The QWERTY keyboard? Who in the right mind would organize letters that way? And yet, we all use it. Our fingers know exactly where to find the letters. Well, mostly. If you’re like me and your right index finger occasionally misses the tiny dimple on the j, a trip to Bletchley Hall may be required to decode your deathless prose. So, who put the A there and the M where it is?

In my newest book, One Horse Too Many, Cora’s boarders are gathered for dinner in Countryman House’s dining room where Dr. Shaw speaks of the Centennial Exposition of 1876, where the QWERTY type-writer, the Bell telephone, and giant boilers able to heat whole buildings were introduced. Yet, while people traveled to Philadelphia to see the wonders, General Custer fatefully met the Sioux in Montana, and the James-Dalton Gang robbed the Northfield Minnesota bank. The years 1876-77 were like that, colored by the past and roaring toward the future.

Telegraph operators tapped out the news of the massacre and the robbery on QWERTY keyboards. So, how did the board’s odd array of letters come to be? In October 1867, Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, filed a patent application for an early writing machine developed with the assistance of two friends (Glidden and Soulé). 

Sholes worked five more years to perfect his invention, rearranging the alphabetical keys, until 1873, when the QWERTY keyboard came to be. If you spend some time with your keyboard, you will notice that the letters are arranged in diagonally slanting columns. This was done purportedly to accommodate the mechanical linkages, as slanted columns prevented the levers from tangling. Yes, you pushed on a key, and a lever slammed the letter onto a ribbon of ink, leaving an imprint on your actual paper.

Now, researchers into the evolution of the keyboard conclude that the typewriter’s mechanics did not influence keyboard design. Instead, QWERTY resulted from how and by whom typewriters were first used – namely, telegraph operators, whose need to quickly transcribe messages informed the letter arrangement. Also, some cite educator Amos Densmore’s study of bigram (letter-pair) frequency as influential in the design.

In 1873, Sholes & Glidden sold the manufacturing rights to their Type-Writer to E. Remington and Sons. Remington made several adjustments after purchase that resulted in the modern QWERTY layout. These adjustments included moving the R key to the place previously allotted to the period key. With the new arrangement, the last vestiges of the actual alphabet appeared only in the home row sequence DFGHJKL. It makes you want to kiss them, doesn’t it?

And how about this nugget? The QWERTY arrangement allows thousands of English words to be spelled with only the left hand but only a couple hundred with the right hand, even though using alternating hands with the first hand striking as the second readies aids speed and accuracy. Does that make any sense?

Well, this makes sense – business sense. In addition to typewriters, Remington offered training courses (for a small fee), ensuring typists learned on their proprietary system. This forced companies that hired trained typists to buy Remington typewriters. By 1890, more than 100,000 QWERTY-based Remington typewriters were in use nationwide.

When the five largest typewriter manufacturers merged in 1893 to form the Union Typewriter Company, they agreed to adopt QWERTY as the de facto standard, and it still is. Though there have been attempts to make an easier to use keyboard, the QWERTY board is so prevalent that the cost to make a worldwide change is prohibitive.

And really, why change something that has produced so many enjoyable books, like One Horse Too Many, available September 15 (pre-order starting September 1)? Here’s a teaser: Sales are up at Cora’s dress shop, and she is making headway on her debt. Her new cook scares everyone and her domestic is a mess. Things have just settled when much-needed drugs are stolen from the hospital, and the newspaper office is tossed. If you like a rip-snorting yarn and appealing, strong-willed characters, you’ll get a kick out of this old-fashioned mystery.

Check out my books at https://dzchurch.com.

It’s summer, the heart of it; fireworks have filled the sky, and the heat has set in like a hot pad on high. The grass has turned lion’s mane bronze punctuated by the yellow of blossoming mule ears. It all makes me long for a trip to my husband’s family’s cabin on an island in a lake in Ontario, Canada. It is a magical place, saved from dereliction by my husband’s mother. She paid the taxes due in the early days of the prior century.

I once charted 19 species of trees and bushes on the three-acre island a buzz with bees and even the stray firefly. I have long believed it is like no other place on earth. As an island, it is of endless curiosity to those boating on the lake. What, then, does one do to ensure the random visitors who climb the island respect it.

In a stroke of brilliance, the door to the cabin was left open, and a Red Chief pad was set out on the dining room table for those who visited to write their names or leave a note. There have been a few incidents, but very few over the nearly hundred years my husband’s family has shepherded the place.  

And, yes, visitors left notes, years of them, whole histories of those who picnicked with their children, who returned as teens, announced their marriages, and returned to picnic with their children. A history left in pencil on foolscap.

Then there are the Canadians who have property on the same bay. Friends who look out for the place. I’m thinking of one group who, upon availing themselves of the island for a bit of the Canadian pastime of beer drinking, saw that a tree had fallen across the cabin’s roof. They returned, removed the tree, fixed the roof and left a note dubbing themselves The Green Bay Boys. I met them when alone on what appeared to be a deserted island, the guys had taken the boat to go into the nearby town (about 20 miles) for lumber. They trooped up with cases of beer to sit on the deck overlooking the lake. Spying me, they grinned, introduced themselves, and offered me a Labatts, which I did not decline.

The family across the bay, whom my husband knew from childhood, lived in the original stage stop, farmed, and managed a herd of spring kittens. They also allowed our family to dock and keep the boat and the engine in a shed over the winter. They are all gone now, and we truly mourn their passing. Such good friends and times.

And if you aren’t aware, Canadians are lovely, filled with fun, and a bit understated, eh? Our neighbors created a whole mythology about the island added to with wild abandon. A dentist who buried a body on the island. A mobster who flew in on a waterplane and held secret planning meetings. Sprinkled with tales of the horse-eating fishers, just to liven up the lies.

Then it happened. A few years ago, I sat down to write a thriller and out popped a tale of the island. Booth Island was a blast to write, rampaging out of my head chapters at a time. When I was done, it had been nine years since Boothe Treader summered at her family’s island. Twelve since her brother died on its rocky shore. She never forgave him for abandoning her, her parents for divorcing, or the dark-eyed boy who watched him drown.

Then her mother deeded her the island. And old friends lined up to welcome her back —Mike, Meg, and Penny, who all affectionately called Boothe “Boo”— or were they? She sensed she was being watched from the moment she stepped foot on the island, even before the shirt her brother died in appeared on the porch railing.

Or he came — her brother’s killer.

The lake neighbors like it, it’s about them and the lake and the nearby town. They buy copies for the bookshelves in their rentals and, every now and again, replace those taken by visitors. It even got good reviews: Masterful, suspenseful, and engaging; Church crafts a mystery rich with unease and an exhilarating climax while also offering a bold portrait of Canadian lake life; Mystery readers will be hooked by the unresolved death and quiet intrigue of this lakeside thriller.

And it’s about summer — romances, jealousies and lake friends. I’ve had a few. How about you? I suspect that’s why writing about this one magic island in Canada was such a gas. Sometimes, I guess, it is best to just sit down and let the joy flow.

Booth Island is available at https://www.amazon.com/Booth-Island-D-Z-Church-ebook/dp/B08VFCRL16/. For more information on it and my other books, go to my website at https://dzchurch.com

Ever one to try something new, I leaped on the AI-generated illustration wagon. I chose an ethical provider, one who has asked permission from those owning the rights to their photographs and one who pays when those photos are used in a mashup (Note: I licensed all of the pictures used in this blog). As you may or may not know, depending on your relationship with your covers, finding the perfect illustration or photograph can take endless hours of wandering through providers and then sometimes settling or buying rights to multiple photos and cobbling them together to create the cover you envisioned if you can. Sometimes, close is as good as you get.

So why not try AI?

I’m not only a trier; I’m a plunger in that I just plunge in without a thought and see where it takes me. As a consequence, there are now an alarming number of AI-generated illustrations of tipped-over horses and three armed men on the service I used. The provider says that images created will be offered to others. Oh, my!

This is what I learned while plunging — mind your clauses:

1. Don’t ask this: In 1870s a young woman dressed in men’s clothing galloping a horse with three men through a snowstorm at a distance. What I got was a woman in a skirt galloping a horse followed by three men in a snowstorm. (abandoned)
2. Or this: Three armed cowboys on horseback side by side in a snowstorm. Some good illustrations, except for those with the three-armed cowboys, you know what I mean. Perhaps one should say armed with rifles or guns. (abandoned)
3. Or this: A team of four horses hauling a freightwagon at a gallop in a blizzard. What I asked for in the world of AI is a galloping freight wagon hauled by a team of horses hauling four horses in a blizzard. (abandoned – see picture)
4. Or this: A freight wagon with a broken wheel behind a team of four horses tipped over in an icy snowy stream. What I got, and rightly so, was tipped over horses under a freight wagon in an icy stream. Too gruesome to share. (abandoned)
5. Close, but no cigar. Learning, I requested:  A 1870s brown-haired, clean-shaven man in a derby hat on a horse with a doctor’s bag in a snowstorm. A wonderful illustration came up. The man even had a distressed look on his face, which was perfect. I thought I had a live one until I realized the doctor’s bag was sitting unattached at the back of the horse.
6. So, here is the evolution of prompts that led to two illustrations that met my needs. This isn’t to say there weren’t others that were good, just not right. Notice the order and precision of the description that resulted in my final choices (** indicates the two I kept for possible use).
   • An 1870s man reaching for black cowboy hat floating in nearly dry stream
   • An 1870s man in a white shirt reaching for black cowboy hat floating in nearly dry stream (picture 1 **).
   • An 1870s man in a white shirt reaching for black cowboy hat stuck in bushes on the banks of a stream
   • An 1870s man in a white shirt pulling a black cowboy hat from bushes on the banks of a stream (picture 2). Note weird dent in the crown of the hat.
   • A 1870s man in his twenties wearing a cowboy hat and a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up retrieving a Stetson caught in the brush along a slow flowing stream. Serious beefcake. Also, there is no hat on his head, and I’m not sure what he is retrieving. But he sure is pretty! (picture 3)
   • A 1870s man in his twenties wearing a white shirt with rolled up sleeves retrieving a Stetson by the brim caught in the brush along a slow flowing stream (picture 4 **).

Summary

In the final analysis, I was pleased with the results and glad I had chosen an ethical AI service for my plunge. As my character Cora Countryman (Unbecoming a Lady, A Confluence of Enemies, and the upcoming One Horse Too Many) would say, I do not truck with pirating the work of authors and illustrators without their knowledge or reward.

Find my books at https://dzchurch.com or on Amazon.

You know what I mean, the one review that just sits in your brain and ferments. It doesn’t even have to be a negative review. In fact, there is almost always a grain of growth in the bad ones, that comment that helps one become a better writer or calls attention to a technique you use that can be annoying. That sort of thing.

Mine is a recommendation, no less. But talk about damning with faint praise. OMG. Yet, that’s not what bothers me about it — well, yes, it is, in part. It seems to me that if you are recommending a read, you might emphasize the good parts, you know, the stuff you liked.

I get that some people think all critiques (reviews) are critical; after all, the word alone conjures criticism. Right! But according to the dictionary people, review means a critical appraisal of a book, play, movie, exhibition, etc., published in a newspaper or magazine or on any number of websites. There is that word critical, again. Interestingly enough, the example is: “She released her debut solo album to rave reviews.”

So, Back To My One

It makes me crazy. Remember, it is a recommendation. Though the reader finds my protagonist silly, it is the rest of the sentence that makes me gnash my teeth, stutter, and obsess. Why? Because of the presumption of it. I tell myself it is okay, because the reviewer didn’t know to make the week in week’s laundry possessive. But it is not. It is because the individual presumed I know nothing about the time and energy required to do a week’s worth of laundry, baking or housecleaning!

I guess I am so very rich from my writing that I have a domestic doing my housework. Not! Here’s the issue: I have used a washing machine with a mangle on it and, yes, gotten wrung. I’ve risen as the sun tinged the horizon to do chores including; feeding chickens, gathering eggs, feeding pigs and hogs, and bringing milk cows in from the pasture. I have hung laundry on a line, ironed sheets, helped bake bread for a week, and cleaned a house from top to bottom. I do know the time and labor it takes.

Why Can’t I Let It Go?

Because it is so unfair. And unmerited. And because of this (from Unbecoming a Lady):

Drawing heated water from the boiler on the stove, she scrubbed using the washboard and her mother’s technique: swipe the bar soap over the item, dip, soap again, scrub, dip, soap, scrub, rinse. Red blotches rose on her hands from the harsh soap and hot water.

When the wicker basket was full of wet, washed clothes, Cora ran the sopping items through a hand-cranked mangle, a nasty piece of business with two rollers to wring the clothes. A barrel positioned under the mangle captured the rinse water from the flattened, wrung-out clothes. Cora would dilute it with some fresh and use it to water the garden.

Her back and arms ached by the time she had the week’s laundry hung out to dry on lines strung from a crossbar nailed to the base of the windmill to a pole with a crossbar fifteen feet away. Cora rested her red, scaly hands on her hips, watching as a soft, warm breeze ruffled the items on the line, swaying them into a kaleidoscope of color, and dreamed of a washing machine like the one advertised in a Chicago Tribune she had thumbed through while waiting for the cashier to total her purchases and debt at Blewett’s Green Grocers on Chestnut Street.

You Decide

Did the reviewer read the book? Don’t you just wonder sometimes? But we learn something from all our reviews; from this one, I learned when writing a review, don’t presume you know anything at all about the background of the author of a book. Just don’t.

visit my website dzchurch.com for more information about all of my books.