Funny how the first day of September FELT like the first day of fall, a temperature drop of 15 degrees, the onset of Santa Ana winds, and an actual blue moon. All pretty auspicious if you ask me.
Fall is my favorite season by far. It always feels like the real new year to me, that back to school energy.
I’m excited for this fall/New Year and also overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed because I’m…
– Selling my house (yes, one of the five most stressful things a person can do. Some even say it’s #1!), and looking for another.
– Apparently I need to buy a new car, too. And if you think selling a HOUSE is stressful, baby – just trying being a femme the way I am definitely a femme and figuring out how to buy a car without a S.O. man involved…
– I have two conventions to get to in the next two weeks (the Writers Police Academy and Bouchercon) Which is AWESOME, don’t get me wrong, but the devil is in the details. Southwest should be paying ME at this point, is what I think.
– I haven’t done last year’s taxes yet (yes, I DID get an extension, I’m not THAT much of a femme…)
– I’m trying to get a new book, the sequel to Huntress Moon, out in November
– I need to do some serious Halloween promotion for my other books. That means OCTOBER.
– Everyone expects me to do an intensive story structure blog series for the month before and during Nanowrimo and I can’t imagine NOT doing it. That also means OCTOBER.
– I have a group anthology that we’re planning to release as an e book in OCTOBER.
Piece of cake, right?
Cue hysterical laughter.
Let’s get real. I can’t possibly do all of the writing things I should be doing this fall. I’d need to be a whole other person on top of the person I am to get it all done.
And yet I am surprisingly cheerful about all of this.
I have theories about this optimism. First, I took a vacation for the first time in ages (actually it was half work, but still, half a vacation in AUSTRALIA is pretty great!) and I can feel that my whole outlook has been rearranged; I’m still having crazy Australian dreams, too, a fun perk. And I came back to real life and even as I wade back into the deluge, I feel that enough of it will get done for me to keep on keeping on, the world hasn’t come to a standstill because I took some time off. Good to know!
Also, it’s a huge weight lifted that Huntress Moon is doing so well. Between that launch and the sales of my other e books, I’ve made the Top 100 Indie Bestselling Author list, and the relief that I actually made the right choice in breaking out into e publishing, and that I might actually understand how to make this work on my own, is vast. Besides that, e publishing makes actual sense in a way that traditional publishing never did: I know what I have to do and I understand approximately why it works, and I see the quantifiable results month by month; there’s no longer that bullshit cloud of mystery around the whole process that there used to be. And I KNOW WHEN I’M GETTING PAID now that I’m not subject to the whims of publisher “float”. Believe me, that makes my life a whole hell of a lot easier, just that.
I am further encouraged that my author friends like Murderati Zoe and Rob and Brett and Dusty, and other author friends in the Killer Thrillers! collective, who have always been doing the same kind of traditional publishing that I have been doing, are now doing much better at e publishing – by doing the same things that I am doing.
That’s a really fine feeling to have. Stabilizing, even.
I have a lot to handle this fall, but grueling as it all may be, it’s all positive, compared to a lot of not so fun stuff I’ve had to handle in the last few years. I’ve made some extreme choices that thankfully have paid off.
And I know what I need to do in the next three months:
– Finish Book 2 in my Huntressseries by the end of October
– Sell my house
– Find a new house that’s a good investment, hopefully by the end of the year
– Buy a new car, but rent one until I have time to actually look properly
– Launch the anthology
– Do my taxes (grrrrrr…)
– Go to Bouchercon and the Writers’ Police Academy
– Do a research trip to San Francisco
– Do the promo runs I need to do for Halloween
– Keep up with social media
– Dance more (a point really driven home now that I’m being able to take class with my favorite hip hop teacher in NC while I’m prepping the house. I can barely walk, but OHH, it hurts so good… and better than that, I feel human again.)
– Enjoy life!!!!!
So, ‘Rati, what I want to hear today is – What is YOUR fall (New Year’s) resolution list?
All the Murderati contributors know the deal, but some of our readers may have noticed my absence from comments for the past three to four weeks. Maybe?
Well, I’ve had good reason. I’ve been an extremely busy girl! First was a trip to Hawaii (which I blogged about), then South Australia for a writers festival (also blogged about that), and then the biggest event of them all — off to Korea to pick up our son. Told you I had a good reason.
We started the process of adopting our second child from Korea nearly three and a half years ago. Since we adopted Grace in 2007, the Korean international adoption program has changed dramatically. I could blog about that (in detail) but I won’t. All I will say is that while I think the ultimate goal is great from a societal point of view (to keep all Korean children in Korea, with loving Korean families) the actual outcome at the moment is probably not in the best interests of the children (in my humble opinion). Now, while there are less children being placed overseas, the ones who are adopted by American or Australian families are much older than they used to be. When we picked up Grace she was 4 months old, but our son was/is 16 months old. That being said, we know we’re both lucky and blessed and he IS settling in brilliantly. And we owe Korea a lot – our family. Now, onto the experience…
We got the news that we were allocated a baby boy in October last year. With this exciting news came the ‘bad’ news that the estimate for when we’d pick him up was early 2013 — so he’d be nearly two years old. We prepared ourselves for the long wait as best we could, knowing we were lucky to have Grace to focus our attention on.
Then, in July this year, we were asked to lodge a final bit of paperwork. Could this mean he was coming to us earlier? The government department that deals with intercountry adoption felt it was a good sign. We started to hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d be with us before Christmas. Maybe even by November. Then we suddenly got the call — you can pick him up in two weeks’ time!
We arrived in Korea late on Monday night, 27 August. Our first meeting was scheduled for 11am on Tuesday 28 August but at 9am we got a phone call bringing it forward an hour. Ahh!!! We managed to get ourselves ready (and presents wrapped) on time — just.
Our little boy arrived not just with his foster mum, but with his foster dad and one of his foster brothers (the foster mum has two boys, both at college). This immediately told us that they were all extremely close and it was going to be very difficult for them to say goodbye.
MinSeok was hesitant at first, but eventually warmed to us, led by Grace who was an absolute angel! The first meeting also involved the exchanging of gifts (Korean tradition) and in addition to some presents for us all, the foster family gave us a huge canvas trunk full of clothes and toys for MinSeok, plus two massive photo albums (including one professional album that features MinSeok in about 10 different outfits/shoots!). There was also an additional bag of his favourite toys. Incredibly generous (although luggage instantly became an issue!) We were also told he preferred men to women and about his routine.
At the end of the meeting I asked the foster mum if she thought he’d respond okay to us holding him, and she said he was normally okay, so yes. Both my husband and I got to hold him briefly. Very exciting, very surreal.
The big ‘handover’ day was set for Monday, but we decided it would be good to have another meeting in between, maybe on the Friday. So we asked our social worker at Eastern Social Welfare Society about it. At this point, we discovered the foster mum had been sick and in hospital and that it would be too much to get them to come in again (they live 1.5 hours by car from Eastern). We now believe this is probably why it all happened so suddenly in the end for us. Eastern rushed us through, knowing the foster mother was sick.
Our second meeting (which would be the handover) was very strange. For some reason, they’re holding these meetings in the foyer of Eastern. And while it is a ‘closed/private’ environment, there are Eastern workers walking around, other couples and families who are adopting, etc. Very strange. We’d witnessed three incredibly traumatic handovers in this pretty public forum and we weren’t looking forward to it. However, MinSeok was extremely good during that meeting and while the foster mum was crying at the end, MinSeok was in my husband’s arms and went off with him/us no problems and no tears. We took him straight to the room (we stayed at Eastern, which has two levels of rooms in their guest house), where he played for a bit, and still didn’t cry. Then again, we did have our secret weapon (5yro Grace).
The next day was tough…the tail-end of the typhoon caused shocking rain and after being cooped up for most of the morning and the first half of the afternoon we decided to brave it just to get out for coffee. We got soaked even with umbrellas. We raced back and had food in the fridge for Grace and MinSeok for dinner but only corn chips (and beer!) for the adults and it was too wet to even consider going out. Eventually we got Grace and MinSeok fed and Grace in bed, and after much walking MinSeok was asleep, too. The rest of our last night was spent packing and eating our dinner of corn chips with a couple of beers.
We weren’t sure what to expect the next day on the plane, but we had a dream flight. The first leg (Seoul to Hong Kong) was three hours and MinSeok kept himself busy. For the second leg, we’d only been up in the air for about 20 minutes when he fell asleep on my husband’s front (in the Ergo carrier) and he didn’t wake up until we’d been through Immigration and collected our bags in Melbourne! Hubby didn’t get any sleep, because any time he tried to put MinSeok into the plane cot or into my arms, MinSeok would wake up screaming. We only tried twice!
MinSeok (who at first wouldn’t really come to me at all) is now looking to me for comfort, food and also smiling and laughing. We’ve started him on a new routine (from a book I had when Grace was younger) and it seems to agree with him.
He’s really coming out of himself the past couple of days. Smiling, laughing, etc. Not that he’s ever appeared distressed or unhappy — more like he was just watching and taking it all in.
He’s absolutely gorgeous — if only I could post pics! We’ve signed something with the Victorian Government agreeing that we won’t post any photos or transmit electronically until we’re his legal guardians. It’s frustrating, but I can see their reasons.
So, after many years of waiting, I’m a mum again 🙂 My writing time is out the window, of course, but it’s more than worth it!
Also, Eastern Social Welfare Society does amazing work in Korea, helping the elderly, disabled, and orphaned and abandoned children who can’t be adopted due to the legal requirement of relinquishment. You can find out more at their website. We sponsor a gorgeous little boy who’s in Jacob’s House. Look at the sponsorship section if you’re interested.
At this point, there isn’t much more to write about the most recent literary sockpuppet scandal that hasn’t already been written. R.J. Ellory has been the subject of more ink and page-views over the past two weeks than Clint Eastwood’s empty chair. The poor bastard’s been slammed from pillar-to-post for writing fake reviews under phony names that not only glorified his own work, but trashed the work of others, and enough of his fellow writers have stepped up to condemn him — and, to some extent, even defend him — that one would think there’s no angle to this shitstorm that hasn’t already been examined a thousand times over.
Well, I can think of maybe one.
As Martyn demonstrated here earlier this week, the vast majority of the outrage people have expressed over Ellory’s behavior has been due to the reviews he pseudonymously posted ripping other authors, including Mark Billingham and Stuart MacBride. People wonder what could have possessed the man to do such a thing. After all, aren’t we in the crime writing community all one big happy family? Don’t we all share a mutual respect for one another that supersedes any jealousies or resentments we could otherwise harbor toward those more successful than we are? Aren’t we above all the foolish and petty infighting that has marred the landscape of literary fiction for years?
Uh, no, no and no.
The truth is, crime writers are just as capable of making enemies of other crime writers as Gore Vidal was of making one of Norman Mailer. We may all be in this writing game together, but some of us are sinking like a stone while others are tanning themselves on the deck of the Good Ship Lollypop, and the disparity between the two states of being sometimes goes to a crazed person’s head. Most of the time, this crazed person is the writer holding the short end of the stick, but not always; sometimes, the fear and paranoia behind all the venom are actually a byproduct of being the one on top looking down.
I know a thing or two about this enemy-making business because I’ve made more than a few myself. I know this leaves you incredulous — “An old softy like Gar Haywood making enemies?” — but it’s true. I’ve done it in various ways:
Daring to criticize other authors by name. Just as the first rule of Fight Club is “You do not talk about Fight Club!” (followed by the second rule: “You DO NOT talk about Fight Club!”), some crime writers believe a similar, even more sacred rule exists for Authors’ Club: “You DO NOT talk about other authors!” Which is an admirable sentiment, to be sure, but a rather unrealistic and immature one, as well. I mean, “If you can’t say something nice . . .” might work fine as an operating principle out on the playground at PS 44, but no adult who enjoys thoughtful discussions of matters literary as much as I do should be expected to adhere to it.
Needless to say, there’s a line between honest criticism and personal attack that should never be crossed, and I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever crossed it. But this is a distinction lost on some of the writers I’ve publicly taken to task for one perceived technical failing or another. To them, any negative word spoken by one writer about another in the public square is tantamount to slander, and whoa be to him who breaks the Brotherhood’s code of silence in this manner.
Taking myself too seriously. Humble as I am, I am not without ego, and some of my peers have confused a healthy dose of self-confidence with insufferable hubris. This is perfectly ridiculous. How could anybody with my Bookscan numbers be afflicted with insufferable hubris?
Not taking myself seriously enough. Believe it or not, not everyone finds my brand of self-deprecating humor, as illustrated above, hilarious. In fact, they think it cheapens my profession, which happens to also be their profession, so a joke at my expense is a joke at their expense. And how will they ever convince the Pulitzer fiction committee to give their work a serious look with clowns like me constantly mucking up the genre with a sense of humor?
As near as I can tell, the general assumption has been that R.J. Ellory posted those malicious reviews of Mark Billingham’s and Stuart MacBride’s books simply to scuttle their careers and advance his own. And maybe his motives were precisely that impersonal.
But I doubt it. My guess is — and it’s only a guess — somewhere down the line, Mr. Billingham and Mr. MacBride, individually or as a pair, did or said something that Ellory found personally painful, and deserving of some kind of payback. So he gave it to them.
If I’ve learned anything about myself and my fellow crime writers over the years, it’s that, by and large, we are all rather delicate creatures. Which is to say, we bruise easily. We don’t like criticism and we don’t trust the judgment of anyone who would presume to offer it, especially another writer.
Let me give you an example:
There is a Big Name Author I used to appear on panels with quite frequently. Let’s call him Leonard. I have always liked and admired Leonard, and have a great deal of respect for his work, as many readers of genre and non-genre fiction alike do to this day. But back then, Leonard, like everyone else who’s ever shared an open microphone with me, was often at the heart of the one-liners I like to sprinkle throughout a panel appearance, and unbeknownst to me, he didn’t like it. Stephen or David will tell you, having seen it firsthand, that no co-panelist of mine is safe from my rapier-like wit, I’m an equal-opportunity quipster — but Leonard had the idea I was always singling him out for special ridicule.
So the phone rings on my desk one day, not long after we’d done a panel together and a month or so before we were scheduled to do another. And Leonard — who’d never called me on the phone before — says, “I can’t do our panel.”
I’m thinking he’s fallen ill. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“No, no, I’m fine, it’s not like that. I mean, I can’t do another panel with you. I just can’t.”
“What?”
The rest of the conversation is a blur after all these years, but through my shock and awe I heard Leonard tell me that he couldn’t take my making fun of him anymore, and he wasn’t going to. We’d appeared on our last panel together, he was about to call the organizers of our next one to cancel and he just wanted me to know why he was doing it, first.
I was blown away. He thought I didn’t like him. Eventually, after I’d explained that nothing could be further from the truth, and offered to pull out of our panel appearance in his stead since he was the real draw of the event, not me, cooler heads prevailed and he agreed to do the thing, after all.
But as you might imagine, nothing has been the same between us since.
I hesitate to suspect Leonard “hates” me now, because that sounds incredibly pompous considering our difference in professional stations. You’d think he had more important people to hate on. Still, if I cared to, I could probably build a case for him continuing to strongly dislike me based on some rather damning evidence, some of it eerily similar to that which earned R.J. Ellory such recent infamy.
I bring all this up now to pose a single question: Is writer-on-writer crime a damn shame?
Today is the eleventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I thought it would be appropriate to interview a first responder—in this case, someone who has worked in fire and emergency services for thirty-two years, both here in the U.S. and in New Zealand.
His name is Mark Chubb and he has served as a fire chief, emergency manager, engineer, inspector, and investigator in addition to his time on the frontlines as a firefighter. Mark is a member of the affiliated research faculty of the Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, and is a weekly contributor to HLSwatch.com.
He also assisted me in the writing of the fire-related sections of Done for a Dime, and by some sad, strange quirk of fate also happens to be my nephew.
I wanted to hear Mark’s opinions both about the attacks and where we find ourselves in public safety services eleven years later. Here’s what he had to say.
You were overseas in New Zealand on 9/11. How did New Zealanders react to the news? Was there a common sense of shock and vulnerability?
Because of the time difference, most New Zealanders learned about the attacks when they woke up on September 12th. By then, the Twin Towers had already collapsed and television news was presenting images of dazed and distressed New Yorkers fleeing Manhattan on foot, which I can only describe as post-apocalyptic.
New Zealanders like others around the world found these images not only shocking but deeply disturbing.
As you might imagine, my wife and I felt particularly vulnerable as we watched these images. She was born in the city and still had family there. Some were near Ground Zero when the attacks occurred. I had many friends in the area, some of whom responded to the World Trade Center and others who were emailing and texting their observations.
When we left the house we were taken by surprise as friends, neighbors, and total strangers embraced us. My wife stopped for breakfast while taking the kids to school. A lady near her, hearing her American accent approached and asked, “Are you alright?” She had been holding it together pretty well until then, and simply broke down in tears.
Before leaving home, I erected an American flag at our front gate. By the time I got home, people had left flowers, candles, and notes beneath it, transforming the site into an ad hoc neighborhood shrine that grew day by day.
You knew some of the firefighters who died in the towers. Has that personal element had an effect on how you view the job now that you’ve returned to the US and are once again working in public safety here? How has it affected others you know?
Just before the attacks, I had been selected for promotion to a uniformed command position with the fire service in New Zealand. The attacks made me more aware than usual of the responsibility I was assuming not only for the welfare of my community but the safety of those I supervised.
As you said, I knew two of the 343 firefighters killed in the World Trade Center collapse. One was Battalion Chief Ray Downey who oversaw the fire department’s special operations command. The other was Firefighter Andrew Fredericks who was assigned to one of the special operations squads deployed early in the incident. Both of these men were not only highly skilled and passionate about what they did, but also more willing than most to share their experiences with others.
Andy was particularly articulate and wrote for a trade magazine for which I was also a contributor. Ray Downey was probably the quintessential New York City firefighter. He had worked in all the toughest assignments, and not only enjoyed the work but shunned the rewards. His promotions, especially his last one, were practically forced upon him.
Even today, I think about the sacrifices made by Andy and Ray and so many others. To some extent, I take consolation in the thought that they died doing something they were passionate about. They truly put the welfare of others ahead of their own safety.
On the other hand, I wonder why others in responsible positions did not take the firefighters’ safety more seriously and withdraw everyone before the second tower collapsed. I don’t think anyone realistically expected the first tower’s collapse, but after it occurred the second one coming down was all but inevitable.
It’s hard to know what the incident commanders knew. They too paid the ultimate price that day. But in the aftermath we know everyone who could be saved had already evacuated by the time the towers fell. The civilian loss of life on floors below the levels of aircraft impact were minimal. Those above the impact never stood a chance of getting out alive.
I think this incident still haunts anyone close to it or to the people who were there. The lesson I took from the attacks and the fire service response to them was the importance of keeping my head and heart connected when I’m making high-stakes, time-critical decisions that affect others’ lives.
What were some of the differences you saw in firefighting and public safety in general once you were back here in the states — was it a sea change or pretty much the same as before only more so?
I think the fire and emergency services have become self-absorbed and even opportunistic since 9/11. Some of these changes were already in process before I left the U.S. in 1999, but I think 9/11 accelerated the trend quite a bit.
After Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway and Timothy McVeigh’s attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, firefighters were pleading their case before Congress for more federal financial assistance.
The argument went something like, “Hey, the cops get $11 billion per year in federal assistance. Don’t count on us to go into a subway filled with nerve agent if you don’t give us the money to equip and protect ourselves.”
The professionalization and militarization of public safety services has left those who provide these services more and more disconnected from the communities they serve. These days many cops and firefighters live well outside the communities where they work. As a result, public safety is now a service procured from others instead of something the community organizes to provide for itself.
You’ve been among a group of insiders in the public administration domain who’ve tried to sound the alarm that salary and benefit packages for public safety employees have to be sustainable to be realistic. This obviously isn’t popular, especially in a post-9/11 world. With three California cities filing for bankruptcy largely due to the burden of their public safety contracts — one of them my hometown — this is hardly an abstract matter. How do you see this scenario playing out, and how do you see fire and police services transitioning in the era of austerity many see coming?
I have been pretty outspoken about the salaries and benefits paid to public safety employees, and I do consider the current situation in many communities both unrealistic and unsustainable.
Before I address the problems I see, I need to make it clear that I am a firm believer that government jobs should pay not just a market wage but also a living wage.
The question about what constitutes a living wage is the subject of some controversy, but most citizens would agree that a living wage is one that pays enough for someone to live and raise a family in the community where they work.
Market-based wages are another question entirely, though, especially when it comes to public safety employees. Unlike many other government jobs, police and fire service are monopoly enterprises. It’s hard to find truly comparable jobs in the private sector to draw comparisons with.
When I started my career in the early 1980s, most cities were coming out of a period of very hard times. The response from many cities was to make public safety services more innovative and productive. Paramedic programs started in this era. Firefighters acquired new skills in rescue and hazardous materials response.
Starting about the same time, the incidence of fires dropped dramatically. Most of the decline seems to have occurred not because of but rather in spite of fire service efforts (or lack of effort for that matter).
As a consequence, a fire department’s main job these days has little to do with fires. In most cases, fires account for 2-5% of all emergency calls. Medical emergencies account for 70-85%. The rest of the calls are minor accidents, investigations, and false alarms.
Even with the sharp increase in medical responses, most fire departments have seen overall activity levels drop, at least on a per capita basis.
Meanwhile, it has become clear, at least to those who have studied the matter closely, that investments in staffing to reduce response times make very little difference. Building and staffing a fire station with career firefighters for something like $1.6-2.0 million per year rarely results in equivalent savings to the community in terms of life and property, productivity, insurance premiums and so on.
Do you see a possible silver lining in the cutting back of fire and police services, in the demand for greater citizen engagement with their own safety?
Yes, I do. Bankruptcy is unappealing to say the least. But it forces the kind of reckoning I think is inevitable.
For starters, it opens the eyes of the community and its public employees to their shared plight. The lack of common cause is a big part of the problem today, and bankruptcy puts everyone in the same boat.
Clearly, the expectations of citizens in bankrupt cities have changed. They take a more active interest in defining what needs to be done and deciding how and how well it should be done.
Disasters affect individuals as members of a community. None of us has the capacity to confront the challenges of recovery alone. If we didn’t need help, it wouldn’t be a disaster.
Creating conditions that give us confidence in the community, not just in the public servants we pay to protect us, makes it more rather than less likely that we will come through together when the chips are down.
* * * * *
Anyone who wishes to comment, in any way they wish, please feel free.
* * * * *
Jukebox Hero of the Week: Igor Stravinsky. His use of a major seventh chord in this beautiful arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner earned the wrath of the Boston Police in 1944, who warned him he could incur a $100 fine for any “rearrangement of the national anthem in whole or in part.” The incident soon established itself as a myth, in which Stravinsky was supposedly arrested for playing the music. (The mug shot you see on the YouTube video is a hoax.)
OK. I wasn’t going to comment on the sock puppet issue because I’ve had plenty to say about it in the last week, through various outlets and none of it complimentary to the writers involved. Both Linda and I signed the letter too. And I was going to let it die down because it should. Or I was going to let other writers talk about it. But then I saw something on Facebook that no one else commented on and I couldn’t let it go. Because I think it may have repercussions for all of us.
The thought of writers inventing false names to big themselves up and give fake reviews isn’t, to my mind, the bad part. I can understand that in the wider context of PR and publicity. After all, how many of us have been complicit with our editors when they have approached other writers to blurb our books? How many of us have gone into a branch of Waterstones or Barnes and Noble and turned our books face out on the shelf? Little things, not necessarily morally right but not big enough or bad enough to hurt anyone. Incidentally, I in turn have been asked to blurb other writers’ books. And to be honest, if I’ve liked the book I’ve done it, if I haven’t I haven’t done it. I can’t speak for other writers but that’s what’s worked for me. If the book’s no good and it’s got my (or Tania’s) name on it, I can’t feel too happy about that. So thinking about what you have to do to get your book noticed in a crowded marketplace, assuming another identity to talk yourself up in forums and on Amazon, while being something I wouldn’t do, I can at least understand.
The four writers who have figured most prominently in this – Stephen Leather, John Locke, Roger Jon Ellory and Sam Millar – have only succeeded in making themselves look foolish by their actions. For instance, Ellory proclaiming himself a ‘magnificent genius’ just seems laughably pathetic, although that kind of Messianic self-delusion seems to be common amongst Scientologists. No, it’s the flipside of this that has, quite rightly, earned them anger. The attacks on other writers. It emerged that Stephen Leather had maliciously targeted another writer who didn’t like his books, even going so far as to set up a website in the other writer’s name with the sole intention of praising his own books. He also made nasty personal attacks against Jeremy Duns and Steve Mosby when they uncovered evidence of his behaviour. Ellory posted spiteful and vindictive reviews of Mark Billingham and Stuart MacBride’s novels on Amazon. The review of Mark’s book – hastily taken down when the story broke – along with other things he has anonymously said against him on Amazon forums wasn’t just unpleasant but tipped over into slander and possibly libel. Sam Millar – although he still denies it despite what seems to be damning evidence that again hastily disappeared – targeted Stuart Neville and Laura Wilson in a similarly bilious manner.
Now, here’s my disclaimer. The writers targeted by spitefully bad reviews mentioned above are all good friends of mine. I’m just stating that in case people think I have some particular axe to grind. I don’t. I’ve seen what they’ve been going through as a result of this and it’s horrible. Getting bad reviews is awful enough but it’s so much worse coming anonymously from fellow writers.
And another disclaimer: I know how they feel. It’s happened to me.
Back in 2000 when my third book, Candleland, came out, I was subjected to a review in a prominent (at the time) magazine. It was a dreadful review. Awful. Almost incoherent in its rage against my book. At that time there were limited opportunities for new crime novels to find an audience and I’d just lost some valuable publicity. People judged the book by that review. People began to judge my other work in context to it as well. I was trying to make a bit of a name for myself and doing what I could to help the books take off and this was a setback. And then I found out something else. The author of the review was actually another writer. I checked this out, looking through all his (I’m assuming it was a he since he had a male name) other reviews. They were all equally scathing, all aimed at writers who had showed a bit of promise. Another writer told me he knew this person’s identity but he refused to tell me. I tried to find out but couldn’t. I figured it was someone I knew and even had a vague idea who it was but couldn’t prove it. I found it really difficult to go to CWA meetings and publishing events knowing that there was a very good chance that the person who had written that was sitting there, possibly even sitting with me, maybe accepting a drink from me. Pretending to be my friend. And then I started to think that maybe he was right. Maybe the book was awful. Maybe I didn’t deserve to think of myself as a writer. Maybe I should give up. And everyone else, all the other crime writers – was that what they all thought of me? Did they agree? Were they right?
Luckily there were other reviews, good ones – notably a great one in The Guardian – and things eventually began to pick up. This reviewer eventually disappeared. The person behind him decided he had had enough. And that was the end of that. But it really rankled. It hurt. Since then I’ve been fortunate enough to make a career out of crime writing. I love being part of the crime fiction community, look forward to getting together when we can and am honoured and blessed to have made some truly wonderful friends in the community. So I remembered how much it hurt me when I saw what had been exposed this week. And I knew what my friends would be going through.
I’ve said some very angry things this last week sticking up for my friends. I’ve been challenged as to what gives me the right to talk like that, whether I’m so perfect I’ve never made mistakes or done things I regretted. And the answer is yes. Have I done things I regretted? Of course. Have I made mistakes. Definitely. Have I ever launched a deliberate, malicious attack on a fellow writer with the sole end of damaging their career and livelihood? Of course not. I would never dream of it, no matter what I thought of them or their work.
So when the dust started to settle over this affair I began to think that would be that. It was Amazon. Just Amazon. Yes, it screwed with their rating system and created false readings and recommendations. Did writers down and others up. Even before this happened I always mistrusted the reviews on Amazon. I can honestly say I’ve never bought a book because of an Amazon review. And besides, there are still professional critics and reviewers who provide impartial, accurate reviews with no axe to grind. The readers can still trust them.
Well, perhaps.
This is the thing I saw on Amazon that no one has commented on. Larry Gandle, who reviews for Deadly Pleasures magazine and the Tampa Tribune, posted a message of support for Ellory but – and this is the kicker – ended by saying ‘As far as his negative reviews on other authors – he is entitled to his opinion and I agree with almost everything he has said about them.’
Now, I don’t know if I’m being naïve, but is that acceptable behaviour for a reviewer to exhibit? A reviewer who wants to be taken seriously? Fair enough, Ellory may be a friend of his and he wants to give his support. Fine, but it may make his readers regard Gandle’s future reviews with a cooler eye and be less persuaded by them. But it’s that last sentence I have a problem with. Obviously, we are all allowed our opinions but it strikes me that making such a statement is at least unprofessional and at worst potentially damaging to Gandle’s reputation. How can his reviews be trusted to be impartial if he’s making statements like that?
So what should we do? Should reviewers have to declare their interests before they write? Or is that a little prohibitive? If that’s the case then perhaps we can’t trust any reviews or reviewers and if so that’s a sad state of affairs.
Right. What do we do next? How do we move this on? We’ve all signed the letter condemning this practise. Fine. The Crime Writers Association have made a statement. But nothing has really changed. I’ve got an idea as regards Amazon. Despite the practice of creating sock puppet accounts being illegal in this country, they’re not going to take any action that will affect their sales. They’ll ride this one out. However I do think there’s a way forward and my proposal is this. Any author found making anonymous attacks and posting malicious reviews on the site should have the ratings system removed from both themselves and their books. The books can still be sold on the site but there would be no reviews. And they in turn would not be allowed to make any. This again may be open to abuse but it’s the best and fairest I can think of.
Does anyone else have a better idea? If so, let’s hear it.
By the way – and here’s a bit of shameless, sockpuppet-free plugging – the new Tania Carver novel, CHOKED, is out in the UK next week. You can order it through Amazon here. And the latest Tania to be released in the States, THE CREEPER, is out too. You can buy that here.
Sitting at the dinner table with my wife and children I notice that my life has become the shining example of what my children should avoid. As I relate one riveting childhood anecdote after another I notice my wife carefully spinning each adventure into a somber cautionary tale. She always ends with the words, “And your daddy was lucky to survive. Don’t ever try that yourself.” Then she turns and gives me the look and all I can do is nod sagely and say, “Your mother is right.”
How did this happen? I used to imagine myself as Jack London, imparting lessons learned from voyages of survival in a world of unprecedented danger. These are rite-of-passage stories, rife with moral lessons gained from personal experience. My boys should know the things their father has faced in his life, if only because they might find themselves in similar situations down the road.
However, more and more I notice that my role in these adventures has been relegated to that of “foolish lad” or “incompetent prince,” a character whose actions serve as a warning to the more sensible villagers whose only desire is to survive another day.
It’s usually around the time I twirl the last string of pasta on my fork that a tale like this begins…
“Did I ever tell you guys about the time I wrestled a steer?”
“Is this when you fell off the mechanical bull and stayed in bed for a week?”
I stare at my youngest, cringing from the memory he evokes. “No, not that time. I’m talking about when I was in high school. Remember how strong I was in high school?”
Their eyes stare blankly back at me.
“Well, I was really strong back in high school. I weight-lifted, like, almost every day. And Wednesday nights I would stay at my friends house on the barn and we’d get up at four o’clock in the morning to feed the pigs and sheep and this big-ass, gigantic bull with long, thick horns sticking out of his head. One day I said to my friend, ‘I’m going to grab that bull’s horns, Scottie.’ ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ he said.”
“It doesn’t sound too smart to me,” my twelve year old says.
“Quiet, now, let daddy tell his story,” my wife says, smiling in a way that makes me feel a little less than comfortable. She pours some wine in my glass and nods for me to continue.
“Okay,” I say, timidly. “All right,” I continue, taking a sip of the cool, white wine. “I climb over the fence and the bull is looking right at me, like he can’t believe I’m coming in. I walk right up to him and clasp my hands on his horns. His eyes widen like you see in old cartoons. He tries to step back, but I hold him still. He starts to turn his head slowly, testing my strength. It feels good, this burn in my forearms, a lot like the forearm curls I used to do in the gym. But then he begins to snort a bit and his pulling gets rough. That burn in my forearms begins to sting and I realize I can’t break away from this, it’s not like an exercise where I can stop and take a rest.”
“So, what did you do?” my wife asks, smiling into her own glass of wine. The kids look from me to her. Suddenly it seems like she’s telling the story, like it was always her story to tell.
“Well,” I say, “I look back at my friend and he has this pale look on his face, his lower lip beginning to tremble. By now the steer is pulling pretty hard and there’s this low, guttural sound coming from his snout. Now I see that those horns which looked so blunt from a distance look pretty damn sharp up close. I’m starting to wonder what the next move will be. I decide I’ll just count down from five and by the time I get to one I’ll know what to do.”
My kids have stopped eating and they stare at me with all the anticipation a kid can muster. I swell with pride at the sight.
“And when you counted down to one?” My wife prods.
“I let go of those horns and bolt,” I yell, slapping my knee with excitement. “I run for that fence with all my might. I can hear him coming behind me, those hooves kicking up dirt, his snorting and farting getting closer, his hot breath on the back of my neck. I swear I can feel his horns cutting the air just below my shoulders, nicking my shirt as he swings his head left and right. I hit that fence and leap, pulling myself up like a trapeze artist. I land flat on my back on the other side and when I look around I see that bull pounding his head into the metal fence, making big, loud clanging sounds that cause porch lights to flicker on across the neighborhood. I look back at Scottie and raise my fist in the air. He stares at the ground, shaking his head like he’s lost some terrible bet. Damn, boys, now that’s a story!”
My wife pours herself some wine, ignoring the empty glass I hold towards her. She turns to face the kids. “So, who can tell me the first three things that daddy did wrong?”
My fourteen year old raises his hand. “Ben?” my wife asks.
“He didn’t listen to his friend.”
“That’s right,” my wife agrees. “His friend, the farmer, knew the bull wasn’t just a big dog, or a pony, or a goose. He knew the bull was a dangerous animal that shouldn’t be messed with.”
Another hand goes up. “Yes, Noah?”
“He thought he was stronger than he was.”
“Yes,” she says. “Daddy did that a lot. It’s called magical thinking, and it happens when people believe their own fantasies. A lot of people die doing things they think they can do, like skiing off mountain-tops or drag-racing cars in the street.” I nod at her reference to the stories I’d told them on previous nights.
Ben raises his hand again. “He thought he was smarter than the bull.”
“Yes, daddy often thinks he’s smarter than he is, which also gets him into trouble. Let this be a lesson to you both, be smarter than daddy was when he was your age.”
The whole thing kind-of dampens my enthusiasm and after dinner I usually find myself skulking over to the TV to Netflix episodes of Breaking Bad.
Most of these cautionary tales fall into the following categories:
Man v.s. Beast: The above story is a case in point. Other stories of this ilk include the time I jumped into the badger cage at the zoo in Window Rock, Arizona, or the time I rode that runaway rodeo horse in the mountain snow, or the time (this one was witnessed by my wife and kids) when I ran onto the highway in Central California to save the life of a tarantula, only to chase it directly into the path of an oncoming S.U.V. The entire family heard the explosive “pop” when the wheels flattened that sucker. Try facing your kids after that.
Pyrotechnics, or What Not to Do with Fire: I made Super 8 movies when I was a kid and they all had to have explosions and titillating special effects.
Fire seems to have played a significant role in my creative development. Recently an old friend contacted me on Facebook, telling me how he’ll always remember how we poured flammable film splicing cement over tennis balls, lit them on fire, and filmed them bouncing around my mother’s garage, in slow motion. I, myself, had forgotten this moment until my friend brought it to light.
All my early films had to include at least five explosions. Most of these films featured me and my high school buddies carrying plastic machine guns and chasing each other through ski runs, hiking trails and dusty New Mexican neighborhoods. When a character was shot, we found it imperative that he also explode. We accomplished our pyrotechnics by using gunpowder extracted from the rocket engines sold at hobby stores. We turned them into blasting caps we ignited using electrical leads that went from the “explosive device” to the battery on my mother’s car (“Mom, can I borrow the car keys for a sec?” “Sure, honey”).
Then there are the stories of high school camaraderie, where teams of listless youth banded together to create warring factions that battled it out in the desert in order to protect their tribal lands. I remember bottle-rocket fire-fights that ended in stalemate until someone lit a Roman candle and pointed it in my direction. Balls of colored fire skimmed the top of my head, igniting the tumbleweeds and sagebrush behind me. I remember the warring factions working as a team (there’s the moral, kids! We’re all in this together!) stamping out flames with our melting sneakers.
I often regal my kids with tales of neighborhood kids left to their own devices, how we turned the time-honored dirt-clod war into something truly exceptional by incorporating our community archery set, using safety-conscious, rubber-tipped arrows. All is well and good until you douse those puppies in FLAMMABLE FILM SPLICING CEMENT and strike a match! This was long before anyone had even heard of the Hunger Games.
I remember once sitting in the shadows watching the fire department extinguish the pine tree in our neighbor’s front yard.
There are other stories, of course, stories from a genre I call Altered States, which have their grounding in a period of my life where I experimented with drugs. These tales are usually adjusted at the dinner table and transformed into what I call “things I did after a couple of beers.”
There’s another favorite genre I call Adventures with Girls, which is my attempt to relate valuable courting instruction to my teenage boys. These stories usually get me the “stink eye” from my wife and are followed by the comment, “Never treat a girl the way daddy did. You boys should be gentlemen, the kind that opens doors for girls and showers them with kindness and affection.”
At this I smile and wonder if my boys get the subtext of all these tales. It wasn’t the kid who opened the door that got their mommy’s attention. It was the kid who lit the fire.
September marks the end of the first year of my Great e-Book Experiment. I can hardly believe that only twelve months ago I had none of the backlist Charlie Fox books out there in digital format. Now I have five of the books and a short story e-thology out on Kindle, and am just about to launch into all the other e-pub formats, plus my first foray into printed editions.
It’s been a hell of a year.
For me as a writer, the real joy has been to see Charlie’s story available again right from the beginning. So many readers wanted to start at book one, and I could see their enthusiasm waning when they discovered that only collector’s first editions were available, often at mind-boggling prices.
The first e-book I put together was FOX FIVE: a Charlie Fox short story collection. It was a huge, huge learning curve, during which I have many people to thank for putting up with my innumerable stupid questions. In many ways, it still IS a steep learning curve, but more on that later.
A short story anthology — which in e-book form I refer to as an e-thology in an attempt to bring the word into common usage! — was very different proposition from the first of the books themselves, however.
One of the things that immediately struck me was the layout. A traditional book often has a pre-title page (with just the book’s title on it), then the title page itself, copyright page, list of the author’s previous publications, a dedication, acknowledgements, maybe even the author biog. Only THEN do you reach the story itself.
With an e-book, where a prospective reader might well download a sample first before deciding to buy, those intro pages all eat into the sample. So I put the dedication on the title page, shifted the copyright, acknowledgements, and an extended author biog to the back of the book, but instead added a short synopsis — what would be the jacket copy on a printed book — so the reader is reminded of the story as soon as they open the file.
In addition, some brilliant writers were generous enough to do swap excerpts with me — Brett Battles, Blake Crouch, Lee Goldberg, Timothy Hallinan, and Libby Fischer Hellmann. I put a taster of one of their books in the back of one of mine, and they did the same for me. Plus, of course, an excerpt from the next book in the Charlie Fox series, just to whet your appetite for more.
And in KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one, I was also able to include the amazing Foreword by Lee Child, and my own Afterword, as well as two previously deleted scenes that I felt helped to fill out Charlie’s back story for what was to come. There’s also a short biog of the character, and the jacket copy for the other books in the series with suitable links.
In October, the next book in the series will be ready to go. Called DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten, it sees Charlie facing her toughest challenge.
In post-Katrina New Orleans, a celebrity fundraising event should have been the ideal opportunity for Charlie to piece together her working relationship with Sean, who has woken from his gunshot-induced coma with his memory in tatters. But the simple security job turns into a nightmare when an ambitious robbery explodes into a deadly hostage situation. Charlie is forced to improvise as never before, and this time she can’t rely on Sean to watch her back.
I’m already putting together the extras for the e-book version. And my question is, what else would you like to see in an e-book that there isn’t the space or opportunity to include in a printed book?
I’ve always loved the extras available on a DVD, and an e-book is now the literary equivalent. So, would you like insights from the author about the writing process, or asides about continuing characters giving you a little of their back story, or research notes that didn’t make the final cut? In DIE EASY, for example, I did an enormous amount of research about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, but only a fraction of that made it into — or was relevant to — the actual story. Would you like a bonus article on that?
I’m open to suggestions and fascinated to know what you all think! And I hope you’ll forgive for continuing to ask stupid questions — it’s how we learn 🙂
This week’s Word of the Week is epeolatry, meaning the worship of words. It comes from the Greek epos meaning word, and –latry meaning to worship.
I’m away this week, doing some very serious and labour-intensive research on a boat in the Mediterranean, but I’ll try to get to comments as soon as I can!
Call a player “Sycamore Flynn” or “Melbourne Trench” and something begins to happen. He shrinks or grows, stretches out or puts on muscle. Sprays singles to all fields or belts them over the wall.
—Robert Coover, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.,
J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
No, this isn’t about outing sock puppets. After the heated debate of yesterday on the issue of fake internet reviews, I thought a little cooling off—a palette cleanser, if you will—was in order.
(Actually, I’d already written the damn thing and I didn’t have time to whip up another.)
So, gentle readers, let’s turn our beautiful minds to the subject of character names—even though I’m sure some crank out there will read this and think what I’m secretly doing is giving everyone various ways to create pseudonyms for sock puppet villainy.
I’d rather shoot myself, frankly.
Anyhoo, here goes:
My favorite character name of all time comes from Richard Price’s Clockers: Buddha Hat.
No, he’s not a Zen milliner. He’s a drug enforcer. A bit counter-intuitive? Oh yeah. Ergo, perfect.
Best name I discovered in real life I couldn’t use because, well, a real person already owned it (and not a terribly nice person): Seth Booky.
Most writers will tell you choosing a name is one of the most crucial parts of a character’s depiction. Get the name right, so many other things just seem to fall into place. Get it wrong, everything else is a struggle.
Once you know the character’s name, once you can picture her vividly enough to know that a certain name suits her—or better yet, is intrinsic to her—you’re pretty much home free.
It’s sometimes said we grow into our faces, coming to resemble our real selves as we reach our prime. I wonder if we don’t also grow into our names: George Clooney. Hillary Clinton. Art Garfunkel.
A name can often substitute for a physical description if chosen wisely—think of the names from the TV series The Wire: Jimmy McNulty, Stringer Bell, Omar Little, “Proposition Joe” Stewart, Snoop Pearson, Bunny Colvin, Cutty Wise, Bunk Moreland, Bubbles.
And returning to Richard Price (who wrote for The Wire), there’s a man with a true knack for picture-ready names: Rocco Klein, Strike Dunham, André the Giant, Shorty Jeeter, Lorenzo Council, Little Dap Williams.
Other memorable character names:
Chili Palmer (Get Shorty)
Baby Suggs (Beloved)
Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
Ed Punch and Al Catalog (The Shipping News)
Ree Dolly (Winter’s Bone)
Madeline Dare (A Field of Darkness)
Rooster Cogburn (True Grit)
Jenny Petherbridge (Nightwood)
That said, there’s an intriguing challenge in a seemingly lackluster name—Jim Williams, Jane Smith, John Harris. Such names, by denying you a unique visual image, force you to remember that the character can’t be confined to such an image. He’s more than that. And he’s going to change, even as his name doesn’t.
But where do I get really good names, I hear you cry.
There is of course every author’s friend, the Random Name Generator, which has the eminently useful “obscurity factor” for increasingly oddball names. (Anything over 5 puts you pretty much in Dickens territory).
And, as they say, so on. Just Google “random name generator” and stand back.
But I invariably find the best sources are those that give you names people really use. A computer can crank out nearly infinite possibilities, but the fact a loving mother actually said—Yep, that’s my baby’s name—makes a subtle, sneaky difference. At least it does for me.
Which is why I’ve sought out real-life sources for interesting names. And what I’ve discovered, quite by accident, is that sports provides some of the strongest or most unique names for both men and women available.
Don’t believe me?
Brandi Chastain. Serena Williams. Dakota Stone.
Jake Stoneburner. Pudge Cotton. Philander Moore (I’m not making that up.)
That’s a mere sample. Let me share with you a few more names of athletes I just found too intriguing not to tuck away for further use. (A gift from me to you.)
Note: You seldom want to steal a name wholesale, so consider this list a set of parts, with interchangeable first and last names.
WOMEN
Mao Asada
Seimone Augustus
Susan Butcher
Gina Carano
Swin Cash
Tamika Catchings
Debora Dionicius
Carolina Duer (great name for an assassin)
Vonetta Flowers
Shindo Go
Chevelle Hallback
Christina Hammer (yes, she’s a boxer)
Ronica Jeffrey
Malia Jones
Ava Knight
Lo’eau LaBonta
Kina Malpartida
Misty May-Treanor
Heather Mitts
Carina Moreno
Susie Ramadan
Cat Reddick
Libby Riddles
Carolina Salgado
Ann Marie Saccurato
Briana Scurry
Miesha Tate
Diana Taurasi
Jackie Trivilino
Kaliesha West
Fatima Whitbread
MEN
Okay, these are a little more offbeat. I gathered them from an article titled
Now, I realize many of those names are “too weird not to be real,” and thus problematic as character names, which have to be believable in a way real names don’t. Reality always has the upper hand in weirdness, because it doesn’t have to make sense.
But for secondary characters or just a walk on the wiggy side, this just might point you in a useful direction.
Oh, and one last thing: If you read an online review by Barkevious Mingo, it’s not me. I promise.
* * * * *
So, Murderateros — what are some of your favorite character names?
What are your favorite sources for names?
Have you grown into your name? Your face?
Do any of the names I’ve listed above suggest characters to you? Describe them for us.
Using mix-and-match, what character names have you been able to create from the above lists?
* * * * *
Jukebox Hero of the Week: Bond. James Bond. Meet the Beatles:
Well, it’s Wildcard Tuesday and as reluctant as I am to take up this topic, I wouldn’t be doing my job as a mystery community blogger NOT to report on the scandal du jour (or de semaine, or du mois, probably.)
The subject is paid and fake Amazon reviews, and the internet is burning up with outraged posts, petitions, and condemnations against several authors:
– Stephen Leather and Roger Ellory and Sam Millar for creating sockpuppet accounts to praise their own books and trash those of competitors.
– John Locke for paying for at least 300 Amazon reviews and then – what I personally find even more reprehensible – writing a book on “How I Sold a Million E Books in Five Months” and charging $8.99 for it, while OMMITTING the fact that he paid for at least 300 Amazon reviews, which surely had a great deal to do with his sales success.
I’ve linked to some main articles below so you can catch up.
Go read here and here and here and here, and then if you feel like discussing, meet me back here.
There is a lot of sadness and discomfort mixed with my own outrage.
I like Roger Ellory very much as a person and I actually agree with his own reviews of his books, they’re some of the best crime fiction I’ve read in recent years. Why he thought that he had to pump up his already stellar reputation by creating fake reviews and trashing other fine authors like Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham is beyond me.
Except that it’s not.
I have done many stupid, regrettable things in my life, and paid dearly for those things, too. Usually when I have been completely out of my mind with – something – grief over a dying parent, grief over the loss of a loved one or a loved project, fear over my financial situation, fear over just about anything.
As completely unchristian as I am I can’t help thinking of that little verse about “she who is without sin” and “casting the first stone.”
It’s very easy to get caught up in the maelstrom of – well, anything, really, but publishing is what we’re talking about – and do stupid things we wouldn’t ordinarily condone or be caught dead doing ourselves.
When we can see other authors blatantly gaming the system: racking up success after success by faking reviews, publishing fan fiction that skirts or crosses the line of plagiarism which turns into a series of multimillion dollar bestsellers and a major movie deal, hiring other authors to write books for you and slapping your name on them while grossly underpaying the authors who actually WROTE the books – there’s a huge temptation to jump on one of those bandwagons because, hey, everyone’s doing it. And while I’m able to flatly say that the above practices are wrong – what about tagging parties? What about asking friends to bury one-star reviews by clicking “unhelpful” on Amazon? Is that gaming the system? Is it wrong?
BUT – even as I am remembering that I’m fully capable of doing stupid and condemnable things myself, I do very strongly believe that we authors have to police ourselves as a community. We need to talk, to debate, to develop standards and be able to say when required: This is wrong, this is duplicitous, this is unacceptable.
Whether that will stop the behavior, I have no idea.
But I also believe authors are for the most part an empathetic and moral lot. I really do believe that. I hope that all of these authors who have been caught out and are being held up as examples will take all this furor and censure to heart, self-correct, make appropriate amends to anyone who has been wronged, and go on to use their influence to do better. Much better.
And I would hope that friends of authors who are drifting toward moral gray areas would be the first ones to speak up and say – WTF – what are you thinking? Stop that shit NOW before you do somethiing you’ll regret for the rest of your life..
I SERIOUSLY hope that my author friends would step up and say it to me.
I hope we ALL will. Because we need to remember how easy it is to get caught up in the desperation of trying to make a living at this very tenuous profession and how easy it is to fall into behavior that serves no one. We ALL need a little help from our friends.
So, ‘Rati, I have a lot of questions today. Were you aware of the blazing heat suddenly surrounding this issue of paid and fake reviews? Are you feeling outrage about any of this behavior, and if so, or if not, what are you feeling? Do you believe that given all the success ladled on cheaters, you have to cheat to remain in the game? Or do you believe in karma? Or do you believe that a belief in karma is the modern opiate of the masses?
And here’s another question – who should be policing reviews and author behavior, if anyone?
I’ve been thinking about aging lately. It might have to do with the fact that amid the ashes of my marriage’s implosion, I’m now finding small green shoots of hope. Whether it’s the dream of traveling or embracing a new relationship or exploring a creative passion, I’m allowing my imagination to dance again.
But usually at some point a panorama of negatives about aging comes into the picture. Age complete with a flimsy aluminum walker and ivory-topped wooden cane. Age with its wrinkles and smells and bumps and lumps . . .
Age with its loose skin thinning bones lousy eyesight and compromised hearing.
Is there enough time to let those green shoots grow? Am I too old to dance in the streets during Carnival in Rio to have an extraordinary relationship to become a visual artist?
My thoughts sway with the ferocity of winds in a confused hurricane, strong and strange and unpredictable. One moment I’m saddened at perceived limitations. The next moment I’m excited with expanding possibilities. Here I stand at this odd cusp in my life, marveling at the push-pull of existence: Youth/Old Age, forward-looking/past-focused. I’m a Great Aunt and the mother of teenagers, an orphan and a single woman contemplating dating again someday.
I’m betwixt and between.
In department stores, younger salesclerks ignore me in favor of 20-somethings. Women in their 60s tell me I’m just a baby. On television my contemporaries fight desperately to stay young. The people I’m meeting in their 60s and 70s are so much more content and purposeful than most of my peers.
Aging is a reality in the sense that our bodies change our past experiences inform what we do now and in the future and we move through time no matter how much we might want to halt it. (And, my friends, halting it would be death.)
But is aging the end of fruitful living? Is it to be feared? Or is aging an adventure? Does it deserve cultural — and personal — reframing?
What do you think? How do you relate to aging?
(BTW, I’m not at work today, so I can finally really carry on a conversation with anyone who cares to comment!)
