Words, Beautiful Words

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ Leave a comment

by Janis Patterson

Okay, I admit it. I spend much too much time wasting time on Facebook. It’s therapeutic. It fills my surface mind with trivialities so my deep mind can wrestle with the snarled complexities of my current WIP.

Or sometimes it’s just fun – sort of like a forbidden candy bar late in the afternoon even though you know it will spoil your dinner later.

And sometimes – distressingly often, in fact – it is infuriating. And depressing. And downright disgusting.

I’m not talking about some of the opinions held by the posters – though many of them do fit the above descriptions with a few even more damning pejoratives added, but that’s the subject of another angry column – but about the way they are expressed.

Over the years I’ve been swimming about in Facebook the use of language has not only deteriorated, but downright imploded. Rotted. Disintegrated.

And I don’t mean the fancy $3.00 words I personally prefer – I’m talking about the plain old four letter or less meat-and-potato words that are (or should be) the concrete basis of lingual communication. Staid old standbys like want and be and to and even and itself which magically morph into won’t and bee and two and end in such profusion that one does not have time to worry about comprehension but must instead go directly to translation. And at times even that doesn’t work, so the poor reader is left scratching his head in a total lack of comprehension at what the poster was trying to say. It even makes one wonder if the poster himself really knows what he was saying.

When did we become a country that so disregarded the basics of communication? Even our written language – an elegant simplicity of 26 discrete symbols which can be arranged at will to form an unending combination of words – is being seriously challenged by both a confusing and sometimes contradictory sub-language of initials-for-phrases, such as LOL, BFF, FAFO and the like. Which, one must admit, can provide handy circumlocutions for today’s ever-increasing vulgarity, but offer little in the way of nuance and precision.

Much more alarming is the regression of written language to an almost completely pictographic form of communication very similar to the antique Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs – the emoji. A seemingly endless variety of trite little sketches covering everything from facial expressions to individual depictions of food items, emojis have attracted a following who claim that using them is so much faster than having to sit down and type out a long list of alphanumeric symbols… a claim which I cry is thoroughly specious. By the time it takes to find the exact symbol you want, figure out how to transfer it to whatever it is you are writing (I did mention that I am a total techno-naif, didn’t I?), and keep your original line of thought going enough to go fishing for the next symbol I could have written at least a blog post on another, less-illustratable subject.  Still…

I await with grim acceptance the arrival of a novel written entirely in emojis.

So – what are we going to do about our slipping grip on language? I accept, however reluctantly and largely silently, that most people are not linguists nor do they have the appreciation I do for my favorite long, complex and occasionally obfuscatory $3.00 and $5.00 words. I refuse to accept that our population has become so stupid that their ability to learn the proper use of the basic building blocks of communication, that their cognitive abilities are devolving to the sub-human range, so it must be some external influence. Perhaps it is the startling decline of expectations in our educational system. Perhaps it is a shift of societal admiration from those who strive and achieve to those who subsist and border on parasitical. Or something else that has not quite yet jelled in our collective consciousness. It is real, though, and our communication skills are suffering because of it.

However, I must admit that other than writing angry little screeds like this and yelling fruitlessly at the ignoramii who populate Facebook I have no idea of what to do other than to keep putting the best language I know out there and praying that somewhere it resonates with another linguist, then another and another and eventually we can reclaim and expand the pure and unsullied beauty of language.

P. S. If you like my blog posts, Volumes 1 – 4 of 50 Blogs on Writing and the Writing Life are now available for just $.99 each on Amazon.

Having Too Much Fun!

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

I just spent a week on the Oregon Coast with a granddaughter. She is the one most like me. Whenever we’re together we have lots of laughs and fun conversations.

Nearly every day as we were out walking, either on the beach, around town, or through an old growth cedar walk, we would have different versions of things.

On the beach, she saw a man digging with shovel at the base of the grass embankment. She said, “Look he’s digging for gold.” I said, “He could be preparing a hole to bury someone. But in the daylight that’s kind of risky.” My granddaughter looked at me and said, “Why would it be risky?” “Because it’s daylight and someone could mention they saw him digging.” She shook her head and said, “It’s gold.”

As we were walking through four foot high skunk cabbage, old growth cedar trees, bushes, and water on a wood walkway, we noticed there were some houses not too far away and then a trail leading off through the marsh toward the houses. My granddaughter said, “Looks like some people like to go exploring off the walkway.” “I said, “No that’s the trail of the serial killer who lives in one of those houses and comes here to find a victim.” She stopped stared at me, then the trails and said, “Thanks. Now I’m not going to be able to enjoy it.” When we reached the end where this hundred year old, deformed and huge tree was, there was a picnic table and a bench. A man in his thirties sat on the bench wearing a hoodie and sunglasses. We walked by him and my granddaughter whispered, “There’s the serial killer.” I nodded and said, “He’s waiting for an unsuspecting woman who is alone.”

Walking around the small beach town, we were admiring the kept up yard and looking at the cute little houses. We passed a house that had a couple of boards on the windows and looked uninhabited. My granddaughter remarked how it was out of place among the other well kept houses. I said, “There’s probably a body in there and whoever put the body in there didn’t want it to become known, so they don’t live there and won’t sell it. Just let it decay like the corpse inside.”

My granddaughter stopped, put her hands on her hips and said, “Grams, you are always thinking about murder.” I replied, “That is what I write. I’m always working out ways a body can be killed or how someone might try to cover it up for my books.”

“Doesn’t that depress you?” she asked.

“Nope. I find it fascinating and exhilarating to come up with something that readers may not have read before.”

And that is how my brain is working 75% of the time. Even on vacation.

This month I’m celebrating my 20th year as a published author. Come by my Author Paty Jager Facebook page and leave a comment to win prizes.

Author, Entrepreneur, Wearer of Hats

~ Margaret Lucke ~ 6 Comments

By Margaret Lucke

Recently I came across a quote I wrote down several years ago when I attended an at my local public library. The speaker was mystery author Stella Baker, who talked about her adventures in writing and publishing her debut novel 4 Gigs of Trouble. I was particularly struck by one comment she made, so I scribbled it down:

“A book begins as an act of creativity, is finished by an act of will, and once published is a business.”

How true, I thought. But then it occurred to me that maybe this statement doesn’t go far enough. Because in reality, most writers I know who succeed in reaching readers and earning money in this crazy profession treat it like a business from start to finish. That’s especially true these days, when the publishing industry is going through a transformation and no one is certain how all of the changes will sort out. It can pay off for authors to think of themselves as entrepreneurs.

Some years ago, when my husband and I owned a printing business, we enrolled in a series of small business workshops. They were organized into three topics – the three basic functions of any business:

1. Production – manufacturing the product, or providing the service.

2. Marketing – finding customers and persuading them to buy.

3. Administration – doing all of the tasks of running the business and enabling the first two functions to happen, including managing the finances.

In other words, a business needs someone to make it, someone to sell it, and someone to count the money.

Once upon a time, a writer’s business model looked like this. The writer concentrated the most important part of the production–writing the book. Then she engaged a representative (the literary agent) to secure a partner (the publisher) for the enterprise. The partner would handle the rest of the production tasks, like editing, design, typesetting, creation of a cover, and printing, as well as the administrative the administrative aspects of their work. And, oh yes, everything involved with marketing. In fact, a friend of mine whose publishing credits go back to the 1970s has told me that her early contracts with publishers expressly forbade her from doing any marketing for her books.

All the writer had to do was write – and, with any luck, count some money.

How times have changed!

Gradually publishers pushed more and more tasks onto the writer’s shoulders. Skip the typesetting; we’ll use the author’s electronic files. Skip the marketing, except at the most basic level; if the writer wants to have the book promoted, she can do it herself.

Many writers still prefer to pursue the traditional writer-publisher partnership. But now, with the rise of independent publishers, more and more authors have decided that the partnership is no longer working to their advantage. So they’re skipping the partnership with a publisher and taking charge of the entire enterprise of placing a book into a reader’s hands. I’ve formed my own mini-publishing company to help me do just that, for myself and a handful of writer friends.

With the industry in flux, none of us knows what its future business model will look like. I’m reminded of a headline I saw a couple of years ago, when Penguin Random was facing an antitrust lawsuit stemming from its ultimately unsuccessful attempt to acquire Simon & Schuster: “Big publishers spend three weeks in court trying to prove that they have no idea what they’re doing.”

Last month, the Northern California chapter of Sisters in Crime sponsored a talk at Oakland’s main library by publishing guru Jane Friedman. Her message: The author has become the protagonist in the publishing industry’s story. The percentage of sales that goes to the big publishers’ books is slipping, while small and independent publishers are rising in terms of sales and clout. The publishers can’t do it without us.

But whatever our route to publication, succeeding in the writing business will involve wearing a lot of different hats. Not only that, it will mean balancing them all on our heads without letting any fall off. We’re more than writers; we’re producers, marketers, administrators, tellers of stories, suppliers of entertainment and inspiration to the world.

In other words, we’re entrepreneurs. Whether we like it or not. Even though what most of us want to do is simply to write.

Hey, it’s my book. I’ll kill whomever I want

~ Nancy Lynn Jarvis ~ 3 Comments

I wrote my first book, The Death Contingency, when I was an active realtor. It became part of a seven-book series, the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries, but when I was working on that first book, it was only a game for me, a puzzle to be solved, and an opportunity to right a few wrongs in dealings where I felt slighted or abused by the realtor on the other side of a transaction. You might say in addition to being a murder mystery, it was a revenge book.

Most realtors are nice hard-working people who care about their clients, but if you work in that business long enough, you come across people who aren’t. Writing a book outing some shady dealers promised to be satisfying.

 I assumed the people who read the book would be realtors holding open houses so it was designed to be read in small bursts during downtime between visitors. I thought if I carefully dropped clues about the identities of the real agents I turned into villains, astute fellow realtors would figure out who they were even if their names had been changed.

I was mistaken about that first book on many levels. It turns out most realtors don’t read books, or at least not mysteries written about their associates.  The few local realtors who did read my first book didn’t have any idea who I used as my characters even when it was incredibly obvious and it was great fun when they argued with me about the real identity of a character.

But based on the messages I received from realtors working in other communities, there must be many people out there who’s actions are similar because they’d say things like, “You never met Kathy from my office, but you sure nailed her.”

I always use the phrase, “This is a work of fiction. Unless specifically credited, names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.” It’s a lie.

I eavesdrop unabashedly. I freely steal snippets of other people’s lives to use in my books. The admonition, “Be nice to me or I’ll kill you in a book,” works for me. And that’s not all. Some of my best side stories come from writing about the foibles of others. (I’m not proud, though.  Sometimes I’m the one being parodied.) When I speak at book clubs or in front of audiences about the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries, I always tell people that the murders are made up but the real estate stories, no matter how farfetched they seem, are real and happened to me or to an associate.

I have the feeling other writers do the same sort of things. The baker-protagonist writer has probably seen real flour-throwing incidents similar to the one she used to help her character escape from a killer. The yachting-protagonist writer may have watched an attempted drowning. The chef-protagonist writer has all those handy knives to work with not to mention flaming cooktops and opportunities to add poison to a dish.

Who knew writing murder mysteries could be so much fun…and so therapeutic?

Bella Italia!

~ Janet Dawson ~ 10 Comments

I rode in the gondola. Of course I did. It’s one of those touristy things I just had to do.

I was in Italy, after all. In Venice, built on 126 islands, separated by expanses of water and canals, linked by 472 bridges. Away from the Grand Canal, the main thoroughfare of the largest island, one can get lost in those narrow canals, with their pathways and bridges. Public transit is water buses, known as vaporettos.

My recent trip to Bella Italia started farther south, in Naples. I wanted to see Pompeii and Herculaneum, both cities destroyed by the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius. On the first day in Napoli, I went to local museums. I also met some fellow travelers in the hotel courtyard who invited me to join them for dinner that evening. That’s one of the delights of travel.

The next day was my guided tour. According to my Fitbit, I logged six miles walking around the two ancient cities. Which are now surrounded by modern cities. In the distance, Vesuvius looms, looking benign—for the time being.

Herculaneum first, a rather compact footprint. It was buried under 20 feet of ash when the volcano erupted. The vast acreage of Pompeii was subjected to 18 hours of falling pumice, then a pyroclastic flow of dense, fast-moving ash that buried everything in its patch, suffocating those inhabitants who had been unable to escape. Most of the city has been excavated, but they are still digging. While I was there, our tour looked at one site that was recently uncovered. In one of the rooms, the eye is drawn to a donkey’s skeleton.

From Naples, I took a high-speed train to Rome. It took all of one hour and 10 minutes. I wish we had such efficient and comfortable transport here in the United States. Ah, that’s a subject for another blog.

In the Eternal City of Rome, I joined a Road Scholar tour, logging more miles on my Fitbit as we marveled at the Forum and the Colosseum, hiked from the Piazza di Popoli to the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. On the way, we passed the oldest existing aqueduct in Rome, built in 19 BC by the Emperor Augustus. It’s still in use today.

On the following day we went to the Borghese Gallery. I love the sculpture of Paulina Bonaparte Borghese, by Antonio Canova. It was considered quite scandalous in its day. And of course, all the beautiful sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Then a side trip to the Vatican where I saw Michelangelo’s jaw-dropping works of art—the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and inside St. Peter’s Basilica, where I stood staring at the Pieta, now behind a glass wall since someone whacked it with a hammer back in 1972, causing serious damage.

Another day, another high-speed train, to Florence. The stunning Michelangelo painting of the Holy Family in the Uffizi Gallery. Berlusconi’s Duomo. The adjoining museum contains a remarkable Donatello sculpture of Mary Magdalene. And then the Accademia Museum, where Michelangelo’s beautiful David stands, ready to confront Goliath.

One of my fellow travelers and I went to the Pitti Palace, another museum full of paintings and sculpture. We stood on line at the entrance with three Greek Orthodox nuns from Macedonia and had a pleasant conversation, also one of the delights of travel.

Venice next, with the riches of St. Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace. We also saw something of workaday Venice, when our vaporetto went through the port, seeing boats loaded with packages and luggage. Boats pick up the hotel’s laundry every day. And at one vaporetto stop, a woman got on wearing a Post Italiane uniform, pushing a cart full of mail to be delivered.

When my tour was over and it was time to head for the airport, I traveled by water taxi, speeding over the lagoon to the docks outside the airport.

The food! Wonderful pastas and salads, delicious pizza, and I must confess that I sampled gelato everywhere. My favorite is stracciatella, vanilla ice cream drizzled with strands of chocolate. Good thing I was doing all that walking.

I just returned from my trip a few days ago. It was late evening, so I unearthed my toothbrush from my bag, took a hot shower, and went to bed. After my two-week absence, my three cats were ecstatic to see me. Unpacking could wait until the next day, after the necessary grocery run and laundry. The jet lag is kicking my butt, of course.

I do have my plot, however. Yes, there will be a novel set in Italy. The idea is taking shape in my mind.

In the meantime, I have some fiction suggestions. Pompeii, by Robert Harris, historical fiction that takes place before and during the eruption. An official from Rome arrives in Pompeii to check out problems with the local aqueduct and suspects that Vesuvius is the cause. North from Rome, by Helen MacInnes. Set in the 1950s, a playwright travels to Rome when his fiancée, a secretary at the U.S. Embassy, ends their engagement and accepts a proposal from an Italian businessman. Soon he and the other characters are caught up in deadly Cold War intrigue.

For Florence and the Tuscan countryside, I recommend Turn to Stone, by James Ziskin. It’s part of his series set in the early 1960s featuring reporter Ellie Stone, in Florence because her late father is being honored at a symposium. The event organizer winds up dead in the Arno River. Was it an accident, suicide, or murder? Ellie’s search for answers leads back to the traumatic years before and during World War II. As for Venice, Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti novels have been recommended but I haven’t read one, yet. I will soon remedy that.

Ciao! Here’s to pasta and gelato!