Storytellers Unplugged

FORENSICS 149: ATTEMPTING CLARIFICATION IN VEIN

By Robert Jones, on January 19th, 2012

This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by presenting their readers with a gift of extra detail. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.

Most readers probably remember Daniel Pearl, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. He was abducted on January 23, 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. While a captive, Daniel’s picture showing a gun pointed at his head was sent with demands that the United States free all Pakistani terror prisoners, end the US presence in Pakistan and allow a detained shipment of F-16 jet fighters to be delivered to Pakistan. Daniel was ultimately killed on February 1 and beheaded. His body was cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi. His remains were found on May 16 and were ultimately returned to the United States for burial.

A senior operative for Al Queda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, grew up in Kuwait, but obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from an American university. Subsequently, he received military training in Pakistan and claimed to have briefly fought the Soviets. According to United States law enforcement, he had a small role in the first World Trade Center bombing in New York City on February 26, 1993. The bombing was intended to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, flattening them both and killing thousands of persons. That did not happen, but the blast did kill six persons and injure more than a thousand.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was believed to be the principal architect of the coordinated September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks using four commandeered passenger jets. Two of the jets were crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City A third jet was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth jet, which was on its way to Washington, D.C., crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to wrest control from the terrorists. These attacks reportedly caused 2,996 deaths and injured more than 6,000 persons.

Among his terrorist plots, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly described a plan to take control of ten aircraft. Nine were to crash into targets including those of the 9/11 attack, CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in the states of Washington and California. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself was to land the tenth plane, kill all the adult male passengers and deliver a speech to the media denouncing the United States.

On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested by the Pakistanis in Rawalpindi. He was reportedly held in Pakistan for three days and then moved elsewhere by US officials. During a closed military hearing, he confessed to being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and many others. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confessions included the statement that “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” Since he confessed to so many terrorist acts, and since he had been the recipient of 183 water boardings, his confessions were considered by many as being inflated if not completely false.

A three-minute, thirty-six-second videotape showing Daniel’s decapitation was released on February 21. 2002. It was titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video shows the arms and hands of a masked person severing Daniel’s head. Stills showing his hands were made from the videotape and compared by the FBI and CIA to those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he had been captured on March 1, 2003. A bulging vein coursing across the back of a hand shown in the videotape was found to match a vein in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hand.

Although vein matching is not presently considered to be absolute evidence, it is corroborative with other forensic evidence. Both the FBI and CIA reportedly sometimes use vein matching, formally referred to as vascular technology, to identify suspects. Vascular structures of individuals are believed to be unique. Vein patterns are obtained by recording (typically near infrared) light that penetrates skin and reacts with hemoglobin in blood to reveal a vein pattern. By identifying the vascular structure of a hand or finger of a suspect and recording it digitally, a template can be created that can be compared to a template of a known person.

In addition to being a step forward in forensics, vascular technology, has other useful applications. Critical hospital applications include error reduction and unconscious or uncommunicative patient identification. The chief of hospital operations at one medical center claims that vein patterns are 100 times more unique than fingerprints. Vein matching is also being used in the financial field and for such tasks as entry allowance and attendance recording. For hygienic purposes, a version of a vein matching device has been developed that requires no physical contact. An important advantage of vein matching is that it appears it would be extremely difficult to construct a fake representation of a vein pattern. Fingerprints do not have this advantage.

In response to increasing incidences of credit card fraud and of the illegal withdrawing of funds from their customer accounts, Japanese banks have begun to use biometric technology. A form of this is finger vein identification. A customer inserts a finger into a device that reveals the vein structure within the finger. The structure is compared with that of a customer of record to confirm the identity of the finger’s owner.

I can’t help wondering how long it will take for someone to develop a finger vein identification device that will trap the finger of an unauthorized person and summon security.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Finger vein patterns of each finger of each person are different.

It took until May 2002 to completely clear the site of the World Trade Center disaster.

To protect United States journalists around the world, President Obama enacted the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act on May 19, 2010.
This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by presenting their readers with a gift of extra detail. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.

I can’t help wondering how long it will take for someone to develop a finger vein identification device that will trap the finger of an unauthorized person and summon security.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Finger vein patterns of each finger of each person are different.

It took until May 2002 to completely clear the site of the World Trade Center disaster.

To protect United States journalists around the world, President Obama enacted the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act on May 19, 2010.

The Day Job

By Bev Vincent, on January 17th, 2012

I’m on a deadline and couldn’t think of anything to write about this month, so I dredged up an oldie but a goody from 2005 that is still as pertinent to me today as it was back then. I updated a few of the details but the sentiment is the same.

When people who’ve known me for a while find out that I’ve published some books and am pursuing a career as a writer, one question usually comes up before long: When are you quitting your day job?

This question brings assumptions with it, whether or not the person asking it realizes as much. First, there’s an assumption that if I’ve published books that are in bookstores and in libraries, continue to have good Amazon rankings, were reviewed in Publishers Weekly, are available as limited editions, were translated into other languages, etc. that I must be rolling in dough, so I’ll soon be upscaling my life. I think the idea that there’s huge wealth in publishing comes from an unwarranted extrapolation from the music industry or Hollywood, where a single modest success can set a person up for life.

The second assumption is that my day job is merely a support system for my writing. If that were true, if I was just putting in eight hours a day at a job I barely tolerated so I could write, I would be miserable. As it happens, I currently have two jobs. One I do during the daytime. I’ve been with the same company for 22 years. I love my “day job.” I’m good at what I do there, and it is fulfilling and rewarding. It’s not just something that pays the bills, buys printer paper and covers my family with health insurance. My second job, which I’ve been doing since 2000, is equally fulfilling and more flexible. It has to be, because I fit it in where I can, between day job, family life, chores, and many other things.

My normal response, when I really don’t want to get into a lengthy discussion of the finances of a writer (i.e. always) is this: “I know a lot of writers. I know a lot of writers with day jobs.” If I’m feeling particularly expansive, I say, “The number of writers able to support themselves comfortably solely by writing is fairly small.”

Here’s the reality. Suppose, just suppose, I wrote a killer novel, a publisher loved it and saw a decent market for it, and offered me a big advance. A huge advance. Hey, we’re making things up – let’s say the advance is a cool quarter million. $250,000 smakeroos. That, by the way, is astronomically higher than the average advance for a first novel. What would that mean for me?

Well, after my agent gets his 15% and Uncle Sam gets his share, I’d be lucky to come away with $150,000. And, of course, not all in one lump sum. Best case scenario, half now and half on publication. “Now,” of course, means that six to eight weeks after the publisher approves payment, a check will be sent to my agent. Sounds like a decent amount of money, but in the general timeframe of publishing I’d be unlikely to see both installments in one calendar year, so that really amounts to two years’ worth of income. I’d have to be hopelessly optimistic or foolish to give up a job where I have a fifteen-year history for something like that. Suppose I’m a one-hit wonder (or, worse, a one-flubber when the book doesn’t sell).

Even if I hit the big times and got a million bucks in advance, that really only represents (after commissions and taxes) a decade of good income. I’m 50 – I have about fifteen years ahead of me before I could even start to think about retiring from my day job. What happens when I’m 55 or 58 and blocked and there’s not much money coming in from the royalties any more, and…

Maybe I’m a bit of a pessimist or alarmist. I prefer to think of myself as a realist. I love to write. I like the income I make for my writing. In the best case scenario, I hit my stride, find my voice, find an audience and start producing commercially viable novels every year or two, and I reach the point where I could conceivably retire from the day job. Would I? Well, I’m realist enough to acknowledge that if I attained that level of success, I might have to give up the day job in order to meet a regular publishing deadline. My 2-hour session between 5 and 7 a.m. before I get ready for the day job just might not cut it. It’s the kind of dilemma I wouldn’t mind facing some day.

In the interim, however, no, I have no plans to give up my day job. There are real people where I work. People I can interact with. A social group, a friendly bunch. And I enjoy what I do. It doesn’t get in the way of my writing – I’ve found a way to make these two avocations co-exist. I would miss it if I had to give it up.

It’s not my general aspiration to write myself out of a day job. It’s my aspiration to write, to continue to get published, improve my craft and have a blast with everything life tosses my way.

Thomas Sullivan: SEGAMI RORRIM

By Thomas Sullivan, on January 15th, 2012

If something has to be kept secret, it must be true. Secrets are self-proving. Lies are loud and wear red hats, e.g. Santa Claus. Okay, I’m being a tad glib here. I do not mean that only secrets are true or that all red hats – i.e. loud proclamations — are lies (your red hat is still true blue, Santa). But secrets tend to be true, else they wouldn’t need hiding. I think that most people believe this at some level. In fact some OVER-believe it, glomming onto every “exposed” secret as innately true because life after all is run by conspiracies and manipulative forces. Consider the power that this reflex gives to persuasion. Want someone to believe something outlandish? Present it as a secret.

And in this way my premise statement moves from being a truism about content to a truism about style. Because if you pretend something is secret only to make it seem valid when you expose it, you’ve given it the style of truth but not necessarily the substance. And that can be a literary device to disarm the reader. An effective literary device. In fact, take it a step further. Let the secret be some discovery you make contrary to what the writer is saying. No truth is more acceptable than underlying truth you think you perceive by yourself, after all. Better yet if you have to pry it out, testifying to your astuteness. In this model the falseness is the literal statement, parading itself as truth. The truth is the secret you discern hiding behind the falseness, and it is its opposite. Thus we have Mark Twain giving us his truth about all humans being of equal worth by having Huck Finn believe he is going to hell for helping the runaway slave Jim escape. The world has it backwards, Twain is showing us. Social morality is the real falseness and Huck Finn in the simple purity and honesty of his soul has it right though he believes he will go to hell for his choice. Edgar Allen Poe gives us an even more direct stylistic example in the beginning of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” “True!” his first person narrator tells us too loudly in the very first word, “nervous, very dreadfully nervous I was and am, but why will you say I am mad?” Already you know the character is mad. (“Methinks he doth protest too much.”) He is in your face, asserting his “truth” so loudly that you immediately know it’s a lie.

Life is full of opposites, isn’t it? It is tempting – particularly in an improbable life like mine – to put more faith in the counterintuitive then into the face value of things. But that would be another grave error. Nevertheless, it is counterintuitiveness that seems to yield the most insight into truth when it comes to understanding people and presenting characters. We are devious, after all, you and I; yet relatively transparent as well to the observer who has developed objectivity. So, in human behavior, it is often enlightening to look for opposites, contrasts, and apparent contradictions lurking beneath the surface.

These show up most clearly under stress, but with some people the occurrence is pathological. I find these pathological types to be the most predictable because they always try to be unpredictable, and I often use them for catalyst characters. They are people who have discovered a game, a posture, an attitude, or a tone that works for them. They are usually one-trick types who continually use the single gimmick of reverse psychology. Over time they tend to lose credibility, and so they wear their audiences down to the gullible, the susceptible, or the impaired. You might see them holding forth where education is scarce, or playing the victim, or sounding witty under neon lights just before “last call.” Drunk or sober, “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Their conflicts are seldom internal but instead come from trying to manipulate the external world. That’s why they make good catalyst characters.

More fascinating to me are people who are internally conflicted, because they are not neatly consistent or as predictable. Especially if their emotions are strong. This happens more with women than men. And, no, I’m not saying that women are less rational than men. But I am saying that they tend to be influenced by a more complex range of emotions than men usually are. In evolutionary terms, anger and aggressiveness work strongest for archetypal men, while a fuller range of emotions has more survival value for archetypal women. The former (male) tends to solve immediate tactical problems and be direct; the latter (female) may address long-term strategic goals and be indirect. Which is probably why women get hung with the tag of being unpredictable. In any event, if this makes sense to you, you can easily see why marketing biases favor physical action books for men (external conflicts) and emotional tension books for women (internal conflicts). Of course, just as in reality these stereotypes of men and women exist as a mix within individuals of either sex, fully developed writing reflects a mix of simple action and character complexity no matter what the genre or gender. The nod, though, goes toward internal conflicts with its focus on substantial characterization, if only because most readers are women. I like that. It takes me right back to the deliciously counterintuitive wildcard that emotions introduce.

Think of how many things can go wrong with internal conflicts as opposed to external. In external you have things and events; in internal you have things and events plus all the interpretations and psychological/emotional consequences of external happenings. Internal is where external crosses into human experience, the nerve center, the point of impact – if a tree falls, does it make a sound? (Does it matter to you, if you don’t hear it – if you don’t internalize it?) If you want to experience and communicate life fully, free your characters to be human. Let them become contradictory, confused, emotional, unstable and changeable – then let them find their way back (or not). And while you’re at it, free yourself from being that writer/person who has a one-trick pathology and writes/sees with one eye open in the country of the blind. With two eyes open in life, you have twice the chance of seeing the magic.

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

A Vision of the Future

By Bill Lindblad, on January 11th, 2012

Today, I want to offer forth a prediction for 2012. It may already exist, and if so I am simply going to display my ignorance of the most recent marketplace changes, but I don’t know of anything available like it.

In other words, if this doesn’t exist, the idea is being offered for someone to develop.

I’m calling it the E-Reader Deluxe Edition. It would be used for authors who have interlinked works. This might be something as straightforward as the Matt Scudder stories by Lawrence Block or as complex as the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. It would simply feature all of the associated stories bundled together into one discounted purchase, with each story parsed and coded so that when a reference is made to another work, the reader could open a link on that reference and bring up the associated story. The result would be akin to a frame story, diverging to the new path if the reader so desired and returning to the original point afterward.

It would encourage readers to read more of an author’s work… for example, when references to Black Wind or the Freak Show frame story appear in Repairman Jack stories by F. Paul Wilson, directing readers to work they might not have realized was associative. It would also allow for collections which, while prohibitively expensive or comprehensive in print format, would be acheivable in electronic format. Lastly, it would bring forth some stories which have become effectively lost, stories published in magazines but never gathered into collected format.

Best of all, with the current scanning software available, it wouldn’t even be particularly hard, and would seem to be only a bit more time consuming than normal editorial and/or typesetting work.

Would fans pay for some material they already owned, if it meant getting access to rare works and suddenly being able to recognize each associative reference in a story? I’d be willing to bet yes, if only because I know that personally I’d buy an e-reader just to have such an edition of, say, the Oxrun Station works of Charles L. Grant or the complete Cedar Hill stories of Gary Braunbeck. I’ve met people who would sacrifice a digit to have an easily tracked set of Eternal Champion stories by Michael Moorcock… and the couple-hundred dollars or so an indexed version of those many stories and novels might cost is far easier to pay.

It’s just a thought. I think it’ll happen, though. And if it does, let me know where to purchase the downloads.

The Same River Twice: On Rewriting Your Past

By Brian Hodge, on January 9th, 2012

[What do you get when you cross a Storytellers Unplugged deadline with an exhausted writer who’s just finished a near-30,000-word novella that ran several thousand words more than expected? Today we get a redux: the very first column I did here, in June 2006, and which I recently tapped as supplemental material for a multipart series at my own blog.]

Several months ago, when the decade-old Hellnotes was still doing business as a weekly newsletter, before transmogrifying into a blog this May — transblogrifying, I suppose should be the new word — fellow contributor E.V.B. fired off a salvo in his monthly column that was aimed squarely between my eyes.

Well, no, it wasn’t. It would only feel that way if you were paranoid. E.V.B.’s “Writing 101” installments were full of excellent information and pointers for fledging writers, and often of value to experienced writers, too … and I just happen to run counter to one of them right down to the twisty double-helix of my being.

This particular installment dealt with writers going back to revise previously published work. E.V.B.’s position was unreservedly anti.* In a nutshell: If your work was good enough to have been published once already, leave well enough alone, get over yourself, and move along. There was a strong implication that any feeling a writer might harbor that he or she had grown in the interim and could do greater justice to the work the second time around is, well, kinda pretentious.

With apologies to none, I’ve always been one of those who refuse to leave things alone if time and greater objectivity conspire to make me see room for improvement.

Hang around long enough, and editors and publishers start to ask you for reprints. “Free money,” I’ve heard this called, because you’ve already done the work. All you have to do now is say, “Yes, thanks!”

If only it were that easy. As I’ve said elsewhere, “Whenever it’s time for a story to be collected, or reprinted in anything that comes much later than a year’s best roundup, I take another trip through it and almost invariably it sweats off a few more ounces. It serves the story well, I think, and keeps me from feeling as though it’s merely been dug out of mothballs.”

My tendency to tinker is much more prevalent when it comes to early work, and I would be surprised if that wasn’t the pattern with other chronic tweakers. Just as no one emerges from the womb fully formed, writers rarely start out with their voices fully manifested. After what must be a few million published words by now, I’m still working to refine mine.

One’s voice on the page is a product of evolution, honed through long use and critical self-appraisal. It often requires us to admit that while our works may have been good enough for somebody to publish, nevertheless, our ideas can be better and our ambitions bigger than our means of executing them.

Writers are not all of a single mind when it comes to post-pub revisions, nor should they be. If you feel that a story or a book should remain unchanged, forever reflecting the stage of development you were in at the time … well, to quote Yul Brynner, “So let it be written. So let it be done.” This is your Way, and it is faultless.

It just ain’t mine.

Around the time of E.V.B.’s column, I was spending a string of very late nights going through my 1996 novel Prototype and, I suppose, daring to imply that I really just might have grown as a writer.

Prototype was the last of four novels that came out of what I fondly remember as the Dell/Abyss years, and is slated for a hardcover edition this autumn. I’d salvaged the original computer files from a vintage floppy, which wasn’t entirely cooperative, and I needed to go through them to make sure nothing had gone horribly awry inside.

Offhand, I don’t recall if I started polishing the text on page 1 … but close enough. Reading this old work felt as though I were looking at a time capsule peppered with small but frequent sins that I’ve since tried harder not to commit. At least not as often. And a time or two, even I couldn’t figure out what the hell I’d been trying to say.

When the hardcover edition comes out, some readers will be reading it for the first time, and to them it will be entirely new. There’s no reason they shouldn’t have the best work I can deliver. I wrote the original text to the best of my ability at the time, but my best is better now.

Other readers will be returning to something they liked well enough to read again. They’ll find a novel that’s no different in content — their memories of it won’t be betrayed by characters doing things different this time around — but I hope they’re rewarded, even if subliminally, by a familiar novel that’s a bit more polished.

Here’s what it comes down to: The Dell/Abyss edition represented me in 1996. And the upcoming edition represents me now. One byline, but in a sense, two different writers.

There’s an old saying that you can’t step into the same river twice. As the water flows endlessly past, the familiar debris is swept away, fresh debris washes down from upstream, and all the while, the river has carved at its banks and resculpted the unseen silt and mud of its bed. It lives under constant renewal.

And so I have a hard time letting a work, especially an early one, wind back into print without wanting it to reflect something of what time and later work have done to whatever skills I may have. It’s no better a way than opting to not change what’s been set into type already, just a different one, coming from perhaps a different perspective on what one’s creative work represents: a static snapshot from the time and place it was written, or something drawn from a river.

It’s why Walt Whitman continued to update Leaves of Grass for nearly 40 years, why Stephen King redid the first book in his Dark Tower series, why chefs revise recipes until they’re perfect, why musicians remaster old recordings when new technology can make them sound truer to life, why George Lucas reworked the original Star Wars —

OK, bad example. But you get the idea.

Of course, we could’ve just scrapped every bit of the foregoing and defaulted to another old saying you may have heard, attributed variously to Jean Cocteau, Paul Valery, and Oscar Wilde, and whose subject alternates between art, poems, and books. But let’s take the broadest one possible:

“Art is never finished, it is merely abandoned.”

Or this one from Robert Cormier, which has its own appeal:

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”

* While I wish I could print excerpts rather than summarize, the request to do so went unanswered.

***** That multipart series at my own blog that I mentioned? An epic reader-request fulfillment, it’s a comprehensive look at taking a work from its first draft through to the last, with all the revision stages in between I could think of. It wrapped up last week after four parts and a followup postscript, “A Fine Line Between Polish And Overkill.” Come for the warning signs, stay for the object lesson in shoddy makeup application.

[Photo by Gonzo fan2007]

Disruptive Thinking

By Gerard Houarner, on January 4th, 2012

Looking through clip files for an SU piece this month, I came across a July 2010 article on disruptive thinking. A quick web search led to a ton of more material on the topic, including a military field manual on Intelligence, so I thought it might make a cool kick-off for the coming year.

Like so many other innovations, “disruptive thinking” is just another way for someone with a hustle or a degree to make a living selling something old in a new package. Being creative says it all, but sounds a bit elitist. Thinking outside of the box also says it all, in a friendlier, homespun kind of way.

However you want to name the process, the idea is to look beyond the cliché, the familiar, accepted, routine way of doing things. The motivation for engaging in this difficult work is to stand apart and offer something not done before in a particular context, leading to more of whatever it is you value – money, success, deer kills, whatever – than people doing things the regular old way.

For writers, this can mean looking at the story for opportunities for characters to engage in disruptive thinking – ways to get out of a problem that surprise the reader and demonstrate an interesting aspect to their personality. You see and use this kind of thing all the time – an everyday person overcoming fears, doing things outside their comfort zone motivated by love, rage, money, madness, money problems, all the rest.

It’s the kind of stuff that keeps crime and thriller stories going, the thing that puts the edge to horror as the thinking, in and out of the box, never seems to stop what’s coming after you.

Keeping disruptive thinking handy is useful as well for business reasons. Zombie Jane Austen, whatever its eventual worth, is an example of this. Giving away books for free is another.

Like all ideas, this is a tool, not a lifestyle. A hammer can’t replace a screwdriver (unless destroying the thing requiring the screwdriver is your “disruptive thinking” solution to the problem – not always a bad idea).

However, it can be useful in the process of writing. Yes, at some point, critical thinking is required. Commitment. An acceptance of risk and failure. Feel free to support all the really well executed materials on this kind of thing with a click of a search or shopping cart button.

In the meantime, just riff on the possibilities for writing.

For instance, there is simplicity to “he said” and “she said” in a narrative flow that makes heavy use of anything else a questionable decision, so disruptive thinking in this area is risky business. On the other hand, relying on simple descriptions like “a blue car” or “a green dress” wears thin, at least at reading levels above telebubby, so the application of seat to chair and brain to tools might be recommended.

You’d think disruptive thinking comes easily to creative types – that’s why they/we are considered creative. Except, we’re usually lucky to have some charmingly chaotic aspect to our work which gets us noticed, but have trouble working that charm through all the other levels of our writing, from dialog, characterization, structure, plotting, language, and the rest.

Also, markets are not always big fans of wild blue yonder ideas or characters. Publishers want to be surprised, yes, but by the predictable, which is what they believe readers want. And, judging by best seller lists, if not politics, you can’t argue too much against publishers if you want to make money.

But that’s no reason to throw away the old “DT.”

On a basic writing level, I work on being a “disruptive thinker” in terms of dialog and character perceptions.

Any exchange between characters can become monotonous, particularly if you’re trying to deliver plot and background information while trying to avoid an “info dump” or developing a relationship, good or bad, between characters. Earnest gossiping about someone’s past or long-winded explanations of all the reasons why someone loves or hates someone else may be depressingly realistic, but will kill pacing.

These are excellent opportunities for character development – showing off personality, especially those character strengths and flaws that will show up later in the plot, while hopefully engaging the reader by having more than one thing happening at a time. Fixing a flat, preparing a meal, cleaning a weapon, shopping (and all the side conversations and distractions that can occur while performing these tasks) can break things up while the smoke and mirrors aspect of the action should actually become relevant in the future, as well as demonstrate characters handling situations in their own style.

I find humor in these situations a good way to relieve boredom and predictability, as well cut down on a lot of unnecessary details, at least for myself, if not for anyone else. In particular, the humor from misunderstanding and miscommunication can derail an earnest conversation which has already provided the reader with enough info to figure out that A is in love, or really hates, B.

Watching antic early Marx Brothers exchanges, or even Abbott and Costello, can be an excellent source of inspiration. Being or know a smartass is also helpful. Listening to children can be very rewarding in picking up ways to derail predictable conversations. Picking up and inserting random snatches of conversation from radio, TV, or passersby in public places are also recommended. Real life non-sequiturs from work or family life…priceless.

How a character perceives and reacts to what’s going on or what’s being said can also serve as an opportunity not only to demonstrate what that character is about, but startle and further engage the reader – the zombie lurching toward said character can suddenly be reminiscent of Uncle Harry and his war-wounded bad leg, or the pile-driver lurching suddenly outside my window at this moment as it shifts position may remind someone of an ancient siege tower, just as the relentless pounding of multiple pile-drivers throughout the work-day can become enemies pounding at the gates and walls of a fortress, thus serving as an apt metaphor for somebody’s work life.

As above, a certain amount of critical thinking and restraint is needed in the application of technique, otherwise you’re going to wear people out. And, in keeping with the theme of disruptive thinking, I have to watch out for my own personal clichés. Always reaching for the same technique to disrupt a reader’s expectations – like, again from my personal arsenal, having some kind of spirit/internal projection serve as a foil to help liven things up a bit – can also require a bit of disruptive thinking.

Descriptions. When is a green dress just a green dress, and when is it hanging like a faded sheet of wallpaper freshly stripped from a pale and pot-marked wall, and when is it a cool invitation to lay down in a country field and watch the clouds drift by?

It all depends on just how bad a noir romance you’re writing, I suppose.

But, hopefully you get the idea that thinking outside the box and choosing the imagery, or the detail, that will quickly drive the item in question into the reader’s head is an exercise not only in imagery, but in tone and rhythm and language so that it can become almost haiku-like in its precision and ability to arrest attention.

Language. Phrasing. I’m not going to touch this because I’m not the one to talk about it, but how the words are dropped on the page, how each flows to the next – with invisibly serenity or with the heart-stopping ride of a bucket in a two-mile stretch of rough rapids – is another way to knock around reader expectations. Some folks have the ear to mimic the music of different accents and ways to use words – the difference between an immigrant from Israel and one from the Caribbean – and other like Kelly Link just have a different voice running through their head and the sentences that come out on the page writhe like a nest of vipers and just seem impossible to imitate.

But whatever the talent level, making the effort to be a little out of the box when it comes to language, even if it’s as small as changing sentence cadence when in the head of the vampire or the corporate lawyer, and then shifting it again when in the perspective of the vampire hunter’s traitorous assistant or the thieving chief financial officer, will make a big difference in the final product.

In editing, watch for those personal clichés – words, phrases, fall-back characterizations, pet details that get thrown in time after time – and do the DT to come up with something fresher.

And we haven’t even gotten to the big ticket items, like…

Taking a character down two different choices, in very rough draft form, and see what comes up – the expected heroic action, and the terrible mistake that further complicates the plot and botches up your outline.

Writing in an office or other quiet space if you’re a “need noise” type of writer, or in a public or family space if you’re the “need peace” type, to see what comes out (but write fast and without stopping, using environmental stimuli or whatever’s rattling around in your head.

Write in the voice of a favored or newly discovered writer (yes, I know, it’s what beginning writers do, but sometimes it does a body good to go back and try that trick again, only this time don’t do Lovecraft or Spillane or Hemingway…)

Get lost. No, really, I mean it. Bring a map or GPS to get yourself out of the mess you’re going to put yourself in, and do check the news for the area you’ve targeted to make sure there are no mutant cannibals or rips in the space/time continuum that might mess you up. But do break personal routines and habits every now and then, embrace wrong exits, restaurants out of your cultural range, foreign flicks that don’t have kung fu in them, if only for a little while.

I mentioned listening to children. Listen to them again when they watch a movie or talk about a book they read in school. Listen to people who are not diehard fans of whatever you really love to read or watch, to understand what doesn’t work, why they don’t buy into time lords or starships or monsters or even evangelicals. You probably won’t be able to change their minds, but hearing their criticisms might make you work a little harder to be more believable to wider audience.

If you’re the hyper-critical type, of course, loosen up, and if you’re the fly-by-the seat-of-your-pants type, tighten up. Throw out the outline for a minute, or use one and see what happens. Change out of your usual type of narrator or character types. I’m not saying base a whole novel on this, but in a more complex story, take a small step out of the gender/sexual orientation/religious belief/ethnic group box.

Anyway, check out disruptive thinking as a way to make yourself productively uncomfortable

BEST OF 2011

By Carole Lanham, on January 2nd, 2012

What makes a book stand up and say READ ME! I’ve spent a lot of time in recent months researching different marketing strategies and to do this, I set aside my own writing and took a closer look at the books piled up on my Kindle shelves and spilling across the nightstand next to my bed. Today being the second day of a brand new year, I thought I’d share why I chose to read the books I chose to read in 2011. The rules of attraction might be different for you, but I’m still hoping I can find useful ways to use this knowledge when it comes to my own book sales. I’d love to hear what draws you to read a particular book so please share! Meanwhile, here’s what grabbed me in 2011 and why:

YOU HAD ME AT BACON
Word of mouth is number one for me. Outside of an obvious preference for titles that match up with my own personal taste, nothing makes me hungrier for a book than a scrumptious endorsement. Some opinions are more apt to sway me than others. A suggestion made by a friend who likes what I like will obviously carry more weight. Trusted online review sites are also good. I’m really loving Goodreads right now, which is nothing but a gigantic mouth passing along the word. Creating good buzz through reviews, blogs, reading groups, and advertising is key, of course. How you create that is something I’m still studying, but boy do I love my homework.

YUM, A FREE TASTE!
I’m one of those people who will buy a ten pound tub of Foie Gras if I taste an appetizer off a tray at the grocery store and it tickles my taste buds and I need a teaspoon of the stuff to make the appetizer at home. One of my favorite things about Kindle ownership is the free samples. If a sample tastes delicious, I’m all yours Baby – heart, body, and soul! If not, there are other fish in the sea and I’m moving on. That free sample from Amazon is all-important if you’re me. I’ve passed on many a book because of it – books I might have otherwise bought had I simply read the book jacket while rushing through Borders in the olden days. I try my best to grab a sample at the bookstore or library too but you’ve probably only got one or two paragraphs to snag me there. Outside of word of mouth, a savory sample is the second best way to earn my business.

BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP
This is true, but I happen to be shallow as hell. An alluring book cover stops me in my tracks every time. I like a pretty spine and I’m not afraid to admit it. I might not end up going anywhere with you, you dazzling little thing you, but you’ve definitely caught my eye. If you talk as pretty as you look, I might jump on you right now. One word of caution though; if you’re a writer whose decided to put your own book on Amazon, please choose a book cover that will look good as a thumbnail. A cover I have to squint to see has the opposite effect. Unless you come highly recommended, a tiny, too dark, too elusive piece of cover art on Amazon is a real big turn off for me.

HAH! MADE YOU LOOK!
A clever and/or compelling book title really is tied for third place with good cover art when it comes to why I choose a book. Some titles are just more fetching than others. No, I won’t buy a book based on this alone but then again, in the vast sea of books I have to choose from, you’ve at least made me look.

A CHEAP DATE
I don’t care so much about the cost of a book, actually. I like lobster and I’m willing to pay for it. That said, when the above features line up, a nice price is appreciated. All things being equal, I will go for the better deal. If I have a Barnes & Noble gift card to spend, I want to make the most of it. In this economy, who doesn’t love a good bargain?

WHY IS SHE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT FOOD?
Some of these things authors have control over. Some they don’t. Speaking only as a reader, this is the stuff I care about. I’m drawn to books that my trusted sources are raving about, I’m a sucker for a juicy sample, my eye is drawn by interesting book covers and/or fabulous book titles, and I’d rather buy two books for my money than one.

As a follow-up, about a year ago I wrote a post on the importance of having good cover art. Several authors with more experience than myself pointed out that it is rare for an author to have much say about the look of their own book covers. With the increased popularity of publishing one’s own book on Kindle, more people are choosing their covers now than in the past, but there is still something to be said for having professional input. When my book was published this year, I held my breath and said a fervent prayer before taking a look at the cover art the publisher sent over. I got very lucky. I loved it. If you’re in my same boat, I wish you similar good fortune! With all the work that goes into writing a novel, it’s a real blessing when the publisher finds you a cover you love.

I’d like to close this month’s post with some of the books that swept me up, either for a moment or for their entirety, in 2011. Please share your own as there are many more that deserve recognition than the ones I’ve run across lately. And yes, the last book I included on my list of Best Covers is the book cover of a dear friend. And yes, Crossroad Press happens to be the publisher. But it’s lovely cover art and it definitely made me look.

The following books appear in no particular order -

Best Titles of Books 2011

Bedtime Stories for Children You Hate by Antoinette Bergin

There But For The by Ali Smith

The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel by Sam Torode

Women and Other Monsters by Bernard Schaffer

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Speed Dating With the Dead by Scott Nicholson

Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer

Go the F**K to Sleep by Adam Mansbach & Ricardo Cortes

Best Book Covers 2011

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

How the Dead Live by Derek Raymond

Unloveable by Sherry Gammon

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay

A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

The Martyring by Thomas Sullivan (Kindle Edition)

Carole Lanham is the author of The Whisper Jar from Morrigan Books.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Whisper-Jar-ebook/dp/B0062ID33K

Auto Draft

By David Niall Wilson, on December 31st, 2011

So, here we are sliding into another New Year. I’m in my armchair, watching silly TV with Trish and two of the kids, three other kids spread far and wide with friends and family…and thinking about saying something profound, or moving – anything to brighten that first day of 2012 for someone reading this post. Not sure where this is leading, but here goes.

The thing that comes to me is that I’ve been blessed over the years, particularly in my writing career, with a number of truly remarkable friends. We are drinking Blue Mountain coffee tonight (expensive, but actually worth every penny). The reason is not so simple. Many years back, when I published my own magazine, I did a tribute issue to Manly Wade Wellman, a writer I’ve loved since I was young. I missed my chance to meet Manly, he passed on right before I did the issue, but through that project I met others. I met the late Karl Edward Wagner, who was an inspiration, friend, and who connected me, in turn, with others.

One of those others was Hugh B. Cave. When I met Hugh, he was already in his eighties, but still writing steadily, and with style. He sent me stories for my Wellman issue, and I ended up being so impressed I followed immediately with a Hugh B. Cave issue. Hugh was an amazing man, and one of the things he did during his long life was to run a plantation in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Now, with Hugh gone, my company Crossroad Press is publishing all of his work in digital and audio, and Trish is helping with the copy-edits. We know more, through Hugh, than we ever expected to about Blue Mountain coffee, and the system in place that formed the co-op producing the tiny amount granted to the world each year. When we saw a tiny pouch of it for $20 in the grocery store, we nabbed it. I am happy to say that, like Hugh, the coffee is strong – amazing – and lives up to the words that brought it to us.

That is what I hope for in this new year. I want the words I write to bring images and dreams and enjoyment, and when and if my readers encounter something they met first through me – like The Great Dismal Swamp – I want the reality to make them smile and remind them of what I wrote. May all who read this have a wonderful 2012…

Be well, do something amazing, take some chances – live.

If Hugh was here…that’s what he’d tell you. Also – if you happen to see Blue Mountain coffee, and it seems like an awful lot of money to spend on such a small package…take a chance. You won’t regret it.

From the tail end of 2011 …

-DNW

The turning of the year

By Alma Alexander, on December 30th, 2011

Aaaaand here we are again. In just over 24 hours human beings will usher in yet another year, the fireworks will go off (or whatever method of celebration is locally pursued), people will laugh and scream and kiss and shout “Happy New Year”. The next day dumpsters will be full of empty champagne bottles, spent streamers, clumped confetti, old calendars. And we will have a new date to put on our checks, on our correspondence… on our lives.

It’s a time for looking back as much as for looking ahead.

That pic, up there? That’s a park in the city where I was born. Those are the earliest memories I have of Decembers, the crisp days on sun and snow, the sparkle and glow of snow under haloes of street lights and strings of holiday lights out where the sellers of cards and tinsel had their tables on the sidewals of the old city, standing behind them while their breath steamed from their lips and while they hopped up and down from one foot to the other clapping mittened hands together for warmth, the way snow crunched underfoot when I walked upon it with my small hand in that of a parent or a grandparent, hurrying hither and yon on end-of-year errands of one sort of another. Those were the days I had a bedtime, and staying up to midnight was an adventure, and New Year’s Eve was something big and magical that I was allowed to stay up for and await even when my eyelids were at half mast and I was yawning mightily – but it was NEW YEAR, and I was part of the family which had gathered together to greet it.

I lost a couple of decades of my life to living in the “wrong” hemisphere, where December was full summer, where New Year parties were barbeques on the beach, and I NEVER accepted that – some part of me, deep inside, rebelled at the wrongness of it all, because if you look at almost ANY remotely “traditional” Christmas card (yes, even those sent in Australia or South Africa) it will show you the snow and the cold legacy of my own childhood. Yes, I realise how Eurocentric this all makes me sound – but sue me, I grew up there, and to me that was the right and proper way, and I could never ever shake that. The first “Real” winter I spent back in the proper hemisphere, dressed in a manner I deemed fit for the season (sweaters and gloves and boots and scarves and woolly hats) and looking at the bare branches of winter outside, watching the first fat flakes of snow falling, I cried. I was somehow deeply, viscerally, HAPPY and all was right with the world once again.

I need these long cold nights at the turning of the year, when I lay my head on my pillow and watch the winter moon rise into the sky through my bedroom window. I need them to recharge, to think, to remember, to gather the strength for the things to come which will be sent to try me (and some will. Some always come. That is the way of the world, and ever has been).

Tomorrow night, I will rip the last leaf out of the old calendar, and we will start again. Anew. Clean slate. Fresh new January 1.

Come in, 2012. The house is warm. There will be mulled cider. There will be quiet plans made by and beside the people I love most in the world.

May the New Year come gently to all of you out there, and may it treat you well

The Reading Corner, With Added Sasquatches

By Richard Dansky, on December 27th, 2011

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – the net is awash in advice by, of and for writers. This is a good thing, insofar as getting information into the hands of folks who are interested in using it to become better at their craft is generally a good idea. There’s advice on writing, there’s advice on marketing, there’s advice on self-publishing, there’s advice on e-publishing, there’s advice on how one should comport one’s self when engaged in a metaphorical act of cross-species carnal knowledge between Rana pipiens and Pan troglodytes. There’s advice on writers and agents and editors and bookstore folk and podcasters and cover artists and blurb-givers.

But lost in this flood-stage river of writing advice tends to forget one important person in the equation: the reader. Sure, there’s lots of stuff out there about how you can get readers to buy your book (which is kind of important), and get them talking about your book, and get them reviewing your book on Amazon. But it feels like something’s missing from all that, the sense of the reader as reader, not customer, the notion that their role in this is to enjoy what the experience of reading. And that bothers me a bit.

I confess, I’m a big reader. I read fast, and I read often, and I spend a lot of time in airports, so I have lots of reading time. I also review books, more or less, for four publications, so there’s a pretty steady flow of reading material through Chez Dansky and its hotel room-shaped far flung outposts. In a given year, I’ll probably read about 120 books cover to cover, plus take bites out of another thirty. I love reading, love the experience of curling up with a good book (metaphorically curling, that is – the seats at LaGuardia really don’t allow for much in the way of alternative posture choices) and losing myself in it. I don’t read because I have to – the reviewing gigs follow the reading, not the other way around – I read because I genuinely enjoy it, and I genuinely hope that everyone who reads something of mine gets that same enjoyment.

One of the things I’ve done the past couple of years is track which books I’ve read in a given year via Goodreads. It’s not keeping score, it’s more a way for me to check myself to see what my reading habits are, and how they change, and if I need to stop reading so damn many graphic novels. (Answer: Yes. Yes, I do.) As the year wound down, I did a run through this year’s catalog, and thought about where I’d read them, and when, and how. And I realized there were stories to the reading, to go with the stories that I was reading, ways in which the things I’d read had resonated beyond the experience of just reading. I thought I’d share a few of them.

Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned The Seal (Joe R. Lansdale) – I bought this in an airport bookstore in St. Louis, waiting for a delayed flight to take me home to start the year. I read it in the airport, and was finished before my plane left the ground. On the flight, I read an uneven biography of Forrest J. Ackerman, and fretted over the fact that I’d dinged the cover.

A Man Called Intrepid (William Stevenson) – Read mostly in a hotel room in Paris, off the Bastille. Three weeks at the head office to start the year off, punctuated by news that two relatives I loved dearly had passed away. One of them, according to family folklore, had served in Europe, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was a good and generous and strong man, much loved by all who knew him. I learned of his passing while stalking back and forth in the courtyard of the Louvre one cold night, trying to uncross figurative wires and meet up with the marvelous Gio Clairval, writer and translator, and fellow friend of Bull Spec editor Samuel Montgomery-Blinn. Eventually we found one another, and had a lovely dinner over which many stories were told, and I didn’t mention that Uncle Joe had passed because, really, that would have been kind of selfish. Eventually dinner wound down, and we said good evening, and I walked myself home to my hotel. And in the evenings the rest of that trip, I’d read myself to sleep with stories of derring-do from World War II.

Journal of a UFO Investigator (David Halperin) – Read for the sake of a review and interview of the offer, for Bull Spec Magazine. The interview was at Foster’s Market in Durham, and I was lost and late getting there. I parked in the wrong lot, sprinted in, and recorded the whole thing on my new iPad, which would have been fine if I’d had any chance to test recording things on my new iPad before breaking it in at the interview. The author, David Halperin, was wonderful and generous with his time, just as the book was wonderful and generous. Later, he wrote me to say that he thought the review nailed exactly what he was trying to do with the book, and asked if I’d be kind enough to repost it to amazon. So I did.

Ice Cream: A History (Ivan P. Day) – Read on the back deck of my house with a glass of homemade lemonade as accompaniment. That didn’t happen a lot this year; 20 or so weeks on the road. The hammock went almost entirely unused.

A Mammoth Murder (Bill Crider) – Bought off a dealer’s table at World Horror Con, pretty much because the back cover copy promised a Bigfoot angle to the mystery. I read it at home in the first couple of days following the con. The Bigfoot angle was pretty much a dud, but those who seek Bigfoot are used to failure. God forbid anyone ever actually found a sasquatch; the zoologists would move in instantly, and where would all the happy cryptozoologists be then?

The John Varley Reader (John Varley) – Read in a variety of places around Visby, Sweden. Four stories were read on the beach. Two were read as I perched precariously on the old town wall. Three more in a coffee shop, waiting for something that wasn’t coffee. You get the idea. And in the end, the book stayed there, left behind at the hotel for their tiny lending library, so someone else might get a chance to read it the way I had.

A Taste for Absinthe: 65 Recipes for Classic and Contemporary Cocktails (R. Winston Guthrie) – My wife is a statistician. She is also an absinthe fiend, having become thoroughly hooked on the not-so-blithe spirit during a trip to Prague for a writing workshop with John Kessel and Wilton Barnhardt. When this book came in for review, she decided we’d be having an absinthe party so we could review the recipes scientifically, with a matrix and, err, statistical stuff. So we invited friends over, and we bought a bunch of absinthe, and we made a lot of drinks, and, well, I’m pretty sure I remembered enough of the evening to actually write the review. Were any of the drinks any good, though? You’ll have to ask her.

Mendoza in Hollywood (Kage Baker) – Kage Baker passed away in early 2010. She and I both wrote for Green Man Review, and I was asked to write an appreciation of her for the magazine in the wake of her passing. I’d read and enjoyed her work prior to that, of course. 2011 was the year I really fell in love with it, and I dove in and devoured that which I had not already read. Sometimes, we find things too late; we don’t want to read the next thing from an author who’s gone because that brings us one step closer to reading the last one. Then again, there’s still joy to be taken in the reading of what is there, and there’s a brand new copy of Empress of Mars waiting for me in my to-read pile.

Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed (Philip Plait) – Read in Toronto, in a hotel room that was hugely spacious but lacking in a desk. In the convenience store next door, I was nearly trampled by a Lady Of The Evening stampeding her way to the drink cooler; apparently she was jonesing for a strawberry-kiwi Snapple. Later, I saw her on the street, yelling into her cell phone, tottering on heels high enough to require elevators, and clutching the half-empty Snapple bottle like it was the stuff of life itself.

The Disappearing Spoon (Sam Kean)- Bought in T.F. Green International Airport after a lengthy, lengthy conversation with one of the booksellers there. It was the trip home from NECON, and any books we’d bought there were packed and tucked away. Our flight was delayed – pretty much every flight I had this year, with the exception of the prop job puddle jumper that got me to and from Visby at ungodly hours in the morning was delayed, canceled or otherwise banjaxed – so Melinda ran back to the bookstore to pick up some things we’d talked ourselves out of buying. In truth, the bookseller had helped with that. He’d been so engaging and knowledgeable – and so interested in the fact that there was a writers’ convention down the road he’d never heard of – that we focused more on him, than on the books. But he got us on the rebound, and I read the book in dribs and drabs, one gaggle of elements at a time, over the next week.

Unseen Academicals (Terry Pratchett) – Also read in Toronto, as much of the back half of my year was spent there. I bought it from a tiny, cluttered used bookshop on Yonge Street, where the shelves had long since given up the fight and the books were stacked ten high and three rows deep on the floor. I read it over meals and in cab rides, reading it with one eye to make sure that I got where I was going and didn’t end up lost in the hinterlands of Missasauga or some such. Maybe I read it slower that way. Maybe it was just a very dense book. In any case, I didn’t finish it until just before I left for home. Many books I read on the road, stay there. If it’s not something I’ll read again and I can find a good home for it on the road, there’s no reason to shlep it back. Far better to let it stay behind so someone else could discover it. This one, though, came home with me.

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds (Manly Wade Wellman) – I was mocked by the lead singer of a Swedish prog-metal band for reading this visibly during his band’s set. Prog Day is a local festival, out way the heck and gone in Chapel Hill. My friend Steve Burnett introduced me to it a couple of years ago, and my modus operandi is pretty simple: pack some books, pack a chair, pack a cooler full of beverage, and go hang out. It’s what everyone else is doing, after all. It was just my luck that the lead singer of Freak Kitchen noticed me – us, really; Steve was reading, too – during his set. The book, of course, is by Chapel Hill resident Manly Wade Wellman; things come full circle when you least expect it.

To Rule The Waves (Arthur Herman) – A deliberately contrarian history of the British Navy, selected largely for its bulk and ability to be the only book I’d need on a trip over to Vienna. The reason for the trip was the inaugural STAGConf, dedicated to Storytelling and Games (see how that worked?) and held in the Museum of Natural History in Vienna. Between lectures, everyone would eat pastry, then scurry off to ogle the Venus of Willendorf. Pictures do not do her justice. She is stunning. And she put what we do – what we were all there for – in perspective. Nobody’s going to be going to museums to check out lines of dialog from Cold Fear, twenty four thousand years from now.

Girl Genius, Volume 1 (Phil and Kaja Foglio) – Part of a 6-box-of-books delivery from one of the magazines I review for. I tore them open and blasted through a good ten or so in the next two weeks. One of those weeks was spent on the road, which is when I read half of those books. The other half were all read that night. I stayed up, sitting in one of the living room chairs with my cat curled up next to me, going through one after another. After I wrapped up each book, I told myself I’d be off to bed. Then I’d pick up another book, and another, until the sun came up.

After the Apocalypse (Maureen McHugh) – This one was read traveling back and forth on the Toronto subway. The stories are mainly about everyday people finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances – we’re talking serious end-of-the-world stuff here – and acting in less-than-admirable but entirely believable ways. When you’re on a subway car surrounded by complete strangers, that sort of thing makes you think. My next subway book, for the record, was about sasquatches.

The Hollow Earth (Rudy Rucker) – Melinda brought this home from a World Fantasy Convention, years ago. I read a few pages, and put it down someplace vaguely accessible, and started reading something else. Every so often, I’d pick it up again, and read a few more pages, and then put it down again. This year, I decided to finish it. I picked it up. I sat down in a room with no other books in it. I read the rest of it without stopping for lunch, for tasty beverages, or for random acts of affection toward one of our cats (this is less optional than it sounds – none of them have been declawed, all of them have abandonment issues, and one actually managed to chase off a burglar at one point. Ignore at your peril). And when a few hours were up, I’d finished it. It was done. I’d never pick it up for a few pages and then put it back down, again. And it was OK. Not great, not a mindblowing read or an unstoppable narrative cannonball knocking me off my feet. OK. But I’m glad I finished it.

Monster Spotter’s Guide to North America (Scott Francis) – Am enjoyably disjointed mess of a book that never quite figured out what it wanted to be, but it’s full of hodags and wampus cats and sasquatches, and I’ll never say no to that. This one was a Hanukkah present from my family, much of which is down here. I’ve got an eight year old nephew, and he’s got a friend who’s suddenly decided that he’s into Bigfoot; he cornered Steve at a Christmas Eve party to ask him details of our abortive Bigfoot-hunting expedition in eastern North Carolina (Note: We didn’t find Bigfoot; we did find hippies), which thrilled him to death. Maybe one of these days I’ll sit down with him and my nephew, and we’ll go through this book, and figure out where we can find Bigfoot in suburban Raleigh. And if he asks, I’ll lend him the book, and he can read it, too. Happy new year, everyone. And happy reading.