can be summed up with their CD packaging.

The software industry has developed a nice, conventional way to deliver a CD to you. It's called a jewel case and it looks like this:

This is a nice elegant solution to the problem of delivering a CD. It's obvious how the jewel case works. You can see the CD and you know what kind of CD it is. The door mechanism works like a door. It has a hinge etc. In fact, I've spent way too long describing a jewel case to you because the design is intuitively obvious.

Now, here is Microsoft's idea of how to "add value" by delivering a CD to a customer in a new way.

What the Hell is that? I don't know if you've tried to open one of these cases, but I've handed my copy of Visio to many people and asked them to "open this." There is a lot of struggling, a lot of swearing, and a bunch of spinning the damn thing around over and over looking for some clue as to how they can accomplish a simple task that was once easy to do.

Microsoft took this concept of "growth through complexity" to their software when they came out with "the Ribbon." The Ribbon is a new, supposedly more intuitive way, of doing things that we have done for years with no problem. The new Vista office has replaced our familiar File, Edit, View menus with this:

Once again, Microsoft has taken something that everybody knew how to use and replaced it with something that nobody understands. This is a microcosm of the whole Vista OS -- which people generally detest.

This gets back to why I'm moving to a Microsoft free existence. I don't want to be caught in the death throes of this giant as it flails around trying to save itself. Companies in this situation generally respond to stress by coming out with bigger and more complicated products before they succumb (see DEC, Prime, DG and their experiments in water-cooled computing.)

And the first step in a Microsoft free existence is to eschew Office. Open Office is a free product that delivers all the functionality of Windows, but its smaller, faster, cheaper, and it runs on all platforms.

I'm using Open Office Writer to write my new novel (or rewrite my old novel. Take your pick.) and I like it!

Next, on to Ubuntu!

Made Myself Laugh

2008-01-17T05:30:00.001-08:00

I made myself laugh with this poster from a marketing campaign I had considered for a now-defunct company called GreatManager Works. I think I was working on a calendar when I wrote this:

click to see

Noah

2008-01-16T14:33:00.000-08:00

I wrote Noah several years ago as an experiment. I think it could become the opening to a novel.

----------

Noah knew the real rain had arrived. After days of dark clouds and small sprinkling, the sky suddenly opened with an audible crack, and sheets of water began to fall onto Noah and his wife as they moved their final provisions into the Ark.

Noah had never felt such rain. It was like a waterfall from the sky beating upon his family as they ran the final 50 cubits to the ark. As he ran, Noah looked toward the pond near his house to see how the rain looked as it beat down on the water. But the water on the pond was no longer placidly accepting the rain that fell to it. Instead it was rising up to meet the rain, bubbling and churning as it overflowed its banks.

Noah could hear the terrified squeals of the animals in the ark, and the calls as well of the animals he had left behind. Then he heard a new sound. It was the sound of human panic.

Turning to look behind him, he could see the people of the village. His relatives were running towards the ark. Those who mocked him as recently as five minutes ago had realized that Noah was right. They were running blindly for the only safety they knew.

Noah reached the ark with his wife.

“Is everyone inside?”, he asked.

“No”, she said.

“Who is left? Our children and their children were in place! We were the last two. Who left the ark?” Noah asked. He was filled with anguish that their planning had failed and that he would break God’s word by leaving some of his children or their children behind.

His wife had tears streaming down her face. “My family!” she sobbed. “My parents, my sisters and their families. They’ll all die. We have to save them!”

The water was roaring louder, and the people were coming closer. Noah could see his in-laws running for the ark.

“We can’t save them”, said Noah, “God commanded that I should take, my wife, my children and their children. I can’t add others.”

“You fool! Did he say that you couldn’t take others? We have everyone he commanded! Would it hurt to save my family as well?”

“Your father is a sinner and an adulterer!” said Noah, his voice rising in panic, “You said so yourself. How can we save him and keep God’s word?”

“I don’t care! He is my father, and I would rather throw myself from your ark than see my family die! Who are you to judge them? You don’t know them. You can’t leave them to die! They are my family.”

As Noah looked at his sobbing wife and realized that she was right. He had room enough on the ark for her family. It became apparent to him that she had planned for this day while hoping he was wrong. She had kept her family close so they could run for the ark if the skies actually opened. He could not judge them. He couldn’t leave them to die. If only for her sake, he would save them.

“I’ll get them.” he shouted over the rushing water and roaring wind, “They’re almost here, I’ll help them on board.”

Noah stepped back in to the rain. His brother-in-law, Saphid, had reached the ramp of the ark and had turned to help pull his parents on board. Noah ran to help him when a blast of wind knocked him to his knees and he heard a blast of shattering wood.

The door of the ark, that was designed to be closed by strong ropes and winches, started to swing shut by itself. Noah stood and ran up the rising ramp to his brother-in-law, who was holding onto his mother. As Noah reached them, a blast of wind tossed Saphid over the edge. Noah grabbed his arm and held him as the side of the ark closed – trying to pull him to safety.

“Hold me!” yelled Saphid.

“I’ve got you! I won’t let go!”

The rising door slowed to a stop. Noah, hanging 5 cubits from the floor, tried to get better purchase on the arm, as his wife screamed from below. Noah realized that God must be ready to at least save Saphid. He could have crushed the arm with the door. With new strength he got his feet under him to pull Saphid to safety.

The first wave of the flood hit the ark. Water gushed through the sides of the open door. Noah was rocked by the blast of water. The pummeling water and tilting boat did their work and Noah lost his grip on Saphid. As Saphid’s arm slid out of sight Noah fell to the arc floor. The door slammed shut, blocking out the water.

For a time, Noah could hear the screams and wails inside and outside the ark. Then there was silence outside as the boat rocked softly through the night to the gentle sound of weeping.

Driving to Work

2008-01-16T07:02:00.001-08:00

Today I experienced the most beautiful commute ever. It snowed a light, sticky snow two days ago and the trees in the forest that I call home were limbed in snow. The evergreens wore their snow in great sheets while the others wore theirs like gloves on delicate fingers.

It was a cold sunny day today, so the snow stayed in place as pale sun sprayed light across the landscape. I drove through tunnels of luminescent white as the trees, weighed down by their beautiful burden, created an arch over my head.

I have atheist friends who would tell me that today was easily explained in scientific terms. The photons from the sun traveled to earth in eight minutes and easily passed through the cloudless cold sky. They struck the snow and were reflected, full spectrum, into my eyes where pigments were disturbed. These created electrical impulses that allowed me to see.

And the beauty? That's probably an artifact of an evolutionary process -- not to worry.

On days like today, I prefer the thoughts of Bishop Berkeley who wrote in the 18th century. He offered a simpler explanation than that of matter, photons, and senses. He said that all our experiences are ideas and that God supplies the ideas. The senses are just our explanation to ourselves.

I think God adds a necessary element to the appreciation of beauty and that's why, as I drove to work, I felt compelled say, "Baruch ata Adonoi ... Blessed are You oh Lord, Our God, Ruler of the Universe who gave me a beautiful drive this morning."

Salem author creates a buzz and publishers came calling - The Boston Globe

2008-01-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

Salem author creates a buzz and publishers came calling - The Boston Globe

Sadly, that says, "Salem" author not "Salemi" author. But the story highlights the keys to success in publishing -- self or otherwise.

The summary is that Brunonia Barry wrote a novel, published it herself (investing $50,000), worked to get it into stores, and then sold it for $2M along with another book. She is a classic example of an "overnight" success in publishing.

The key to her happy ending is that her book is, apparently, very good. It's the culmination of several years of work including extensive feedback and rewriting. But, at the end of it she had a great book. Here are comments from her agent and publisher:

"I read it overnight and loved it," Oliver said. "I called Sandy and said, 'I have to work with you. This book is amazing.' It has strong characters and an amazing twist at the end. I sent it to a few publishers. The phone started ringing."

Laurie Chittenden, executive editor of publisher William Morrow, was one of those who called. "It reminded me of why I love books - a good story, wonderful atmosphere, good characters, a real sophistication," she said.

While it's true that these folks may now be selling the book with these quotes, I think that these are the reactions you need to write a breakout book.

In fact, The Lace Reader had generated buzz on its own before it impressed the agent and publisher. Barry had sold it to a Swampscott bookstore and gotten this reaction from her public reading in the store:

"That generated incredible interest," Simpson said. "We had a handful of people a day coming in, asking if we had the book. At the appearance, we had about 40 people, which was a big crowd for an unknown author. We sold out in a blink - probably 80 to 100 books. We don't sell 80 to 100 books of Stephen King or Dennis Lehane."

Word spread. Several teachers read the book, and both Swampscott and Marblehead high schools added it to the literature curriculum.

As always, word-of-mouth sold this book faster than anything else.

There is an interesting counterpoint to this story. Ms. Barry also wrote books for a Young Adult series called Beacon Street Girls. Beacon Street Girls is a series of books conceived by a group of marketeers in Lexington. They are ostensibly written by someone called "Annie Bryant" but she doesn't exist. Instead the books are written for the marketing group and sold as a series.

The folks at Beacon Street Girls have obviously picked a market and decided to focus on it. They have a web presence, a collectible set of numbered books, and a variety of characters chosen to appeal to different types of girls. However, I don't think they'll succeed because I don't see the word-of-mouth kicking in. I bought a copy of Just Kidding (Beacon Street Girls #10) for my daughter.

She read half of it and put it down. No word-of-mouth there.

I think this shows, once again, that the book itself is the key to all book marketing. The book's ability to capture its audience and inspire them to tell others will be the true key to its success.

Writing without a Net

2008-01-11T17:32:00.000-08:00

I'm rewriting the Tucker mystery for reasons that I touched on in an earlier post. This time I'm taking the advice of some other writers and doing it without an outline. I'm just writing to see what will happen.

The experience is interesting, and I have to say, more fun. I'm also experiencing some of what people mean when they say that the characters "wrote themselves." For me, this means putting in details that I think up on the spot. For example, there is a new character in this book who is introduced like this:

We took the elevator to the fourth floor where it opened onto large golden letters that proclaimed “FBI” in the office lobby.Standing in front of the large golden letters was a large ugly man in a crew cut and a pinstripe suit.The guy looked a bouncer in an upscale gentleman’s club.He held a manilla folder in his left hand.

This is agent Meriweather and I knew some things about him as soon as I described him this way. I decided on the spot that I didn't like him and neither did Tucker. I decided that he would be obnoxious. I wondered if he'd play the role of the "skeptic" in this story.

Of course, I could have gone the other way. Agent Meriweather could have been as gentle as a lamb and in that case I would be defying expectations and creating a slightly deeper character. In both cases, I would have made a choice about him (mean or nice) and then had to stick with it. This all came from an extemporaneous decision about what he looked like.

The decisions continued later in the story in ways that could add to the plot later. Here is Tucker watching his friend Agent Bill Carter who is about to speak:

Bill gathered up the photos of Mary Acres and put them into a neat pile in front of him. He had a habit of engaging in meaningless physical activity when he was formulating an answer. Or bluffing in poker. I’d won a lot of money from him as he stacked his chips.

This piece about poker came upon me as I wrote. Now, it may be that Bill Carter is lying. This may just be a red herring. I may decide to use it later. But the fun part is that right now, I don't know. Lee Child talked about taking random clues from early in the book and using them to finish the book. I can see what he means.

Overall, I'm very happy with the results so far. I feel the story is fresher and more engaging. Let's see how it turns out.

Steelers fall to Terrible Motivation Job

2008-01-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

Normally, I don't write about motivation and visualization, etc. But it is certainly a necessary part of becoming a best selling author. Visualizing your success helps you make the right decisions and some (including me) believe that it causes the universe to support your efforts. Not to give it away, but this is the secret in the grand daddy of all success books Think and Grow Rich

However, I've been driven to comment on the worst use of visualization I've ever seen. It happened in the Pittsburgh Steeler's playoff game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Earlier this season the Steelers played the Jaguars. They were losing badly, made a comeback to tie, but then lost right at the end.

In preparation for this game their coach, Mike Tomlin, forced them to watch that loss over and over by having it piped into all the televisions in the stadium and workout rooms. He took the remotes so that they could not change the channel.

The result of this constant visualization? The Steelers were losing badly, made a comeback to take a one point lead, but then lost right at the end.

If you can get 50 people to visualize the same thing, you've harnessed a powerful force. Sadly for Mike Tomlin, he used that force to create a Steeler's loss that replicated the last one.

Happy to be writing fiction again

2008-01-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

Driven mad by a three-month binge of working on my technical book, I took a break and started the rewrite of Terminated.

The problems with Terminated were summed up by one of Jeff's friends. It was something to the effect of "If you can get through the first part it becomes a real page turner." This was backed up when I realized that I could cut the first 80 pages of the book and it read better.

Then there was the feedback from an agent, "A book about a depressed character in an obscure industry doesn't seem like it will sell well."

And the third problem, "Wendy is an idiot."

So I'm rewriting the book to fix the first half, give Tucker more life, and provide a better love interest.

I'm trying a new composition style with the new Terminated. I'm writing without a previously designed storyboard of scenes. Successful authors including Lee Child, Harlan Coban, and Stephen King, all prefer this method of composition.

I remember a panel discussion where one author said that he had taken Lee Child's advice and written a book without an outline. He said, "The book took three months longer to finish than it should have."

Lee Child said from the back of the room, "Yeah, but how did it sell?"

To which the author said, "Oh, shut up."

Obviously it had sold well.

What Makes a Winning Book?

2007-12-31T05:40:00.000-08:00

Spoiler Warning
I'll be giving away some plot points on this book.

A friend recently suggested that I read Plum Island by Nelson DeMille. He said it was very good and I trust his opinion so I read the 570 page, 176,000 word tome. The folks on Amazon also liked the book:

326 Reviews

5 star:		(146)
4 star:		(89)
3 star:		(32)
2 star:		(35)
1 star:		(24)

Given all this information, I wanted to see what it took to create a winning book.

The first thing I have to say is that I hated this book. I would have given it one star (apologies to my friend). I reserve this rating for books that I could not have finished. I finished this book largely out of a need to see what sells, and out of a stubborn pride that I wouldn't let his terrible prose defeat me. I mostly wanted to see why it sold, got recommended to me, and got such high ratings on Amazon.

Why did I hate the book? Simply put it was the prose. The guys writing gave me a headache. I think I might be sensitive to prose since I tend to think in the style of the writer that I'm reading -- I really let him in my head -- and that when I'm confronted with terrible prose I almost find it physically painful.

The prose is so evenly bad, that I can open to any page randomly and find some. Let's take a look at a description of a character in the book:

He had a slight accent, German probably, if the name was any indication. As I said, he was big -- fat, actually -- and he had white hair and a white Van Dyke beard and thick glasses. In fact he looked like Burl Ives, if you want the truth.

This description is full of things that make it difficult to see what the writer is talking about. He has not edited this. Here are some simple problems:

"German probably" -- what does that mean? Can one picture an accent that is probably German?
"big -- fat, actually" -- Why the description of big then?
"As I said" -- DeMille does this all throughout the book. It adds nothing. Why point out to me that you are repeating yourself?
"In fact, statement, if you want the truth." -- This sentence is 75% fluff with strange colloquial phrases in it. "In fact ... If you want the truth."

A narrator is not your buddy sitting in a bar telling the story as it comes into his head. The strange additions of "In fact", "As I said", "Anyway, blah blah" and my favorite, "Just kidding." all drag the reader, or at least me, out of the story. When I read this stuff I'm forced to edit it to understand it. I filtered the above down to this.

He was a fat man with a white Van Dyke beard and a slight German accent. He looked like Burl Ives.

This gives a very clear picture of the guy and also gets in some of the narrator's character. The connection to Burl Ives sets the age of the narrator and his view of the world. His willingness to call the guy fat also shows a certain irreverence. One might argue that the colloquialisms built the picture of John Corey as "just a regular guy." But they don't. Cliches and filler words don't add anything. The characterization comes from the metaphors that Corey chooses, his actions, and his dialog -- not his choice of filler words in his descriptions.

Despite the fact that the cover said that the book featured "mind-twisting suspense", DeMille had real problems creating any real suspense. I never felt worried about the main character or humanity in general because the writing obscured what he was trying to say.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can look at why this book sold well and was recommended to me. Some people might say, "Well the guy is a big name, so it sells." but that wouldn't explain the positive reviews an the recommendation. People really liked this book and I wanted to figure out why.

It's Easy to Read

I read this 574 page book in a couple of days. I'm not a fast reader so this was quite a feat. The Amazon Text Statistics show why:

Readability (learn more)

Compared with books in All Categories

Fog Index:

7.8

13% are easier

87% are harder

Flesch Index:

72.8

14% are easier

86% are harder

Flesch-Kincaid Index:

6.0

13% are easier

87% are harder

These stats are based on the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables per word. They shows that this book is easier to read than 85% of the books on the market. This jives with something Lee Child said -- he writes books for people who don't read. The key to a best selling book is to write one that a lot of people would read.

Large Theme, Good Story

Plum Island is a bio-weapon research facility. There is a good chance that the two people killed at the opening of the book were selling Ebola to terrorists. This kind of theme gets people's attention.

It turns out that this theme was a ruse and that the murder really happened because of buried pirate treasure from Captain Kidd (I kid you not ... get it? This is a joke that DeMille used a lot)

So the theme of bio-disaster gets people interested in the book and then the fun theme of pirate treasure keeps them there.

Good, Simple Characters

Despite his poor writing, DeMille does a good job of creating characters. I actually don't like the main character -- he seems to be a guy who thinks he's funny rather than a guy who is funny.

I love his female characters. They give the wisecracking main character a dose of his own medicine and he does not like it. For example, here's the 36D Beth making fun of his New York accent in a car:

... I rolled up my window and told Beth to do the same.

She did and said, apropos of nothing, "We're approaching toidy-toid and toid."

"I do not speak with that kind of an accent. I do not find that amusing."

"I hear ya."

It's a cute little scene and it shows DeMille's command of dialog. His dialog is quite good.

I have to share one other characterization of the main character's partner -- Dominic. In his past, the main character was a cop who got shot.

... Good old Dom. A guy I could count on. I still remember him standing over me as I lay bleeding in the street. He had a half-eaten donut in one hand and his piece in the other. He took another bite of the donut and said to me, "I'll get them, John. I swear to God. I'll get the bastards who killed you."

I remember informing him I wasn't dead, and he said he knew that, but I probably would be. He had tears in his eyes, which made me feel terrible, and he was trying to talk to me while chewing the donut, and I couldn't understand him, then the pounding started in my ears and I blacked out.

Anyway, the next call ...

What a nifty piece of writing and a great character description. I love the donut and the guy trying to talk around it while he's crying and swearing revenge. Notice DeMille's use of the run on sentence to build the feeling of everything happening at once.

Then he ruins it with "Anyway." All the book needed was some editing to be really great. It probably would still have come in at 100,000 words -- a respectable length for a thriller.

Sex

The main character has a lot of sex with a very nice woman. Everyone likes sex. It never hurts to put it into a book.

DeMille decides to have the nice woman killed by the bad guy, but ever there I saw something I didn't like. Instead of having the main character discover the body he has another character come to the house and tell him about the murder. What's sad is that DeMille had already foreshadowed the main character finding a terrible thing in the woman's house. It would have fit perfectly.

Snappy Dialog

DeMille writes very good dialog. In fact, this is his strength. The dialog keeps the book moving along and allows you to skim his descriptions and poor prose. I think it shows that dialog is king in popular fiction.

What I Learned

In the end, I learned quite a bit from this book. Stephen King has said that the story is the king in a book. You need to have a good story before you can have anything else. I think that this book proved that. Despite terrible writing it had a decent story (but not a great story) and that drove the book.

I also saw that you need big themes, good characters, and snappy dialog. Throw in a little sex and you're all set.

Corner Contest

2007-12-28T16:34:00.001-08:00

Here is my entry to a contest to write an opening to a story (100 words) that starts with the given first sentence "Things were going to be different in 2008."

Things were going to be different in 2008. For one thing, Remy would be dead.

He hummed as he admired his noose. It had seven turns, just as he was taught in Cub Scouts. The other end of the rope ran over the beams in the old cabin and was tied to the foot of the wood burning stove. Plenty of ballast.

Remy heard a car door slam in the driveway and climbed onto the rickety television table. He put the noose around his neck and got ready to kick the table out as soon as his witnesses arrived.

Won Fantasy Football Today

2007-12-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

Today I won one of my Fantasy Football Leagues. Yay!

The experience reminded me of what it was like to be published and see my book in Barnes and Noble. My wife and I walked into Barnes and Noble and looked for my last name. There was my book, Leading After a Layoff sitting on the shelf face out. The conversation went something like this.

"There's your book!" said my wife.

"Wow. You're right. There it is," I said.

"That's so cool. You're a published author, honey."

"Yup."

We looked at the book for a moment.

"You want to get a cup of coffee?" I asked.

"Sure!"

And that was it. Just like winning the Fantasy Football League it showed me how fleeting it is to achieve goals. You work towards them, achieve them, and then get coffee.

I always think of my reaction to getting published when I hear other people pining for it. The getting published is nice. But it's only a momentary glimpse of glory. Then you're back in the grind, so you had better enjoy the grind.

What is Talent?

2007-12-22T12:38:00.000-08:00

Stephen King in his book On Writing had a great description of talent:

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head.

This is an idea that I've used myself to figure out what I want to do, and that I use when I hire others. For example, when I was a customer support manager I would ask people to tell me about a time they had great service People who were naturally drawn to service would watch it in others and think about it. Others wouldn't give it a second thought.

I also used this idea when I gave up chess and switched to writing. Chess was something that interested me, but that I didn't really think about. On the other hand, I would spend a lot of time writing the perfect email, or narrating my life to myself in my head. Once I noticed that I had writing as a talent, I switched and have never been happier.

BTW. When you click on the link above you see Stephen King's book On Writing. But below it you'll see On Writing Well This is the first non-fiction book I ever bought. Probably another hint that I should have focused on being a writer.

Man hit by truck on I-495 dies - Framingham, MA - The MetroWest Daily News

2007-12-20T03:10:00.000-08:00

Man hit by truck on I-495 dies - Framingham, MA - The MetroWest Daily News

As ghoulish as it is, this is a great way to start a mystery novel. Paul Byrnes was in the center lane of Rt495 when he was hit by a tractor trailer and killed.

Nobody knows why he was crossing 495 and there is the mystery.

Joseph Conrad wrote about a similar experience when he wrote The Secret Agent. He saw an item in the newspaper about an explosion at the Greenwich observatory and it inspired him to write the book.

Another writer, sadly whose name escapes me, tells the story of reading the paper and seeing a small story and telling his wife, "That would be a best selling book." She didn't have time to write it, neither did he, so the matter dropped. The news item was "Fishing Boat Andrea Gale Lost at Sea."

Fiction: Feedback

2007-12-13T02:48:00.000-08:00

Here is a story I wrote called Feedback. It features the main character on my novel, which is now under reconstruction. At this point, it serves as a character sketch for Tucker rather than something I'll try to publish:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhbph34w_46c6cgrwhr

Enjoy!

Ray

Funniest Japanese Instructions Ever

2007-12-12T16:31:00.000-08:00

We recently bought a dance pad for my daughter. Apparently the "technical writers" for this Japanese product simply used a computer to translate their instructions to English. Here is the final section of the funniest instructions I have ever read.

But first, here is the product title on Amazon:

PS3 (Playstation 3) Dance Dance Revolution Ultra Sensitive Master Super Deluxe Dance Pad

Now the last section of the instructions (they are all like this.)

V, matters needing attention
do not be please in the high temperature, moist and under the multi-dust environment to use.
Please not will dancemat to put the place which expose to the sun in the solar storm.
guarded against uses the non-neutral solvent to clean this.
the child, the old person and bodily illness carry on the game, avoids the period of revolution excessively begin long.
please do not have to make an effort to twist, pulls the electric cable line, in order to avoid the ties damage.

Wow. I have never seen anything like this. What's amazing is that I can almost understand the warnings.

I think Solar Storms should be avoided at all costs.

The Art of the Pitch

2007-12-12T04:37:00.000-08:00

The "Pitch" is the first thing that any agent, publisher, or eventual reader is going to hear about your book. It is a sentence or three (no more) that will get them interested in learning more about the story. For example here's a shot at Jaws:

When a Great White Shark terrorizes a the Nantucket community of Amity the hydrophobic chief of police swears to kill it.

Writers absolutely need to be able to pitch their story in one or two sentences. You don't get an entire elevator ride with an agent. You get a few seconds in a hallway.

With that background, here is a list called The Blacklist which contains the most talked about movies in Hollywood at the moment. Each movie has it's pitch and the list is useful for seeing what you think of the pitches and how to write good ones.

Here's the pitch from one movie that caught my eye:

BALTIMORE by Chris Terrio & Jesse Lichtenstein

“Only twice in history has a city in the continental United States been attacked by a foreign enemy. The second time was September 11, 2001. The first was August 24, 1814. This is that true story.”

I'm not certain why, but I want to see this movie. It deals with a war that we have largely forgotten (1812) and touches on a time when our country was actually at risk (rather than simply thinking it is as it does today.)

Enjoy the Blacklist!

Bumper Sticker I Should Write

2007-12-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

George Bush
He's no fun since he stopped drinking

What's in a name?

2007-12-08T06:15:00.000-08:00

It's funny how veins of ideas bump into us. We get exposed to an idea, think about it, and then see it everywhere. It's happening to me with names.

This vein started with my conversation with Lee Child about his name. We talked about why he chose it and the marketing implications of it. Naturally this led to the name Salemi which is not a particularly good marketing name, being towards the middle-end of the alphabet, hard to spell, and easily confused with a luncheon meat. It also causes problems when combined with Ray, so that many people think that my name is Race Alemi.

The name has popped up again in a book I'm reading called Apex Hides the Hurt. It's a story about a guy who names products, and in this case a town, for a living.

And this has all culminated in my struggle to rename Tucker, the protagonist and narrator in my novel. The problem is that Tucker, despite being a narrator, is currently a poorly sketched character.

It turns out, to my horror, that Tucker is poorly sketched because he's actually me. Many of my early readers didn't think he was poorly sketched because they simply inserted me. As a result of unconsciously making him myself I don't have much to say about him. And, frankly, he's boring. Real people make poor fictional characters.

This comes back to his name. It's currently Tucker. No last name, or first name. I think I had originally decided that Tucker was his last name and that he had some terribly obscure first name. But it could go the other way. The problem was that I didn't want to get to know Tucker to closely. Tucker O'Brien is a different person than Aloysius Tucker and I didn't want to think about his back story that closely.

Though, now that I read it, Aloysius Tucker has some real possibilities. Hmmm...

Found an Old Friend

2007-12-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

I've recently been going through a book purge. You should see it reflected in my LibraryThing component at the right. I got rid of a lot of books and the experience was somewhat traumatic for me. I love having books and I hate losing them, but I had run out of room and if I wanted to buy new books I was going to have to get rid of many books that I knew I would never read again.

My biggest fear in losing a book is that one day, for one moment, I'll say "I think I have a book that talks about _______." But I had to admit to myself that my manic "business learning" phase was over and that each book, while it had served its purpose in the moment would never see that purpose again.

On the other hand, I bought a new old book. The Bill James Abstract from 1987. This book was an old friend and I have no idea how I lost it. I had moved out of my parents house in 1987, so its possible that I had thrown the book out in a purge associated with a move. Or perhaps the book had been damaged somehow. At any rate, I was very happy to find my old friend again and share some time with him.

The Bill James Abstracts were a labor of love written by the man who almost single handedly created the science of sabermetrics -- the statistical study of baseball. Bill James wrote in a time when good old baseball men ruled the earth. People back then thought that batting average actually meant something. They thought that bunting was good and they would decide an a players ability based on his face, or his build. Bill James was the first person to claim that you could really measure a player's contributions to a team and accurately predict his future. Bill James works for the Red Sox now.

The Abstract is printed on cheap paper that is yellowing today. It has typos and grammatical errors. It is on 8.5x11 inch paper and it is crammed with information about teams in 1986. It breaks down the Roger Clemens vs. Don Mattingly MVP controversy. Clemens won and James showed that he had a net positive effect of 86 runs on the Sox vs. Mattingly's 76.

James dedicates the book to the "sales force of Ballentine Books".

This was one of the last Abstracts. James finally got exhausted and quit writing them. But I remember reading it. I remember feeling that a whole world of new knowledge had been opened up for me and I remember the quirky writing and fun, direct prose. Browsing through the pages brings me back to a simpler pre-family, pre-gray-hair time.

It's nice to have it back in my library.

Helicopter Parenting Turns Deadly

2007-12-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

Helicopter Parenting -- They Hover

Now this is a great topic for a crime story.

I guess I'm not a novelist

2007-12-03T03:53:00.000-08:00

I just put down John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist. I guess I'm just not a novelist yet. It seemed that Gardner was writing the book for someone who's goal in life is to be a starving artist.

Of course, most of what he says is right on the money and very good. I should finish it some day. But not today. My goal is not to write books that cause me or others to recognize a tremendous artist at work. My goal is to write books for some poor guy who just found out he has to fly to California. I want him to walk into the book store in Logan Airport in the C terminal (next to the Legal Seafoods) and say, "Oh good. There's a new Ray Daniel book. This flight won't be so bad."

To my mind there is some artistry in creating that kind of story. It's just not the type that Gardner seems to approve of.

Why book tours are passé | csmonitor.com

2007-12-01T04:21:00.000-08:00

Why book tours are passé | csmonitor.com

A couple of posts ago, I raved about the book Smonk. In addition to my post here I also took the book to some reader friends of mine and said, "Just read the first paragraph."

There is a book called Plum Island on my reading list. It's there because one of my reader friends said, "Read this book. You will absolutely like it."

These are the sorts of things that friends do, and it's the sort of thing that we need to achieve as authors. As much as we'd like to think that a book tour will drive sales, the truth is that book tours can only drive bookish people to give your book a try. Then you rely on them to be "sneezers" (to quote Unleashing the Idea Virus) or "mavens" (to quote The Tipping Point) and to drive book sales to their less bookish friends.

The key, thankfully in my opinion, is that your book needs to be so good that the sneezers will sneeze. And that is in your control as an author.

Still, it is interesting to see other ways that book publishers are trying to get the word out.

Quote from Papelbon that relates to a writing career

2007-11-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

Today Jonathan Papelbon (great Red Sox closer) was asked what he pictured in his future when he was in the minor leagues.

INTERVIEWER: Did you say to yourself, 'It would be great if I could play one day in the bigs.' ?

PAPELBON: No. Ever since high school I planned to be a Hall of Famer.

Papelbon exhibits the attitude I think you need to be a successful writer. Many writers focus on being published. But having been published, and not sold many books, I can tell you that this is a false goal.

The real goal is, "I want to become a multi-millionaire as a result of my writing." As audacious as this goal is, it will drive you to do things you wouldn't do if you just wanted to be published. These include writing marketable books rather than artsy books, finding an agent who believes you can get there, and envisioning a time when your name is above the title of your books.

Great Book: Smonk

2007-11-29T04:14:00.000-08:00

I got turned onto Smonk by Tom Franklin when Dennis LeHane said that Franklin "writes like an archangel on a crank binge." I spent the next year or so looking for the book and finally found it in the Natick Library.

It's a western with some of the best characters I've ever read and some amazing writing. Here's an excerpt about the whore Evavangaline who looks so much like a boy that she keeps attracting the wrong kind of clients. She has just killed two men in a night of drunken excess on a steamboat:

On board the steamboat came the further news of the doctor's head shot half off in his bed, his jimmied-out molar. Bad luck for Evavangeline in that he had not only been the ships physician but the captain's younger brother. More bad luck in that the pervert she'd knifed behind the barrels had been the ship's cook as well as the captain's older brother.

She ought never drink tequila.

The book rocks through the story of Smonk and Evavangaline and is one of the few books that I'll pick up and read while waiting for a red light in my car. It just sits there beckoning.

Holocaust survivor from Tel Aviv, rescuer from Poland, reunited | Jerusalem Post

2007-11-25T06:23:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been done. But I imagine there must be a novel in this story somewhere. It would be a matter of finding the right angle. The hidden woman in this case would get to sneak into the woods on Sunday morning when everyone was in Church to see her husband. I wonder what kind of story that could create?

Holocaust survivor from Tel Aviv, rescuer from Poland, reunited | Jerusalem Post

What's in a Word?

2007-11-25T05:53:00.000-08:00

I'm now reading John Gardner's book On Becoming a Novelist. In the first chapter Gardner names things he looks for in someone who asks, "Do I have what it takes to be a novelist."

The first thing he mentions is a appreciation for language and word usage. This caught my eye because, while I've always noticed that about writers, this is the first time I saw it called out.

He's talking about whether the person is interested in shades of meaning. For example, "He shouted" is different than "He yelled" but how? If the two seem exactly the same to someone or if they can see there is some difference, but don't care, then it's hard to become a novelist.

For me it goes like this: "I went to the ballgame and shouted when Manny hit a homerun. I spent the rest of the time yelling at Julio Lugo."

In Stephen King's book On Writing he talks about a conversation he had with Amy Tam about the questions people never ask at author events. She said, "They never ask about the langauge." He complained that people who write popular fiction never get the credit for language that literary authors do. I have to agree.

Life's little choices

2007-11-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

My fit wife said, "Would you like to come for a walk with me?"

And I said, "I'd love to, but I need to go to the grocery story to buy pie."

And hence, we see how life's little choices add up to a certain body shape.

Of course, it's easy to beat myself up for this one. But I do make some good choices. Given the choice between TV and writing I tend to write. Given the choice between TV and reading I tend to read.

So I get a lot of writing done and a lot of reading.

Of course, the story had a happy ending. When I got back from the store she hadn't gone for her walk yet, so I got both pie and a walk.

There must be some lesson there.

All I know is, I like pie.

More people want to write a book...

2007-11-20T12:51:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting quote in Sara Weinman's Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: Smatterings.

"More people want to write a book than to read a book..." -- HarperCollins's Victoria Barnsley

The question is not so much whether the quote is true as to whether it resonates. It seems to contain a germ of something true. I think that the publishing industry feels itself to be under siege and dropping book sales aren't helping. However I see several trends:

The publishing industry is in flux as the implications of a digital world slowly work themselves through the business models. Amazon has just announced a digital reader, what does that mean for book stores and publishing? Nobody knows. Even if the ebook doesn't make it, the iPhone could easily become the killer in this department.
Authors are everywhere. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who wants to sell a manuscript (or so it seems from someone who wants to sell a manuscript.) The average author make $8,000 a year.
But it seems that publishing people are also under financial stress. There is a new Facebook group called "I work in publishing and I'm underpaid." The lack of pay tells me that book people (and authors) work for reasons other than money. There is, for some reason, glamor associated with being in publishing. I think that people in publishing like being part of an industry that can deliver The DaVinci Code or Harry Potter. I think there is something spiritual in the written word and publishing people want to be part of that process so badly that they are willing to put up with less pay.

Overall, I think we will see publishing continue to be in crisis for the next twenty years. Perhaps bookstores will fade out and be replaced by an iTunes distribution model. Perhaps they will become another class of "Third places" where people go to congregate.

But wherever the industry goes, I am am confident that the written word will continue to be a significant part of society. It fills a role that squawk radio, podcasts, and the web never will and I'm proud to be part of that process.

One of my favorite Short Stories

2007-11-18T09:21:00.000-08:00

Short Stories: They're Made out of Meat by Terry Bisson

Rich, Crappy Authors

2007-11-17T05:35:00.000-08:00

I think it's fashionable among aspiring authors (yours truly included) to take an author who has become everything we wish we could be (rich, famous, read by millions) and say, "He sucks."

The impulse is understandable. It strokes our egos to rail against the inherent unfairness of the world. It allows us to say that our lack of success is due to the fact the world sucks and not that we suck.

It is, I've realized, the litany of losers.

It's true that many tremendously successful authors are not great writers. James Patterson comes to mind. So does David Balducci. Their word choice is clunky. Their descriptions are flaccid. They will actually write things like, "I got into the sedan and it was fairly comfortable." Gaak!

But they are rich, they are famous, and people keep buying their books. Are people idiots? No. Do people have no choices? No. Why do people buy their books? Because people like their books. It's not a complicated process.

The question is not, "Why are people buying their books?", but, "Why are agents, editors, and publishers not buying my book?" Having spent some time with agents and published authors last week, I came to realize something.

These people really do know what they're doing.

Publishing is a rough, competitive, difficult, subjective, turbulent business. The people who survive in it have beaten out, literally, thousands of wanna-be's. So when these people say, "I'll pass" they are giving me important information.

This leads to a more powerful question when we read a rich author, "What are these guys doing right?" Maybe the prose is clunky. Maybe the descriptions are flaccid. Maybe the later work of these guys gets no editing at all because publishers are just throwing it out there for a fast buck.

But the truth is people are buying their books and people continue to buy the books.

A friend recently loaned me The Winner. I read three chapters and put it down.

It's time to ask him if I can borrow it back.

Another Lee Child Thought

2007-11-15T05:33:00.000-08:00

Lee Child told me that a book needed to have the widest possible appeal, both geographically and stylistically. But, I had a question. I told Lee that my marketing experience said that you needed to market to a niche first because you couldn't market to the whole world.

Lee's answer was that the book market is like a donut. The center of the donut, the niche, is what I'll call book people. These are writers, editors, and voracious readers. They need to like your book and then their influence will spread to those who read one or two books a year. Then, those people need to like your book.

I realized that I've been applying this approach to my digital verification book. Though the book is written for novices, I have a lot of core verification people giving feedback on it. They need to like the book first, then they'll recommend it to people who are new to verification.

It's good to see that I was accidentally on track.

Sitting at the Knee of Lee Child

2007-11-11T03:01:00.000-08:00

I got a chance yesterday to spend a few minutes with Lee Child and ask him some specific questions about his career.

I like Lee Child because he made a career decision to become a famous author. Then he put a plan in place to make that happen. This amazed me, given the turbulent world of publishing. How could someone make plan to make a living in an industry where the average writer makes *$8000 a year.

Basically, he took away all the obstacles he could think of and made his creative choices for the purposes of creating best sellers. A sampling in no particular order.

His character, Jack Reacher, is a man with no place. His stories can be set anywhere. Novels that are set in a specific local are unlikely to break out into the mainstream.
He writes in short crisp sentences with the intention of allowing people who don't read to enjoy his books. He recognizes that the average person reads 1-3 books a year. He said that one complement he gets a lot is, "I loved your book. I finished it."
He focuses on one character, Jack Reacher. As he says, "People don't come into the store looking for the next Lee Child book. They come in looking for the next Jack Reacher book."
He made Reacher a loaner and a drifter. So the books don't get tied to any locale.
Reacher was also a man's man hero in at time when all mystery heroes were tortured, angry men. Child figured he didn't want to compete with what was already out there.

Finally, Lee Child can just flat out write. He's crisp and clean and his plotting grabs you immediately. Here's the opening of his book The Hard Way:

Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got and and drove away. That was all.

But it was enough.

Lee Child gets you in one paragraph. This brings home the most important point about being a famous writer: be a good one.

Into the Maelstrom

2007-11-10T04:44:00.000-08:00

I spent yesterday at the first day of the New England Crimebake. The Crimebake is a conference for mystery writers co-sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, two support groups for mystery writers.

And I do mean support groups. Because the conference has brought home to me that I must be crazy for diving into the Mystery Writing Business. The Crimebake attracts hundreds of nice, wonderful people whom I enjoy spending time with. (with whom I enjoy spending time is the kind of grammer up with which I will not put.)

They are very nice, very wonderful, competitors and they are everywhere. As I walk around the conference I realize that we "book people" live in a tremendously turbulent and unpredictable world. It actually makes high-tech look like salt mining by comparison.

Agents, publishers, writers, and book stores all struggle with the fact that there is just so much competition. There are hundreds of manuscripts, dozens of agents, more dozens of publishers, and finally a dwindling number of book stores. Together, we all churn about trying to find the right combination to create the next Harry Potter, DaVinci Code or, from a writer perspective Lee Child(who is a wonderful writer and the guest of honor.)

I once picked up a nice piece of advice for writers. "If there is any way you could be discouraged from this path then be discouraged now and quit. Only do this if you have to."

Or, in my case, "Don't quit your day job."

I'll be adding postings from the conference as the day progresses.

Just getting better

2007-11-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

I'm reading The Education of a Coach by Halberstam. It's an excellent biography of Bill Belichick and it lends background to what we've all watched regarding the Patriots over the years.

We all wondered over the years why the Patriots won by so few points. They won both of the first two Superbowls by 3-points each. Halberstam answers that question. It didn't have to do with coaching style or any sort of master plan. It was simply that the Patriots were not that good -- especially that 2001 team.

The book highlights something I find refreshing in an age of instant stardom. It's that the Patriots have always had a plan to improve. They've hired players within that plan and, when they could, they hired slightly better ones. The result was the snowball effect that we see today. The Patriots have become a hated juggernaut by adding the final few pieces to the puzzle.

It's interesting to see the media's reaction to a team that rose slowly through solid execution of a plan. First they claimed that there must be cheating involved, and now they've devolved into simply calling the Patriots a hated team. We live in a culture that can't understand two things:

Our results are the consequences of our preparation and ability.
One can improve slowly and get compounded interest type results to become great at something.

Sadly, these are two things that we need our children to understand. So I'm glad there's a book like Halberstam's to remind us of basic truths.

Of Karma, Baseball, and Turbulance

2007-11-04T12:53:00.001-08:00

I took personal credit this year for the Red Sox sweeping the Colorado Rockies. My reasoning? I was out of town on Sunday night, and Boston teams always win their championships when I'm out of town. It happened with the Pats and it happened with the Sox in 2004.

I shared this theory with one of my customers and he told me that I was wrong. He said the real reason that the Sox won was that he had sat in his lucky chair for the entire series. He was sure that this was the reason they won. In fact, I'm willing to bet that there are thousands of people across the country who are taking credit for the Sox winning the world series due to lucky rabbit's feet, special socks, or a diet of nothing but ice cream for the entire playoffs.

All of this is an attempt to control lives that we've connected to the most unpredictable of natural phenomena. Turbulence. Because turbulence is a completely unpredictable scientific phenomenon.

The reason we can't predict turbulent behavior is because tiny, even microscopic, changes to the environment creates dramatically different results. Consider the knuckleball, a pitch that lives on turbulence:

The knuckleball works because it lives in a turbulent space where very small differences in speed, breezes, and rotation results in dramatic changes to the way the air catches the seams and moves the ball.

The key is speed. If you throw a knuckleball too slowly, it won't knuckle even if it isn't spinning. This is because the wind catches all the seams evenly. If you throw the ball too fast it won't knuckle because the wind passes over all the seams evenly. But, if you throw it just right, the wind will catch on some seams and pass over others. Nobody knows which seams will catch and so the ball randomly gets hit with unpredictable forces. These forces make it move unpredictably.

So back to baseball and karma. Why do we believe that our lucky socks won the game? Because we know that the result of a baseball game is a matter of turbulence. The smallest differences can have huge results. Just ask that poor bastard Steve Bartman.

This problem doesn't exist in football. Recently the New England Patriots beat the Washington Redskins by the score of 52-7. Nobody doubts that if the Patriots played the Redskins again the next week that they would beat them again just as soundly.

Contrast that to baseball where the Red Sox beat the Rockies 13-1 on the first night of the World Series. While most people were unimpressed by the Rockies, nobody expected that the 13-1 win made the second game a sure win. In fact the Red Sox won the second game by the score 2-1.

And here's where the lucky chairs, etc come into the game. When we tie ourselves to a baseball team we buckle in to ride knuckleball through the season. We have no control over what will happen game to game and we have no way of predicting what will happen. In an attempt to control our lives we turn to superstition to give us something to do.

Karma is all we have left when the rest is left to chance.

Recent Readings

2007-11-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

There's nothing that will get you charged up faster about writing books than reading great books. I just finished two outstanding books this week. Outstanding in the sense that they are mind expanding. Once you read them, you don't look at the world in quite the same way.

Both books talk about dramatic changes in the world.

The first is an enormous book called The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. This is the middle book of an enormous series called The Baroque Cycle. These books chronicle the tremendous changes that took place in the world in the 1650-1720 period when the west discovered science and commerce. This book had amazing geographic scope, starting on the Western edge of Africa and traveling East until the character winds up in London.

To be honest the first was a very will produced audio book called World War Z It's the story of what happens when the world is overrun by living dead zombies bent on devouring the brains of the living.

Amazingly enough, these books both resonated in the same way for me. They talked about a world going through profound changes in the way it viewed itself and in the way people viewed their relationship to the world and the universe.

Both books are lessons in how you address such sweeping subjects in a story. In short, think about people. The Confusion chronicles the exploits of a handful characters as they make their way through the world on the high seas and in the courts of France under Louise.

World War Z is an oral history where individuals tell stories of how they survived the onslaught of the zombies.

In both cases, my connect to the people connected me to the world, and both book changed the way I look at the world today.

It's a pretty tall order, but both books pulled it off.

Media myths about the Jena 6 | csmonitor.com

2007-10-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

I was reading the newspaper this morning when I caught this story in the op-ed section of the Christian Science Monitor:

Media myths about the Jena 6 | csmonitor.com

The story starts with the phrase:

By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they've all heard the story of the "Jena 6." White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics.

There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong.

There was just one other problem. I had never heard of the Jena 6. I asked my son if he had heard of them and he said he had. He also told me his source. "Facebook, Baby," he said.

I don't watch the news. I don't listen to NPR. I don't read the "big feet" newspapers (Globe, Times, WSJ, etc.) I barely read the local paper. So when I miss a "major" story like this I feel a slight twinge of guilt based on having been raised to think that a good citizen is well informed.

But, as is usually the case my guilt passed when I read that all these major media outlets ignored the real facts of the Jena 6 in their quest to deliver a juicy story and once again I was vindicated in my choice to spend my time elsewhere.

It's true that this was an 0p-ed piece, and its true that the author is an editor of the local newspaper. So perhaps he has his own agenda. But the major news outlets have a long history of ignoring the facts in order to tell a fun "story."

My favorite example is an old one where it was reported that George Bush #1 was amazed by the technology of a grocery story checkout machine. The WSJ, Times, & Co. loved this story because it demonstrated that George Bush was disconnected from the lives of real people. The only problem was that George Bush was at a grocery story technological fair and the checkout machine was, indeed, revolutionary. It had not been deployed anywhere yet. The major newspapers ignored this fact because their own story was just so much fun.

Of course, this got me thinking of a mystery plot. Would a reporter kill to keep the facts of his juicy story secret? Given the low regard for facts in the media today -- I doubt it. But still there may be a plot in there somewhere. Perhaps revenge for a story badly told? That might be a decent story to tell.

Worried about not being worried

2007-10-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I'm not worried about the Colorado Rockies.

This worries me.

Baseball is a game of karma and weirdness and surprises. Especially surprises.

The Rockies are a member of the AAAA National League. They went on a weird ass streak of winning 21 of 22 games to get where they are. Then they were forced to sit for eight days. And while I don't believe in momentum in baseball, I am very happy that they had to sit. I can't explain it. That's just the way it is.

Their starting pitcher tonight has an ERA of over 4.5. They are facing our killer starter, Beckett. They are in a hostile ballpark. They shouldn't win. I don't expect them to win.

So I am not worried about them.

But I am worried they'll win.

A Cathartic Moment in the Church of Baseball

2007-10-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

I've always said that baseball is like church. We stand up at the same time, we sit down at the same time, and we sing all the right songs at all the right moments.

Well I had what can only be described as a cathartic experience in Fenway Park. It was the seventh inning of the seventh game against Cleveland and I was in the bleachers (10 rows in front of the letter 'O' in Dunkin Donuts.) I hadn't realized it, but my tension was building as the Red Sox nursed a 3-2 lead.

Then Kenny Lofton hit a short fly to left field.

"That's Manny's ball," I muttered as I watched Julio Lugo run out to left from the shortstop position.

"That's Manny's ball!" I said. Manny was giving way to Lugo who was calling him off. The shortstop never calls the outfield off on that play. It's a much easier play for the outfielder.

Now remember. I think Julio Lugo is an idiot. I've watched him make stupid plays all year long such as getting thrown out for the final while trying to steal third for no reason. I've watched him get picked off first with the game on the line. I've seen him trot to first on an inning ending double play when the field bobbled the ball and he would have been safe. And the thing is, when the pressure is on Lugo gets stupider and stupider. And while I can forgive errors of commission, I hate avoidable stupidity on the part of a professional baseball player.

Each time Lugo would make a stupid error I'd get mad. But now he finally broke the camel's back.

Lugo ran out from short stop. Called off Manny who had an easy play on the ball, and tried to make a running overhead catch on a ball that was fading away from it. He dropped it, and all the tension that had quietly been building in my exploded.

I jumped to my feet and yelled "G*DAMN F**KING, LUGO!"

"YOU F**KING MORON!"

"THAT'S MANNY'S F**KING BALL YOU F*CKING PIECE OF SH*T! YOU F*CKING IDIOT!"

"G*DAMN IT! F**KING LUGO!"

"I'VE ALWAYS F*KING HATED THAT F*KING ASSH***!"

I screamed myself hoarse. My son next to me thought, "uh oh he's lost it."

But here is the beauty of the Church of Baseball. Because, unlike regular church where my outburst would have gotten me put me away, Fenway Park blissfully swallowed my rage and combined it with the rage, despair, and disgust being poured out by 37,000 of the other faithful.

In short, it was too loud in Fenway for anyone to notice one guy having a tizzy fit. The only person who even noticed my explosion was my son. And he thought it was funny.

Ahhh ... the Church of Baseball. Sweet Mother of Catharsis.

Shut up!

2007-10-22T04:27:00.000-07:00

I have a simple message for all those morons at baseball games who take it upon themselves to make sure the crowd is standing.

Shut the $(*& up and watch the game!

I've been going to baseball games for 20 years. I know when to stand. I know when to sit. To make matters worse, the idiot at my game was sitting in a section of season ticket holders who had been displaced to the bleachers. Everyone in his section has been going to games for 20 years.

Just shut up and sit down, meat!

Home Runs, Singles and Plato

2007-10-19T16:43:00.001-07:00

Manny Ramiriez hit a ball off the top of the wall at Jacobs field in Game 5 of the '07 ACLS. This was, in fact, a home run, but the umpires wrongly called it a single because it bounced back onto the field. I happened to be listening to lectures on Plato that day, and the two incidents connected for me. Manny was robbed of a home run because the umpires or the people who made the ground rules at the Jake didn't understand Plato. Thus, they wound up in a world of logical inconsistency and madness.

Plato believed that there are two worlds. An ideal world of forms where squares are perfectly square and made of infinitely thin lines and our real world where you can never draw a perfect square and all lines have thickness. The people who wrote the baseball rulebook understood their Plato and strove to create a rulebook that could survive Platonic scrutiny. Here is the official definition of a baseball playing field as it pertains to the wall:

FAIR TERRITORY is that part of the playing field within, and including the first base and third base lines, from home base to the bottom of the playing field fence and perpendicularly upwards. All foul lines are in fair territory.

Notice that the rule writers clearly excluded the thickness of the wall from the definition of the playing field. This was because they were trying to make the definition match the Platonic idea of a baseball field as closely as possible. Because of this rule, a ball that lands on top of the wall has left the field because it has passed the plane that runs perpendicularly from the base of the fence to Heaven.

The groundrule writers at the Jake -- being part of the ignorant Hoi Polloi corrupted the beauty of the official definition with this ground rule that pertains to a yellow line that is drawn across the top of the wall at Jacob's field. You can see the play here by clicking on the link called "Manny's long RBI single".

Here's the offending ground rule:

Fair batted ball that travels over the yellow line on top of the outfield wall (on the fly): HOME RUN.

What does "over the yellow line" mean? Nobody knows because the yellow line has width. And this caused the bad call for Manny. The ball hit the top of the wall, which is a home run in a normal ballpark, and bounced back.

Now, you may be saying, "Well Ray, you're just pissed off because Manny lost a home run." And sure. I am. But that's not all. The bad rule that forgot about Plato caused inconsistent calls. Because Kenny Lofton hit a home run that bounced on the top of the wall and into the crowd. You can see it here by clicking on "Lofton's two run homer."

In this case the ball hit the top of the wall and bounced out. But, if the top of the wall is in the park then the ball landed in the park and bounced out. Thus it should have been a ground rule double, not a home run.

The folks at the Jake should embrace Plato and try to fulfill the platonic ideal of a ball park. That is the only way they can avoid more embarrassment in the future.

As if the bugs weren't enough.

Why is Sex Fun?

2007-10-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

It's funny how information from disparate sources can make us aware of assumptions we didn't know we were making. Take human sexuality for example.

In his great little book Why is Sex Fun? Jared Diamond talks about the evolution of human sexuality. He asks questions like "Why do we do it in private?" and "Why is it that humans don't know when women are fertile."

The second question is especially puzzling because other primates know exactly when the females are fertile and nobody wastes time having a lot of unneeded sex. But, for some reason, human females who kept it hidden fared better than ones who didn't and now we have a lot of unwanted pregnancies (ala Tom Brady) because nobody knows what's really going on.

The theory put forth in the book is that women who showed they were fertile would be abandoned by their males when they weren't fertile and would have trouble raising children. The idea is that they keep the men guessing and close by. Men who spend energy raising another man's children don't get into the next round of the gene pool. But, as we'll see this thinking has a hidden bias.

Now cut to The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. In the book Stephenson has a short set of scenes that take place in a culture run by women. In this culture women sleep with any men that they want to and the men, not knowing whose kids are whose, support the entire community. Land is passed down through the women because this is the only sure way of knowing lineage.

This passage highlights the paradigm that caused problems for Jared Diamond's theory about men hanging around to keep other men away from their women. That theory assumes a proprietary relationship between the man and woman. It also assumes the woman attaches herself to a single man for support.

But what if early humans had this "lots of sex for everyone" approach to sexuality (which, by the way is employed by our nearest relatives -- the chimpanzees?) This would explain a lot about our current state of sexuality. For example:

Men naturally want to sleep with almost any woman they meet. Don't deny it! You know it's true. This urge to sleep around makes little sense in a monogamous culture but fits in perfectly with the "lots of sex" culture.
In this culture a woman who let the father of her children be known would be at a disadvantage and wouldn't benefit from the communal support. This explains the hidden fertility.
The oldest profession in the world is alive and well despite hundreds or thousands of years of opposition. Perhaps this transaction has a deeper basis. In the "lots of sex" culture, one could easily see women trading sex for a nice tasty piece of buffalo.

So then, what went wrong? Why didn't Stephenson's females-rule culture take over the world? I think that the the problem started, like so many human problems, with agriculture. When people started settling down and owning land then men (being larger) took over and started gathering wealth. They wanted to raise only their sons and pass the land to only their sons, so monogamy became the rule and as a result we have thousands of years of taboos -- both religious and social -- keeping people from doing what would come naturally.

Which brings us full circle to Jared Diamond's theories about human sexuality. He obviously views the world from a paradigm of "men with harems" and as a result a perfectly reasonable alternative explanation got overlooked.

the girl with violets in her lap - In memoriam

2007-10-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

My Aunt Juanita died earlier this year. She was a teacher at Boston Latin School (actually one of the two women who were the first female teachers at the school.) One of her students wrote a beautiful memorial.

the girl with violets in her lap - In memoriam

Trolling for Inspiration

2007-10-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

I've started work on the second Tucker mystery. "Started Work" is a vague concept however.

My stories come into focus slowly. First there is one scene. Then perhaps a character. Then a theme or another scene. Then I watch something on TV and say, "Ooh. That's a cool idea. It could fit here. Then I throw away a scene. Then I add another."

The effect is that of a creative snowball. I keep accumulating ideas until, suddenly, a story appears that I feel compelled to tell.

So what do I mean when I say I've "started" the next book? It means that I've got a scene in my head (that might be tossed later) and have started acreting ideas. After only two years, I should have a book!

Who is John Galt?

2007-10-14T05:05:00.001-07:00

We are, apparently, nearing the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged. I went to Amazon today to send a recommendation of the book to my friend who is examining atheism since the book espouses a totally rational world view.

Just for fun I "opened" the book to a random page on the website and started reading. Ayn Rand was an astounding writer! Even on that one page (512) she captured a conflict between Dagny and the world, Dagny and Francisco, and conflict of productive people in a world that would take their contributions and call them thieves.

She foreshadowed the last third of the book. Increased the suspense of what would happen to Dagny. And called into question the assumptions that Francisco had become a bum. She reraised the question of "Who is John Galt" and tied it what was happening in the moment.

She supported long, thick paragraphs with compelling prose that moved you forward quickly. She touched on sexuality, politics, and economics. She espoused her personal preference for strong men who could take charge.

She did all of this between pages 512 and 516.

She was an amazing writer and Atlas Shrugged remains an amazing book.

The Joy of Confronting Reality

2007-10-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

Today I got rid of a headache that had been plaguing me for a week. The secret? I finally admitted to myself that the book I thought I'd have done by the end of the year won't be done until this summer.

Suddenly freed from those expectations I was ready to go on and figure out how to make my fiction writing work in the intervening six months, because this sudden confrontation with reality has convinced me that I cannot hope to put off my fiction writing until the technical book is finished.

Oy!

What are Facebook friends for? | csmonitor.com

2007-10-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

I recently had an odd confluence of events. I had dinner with a buddy from work who has found Richard Dawkins's book, The God Delusion to be compelling and is considering atheism as a spiritual response to the world. I also read this commentary from the Christian Science Monitor on Facebook.

What are Facebook friends for? | csmonitor.com

What struck me about both is that if you go to the Atheism section of the book store and peruse the titles, you see people who feel beset by religion. The books generally tout their ability to help the reader defend himself against the onslaught of religious folks who would try to indoctrinate them. Dawkins's book, in particular, encourages people to use a scientific mindset as a defense against religion.

I find this paranoia amusing, because scientific thought is alive and well in the US as evidenced by the Facebook editorial. The editorial first makes some relatively obvious statements that people on Myspace try to use shock techniques to express themselves and get more "friends." They point out that the friend count is a status symbol. This is all well and good.

But it was the last third of the editorial that struck me. The editorial went on to say that we really didn't understand the implications of online social networking because not enough research had been done. The implication was that we really couldn't understand a phenomenon unless a "scientist" had told us what to think. (Not surprisingly the few studies that were done were negative and vague. But that didn't keep the author from citing them.)

This is why I think that Dawkins & co. have little to fear. They live in a society where every aspect of what we "know" needs a study behind it to support it. We, as a society, no longer accept simple opinion or statement of fact based on personal experience. Instead, we cite obscure studies to get through our and tell us what is true.

Given that -- I think it's OK if some of us take comfort in the idea that there is a God. After all, studies show that 82% of us believe in God.

Why do we write

2007-10-10T17:43:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine once told me what it took to be an artist, "The only reason to be an artist is that it hurts too much to stop."

I'm living that today. I love writing fiction, but I've taken on an excellent non-fiction project that teaches engineers how to design a certain kind of computer chip. I'm thinking that this non-technical book will make some money and create a springboard for my fiction -- which most engineers like.

But recently, I've been listening to conferences from the Mystery Writers of America conference in New York and I'm reminded of how much I miss writing fiction. I've had a headache for a week.

I've decided that I can't listen to interviews with Stephen King or panels on how to build suspense. It's literally to painful. I'll have to put off listening to these until I can get back to putting my main character Tucker in mortal danger.

I've got some ideas ... the poor guy is in for a rough time.