When Reality Intrudes

by J.T. Ellison

An advance warning — this may be a bit explicit. No nudity or bad words, just a frank discussion about forensic research and the unsolved murder of a Nashville child. If you have young children, you may wish to steer clear.

As a mystery writer, I spend a lot of time living in an imaginary world, populated with imaginary crimes, imaginary people, imaginary life or death situations, grief, justice and evil. One of the most frequent questions I get revolves around my impetus. "Do you base your stories on real life headlines or cases?"

The answer is yes and no. There’s nothing I can do about the inevitable subconscious co-opting of stories I hear on the news that blossom into plot lines. Every once in a while, I purposefully follow a case to its sad conclusion, or lack thereof, and think about using it as a basis for a story of my own. Great example, the horrific murder of a young mother who was recently killed in North Carolina. I was inexplicably drawn to this story, exploring every detail until I realized I was mentally solving the case. Rewriting the facts. It had become more than a news story; it was the meaning behind the plot of my third book. Okay. I was able to get some perspective after that, analyze the information, pick and choose what I wanted to be influenced by, and write the story my way.

That is actually a rarity for me. I hate to admit that 90% of my stories are purely figments of my imagination. I’ve never fictionalized a live case as a main plot, and as such made some massive adjustments to make it my own. The bones are based in reality for this one, but the reality isn’t real in the novel.

Research, I call this, though in many cases I believe immersion in these evils leave a tiny smudge on my soul. I have days that I don’t ever feel clean, or at peace. I have bad dreams. I get jumpy for no reason. This research is necessary for me to write with empathy and compassion, but inevitably brings it’s own private horrors.

Neither here nor there. There’s plenty of cases that catch my eye, for various and sundry reasons, most of which aren’t even definable. But there’s one case here in Nashville that I’m wary of.

Marcia Trimble.

Anyone in Nashville can tell you about this sunny little girl who disappeared one afternoon out delivering Girl Scout cookies. It is our biggest, baddest, most speculated upon unsolved murder. A cold case to end all cold cases. Now that we’ve got Perry March in jail for the murder of his wife Janet, Marcia Trimble is again Nashville’s outrage.

A quick precis of the case. Marcia was 9 years old. She went to deliver Girl Scout cookies to a neighbor. She was found 33 days later, less than 200 yards from her home. She’d been strangled and sexually assaulted. There were allegedly multiple DNA donations. Celebrated forensic scientist Dr. Bill Bass postulated that she had been dead since the day she went missing.

You can imagine the horror that filled Nashville in 1975. Metro Nashville Police Captain Mickey Miller commented on the case:

In that moment, Nashville lost its innocence. Our city has never
been, and never will be, the same again. Every man, woman and child
knew that if something that horrific could happen to that little girl,
it could happen to anyone.

As you’d expect from an unsolved case, the theories about who murdered Marcia range from rational to otherworldly. And this week, a crazy thing happened. The police announced that there was a possible DNA match to Marcia’s potential killer. And it’s all I’ve been able to think about.

It’s one of those cases that begs to be written about. It’s a wrong that I could right, fictionally. But would that ever be enough? And would my psyche hold up under the pressure?

You know the murdered young mother case I mentioned earlier? When I said I went and learned everything I could about the case, I glossed over a few things. Like the thirteen page autopsy report. And the fact that I ended up talking with two different medical examiners about the findings before adapting them into my own story, and made sure that I had all the details accurately depicted when I wrote the fictional autopsy. Made sure the crime scene would support the medical findings. All very clinical and detached, professional discussions among colleagues. Three weeks of nasty work, for three pages of original material. Somehow, I was able to separate myself from the fact that this girl had been bludgeoned to death. That’s not always possible.

When I was doing research a few years back, I went through a cold case file of a co-ed who’d been raped and strangled, and the images from her crime scene seared themselves into my brain. Happily, her case has since been solved, and her killer is being brought to justice. But strangely enough, when I wrote the initial scene of the murdered mother-to-be for this book, those three-year-old images rose to the surface, built like a crashing wave and spilled onto the page so vividly that I might as well have been staring at the photos all over again. I had to go back and tone it down, way down, because there’s just no reason to force people to see what I’ve seen.

And as much as those crime scene photos were stark and unflinching, one of many images that will stick with me forever, they drove home the reason I chose to do this work. Not so I can stare into the abyss, but so I can draw back from it, and hopefully pull people back with me. In my books, I catch the bad guys. Justice is served.

I certainly hope that Marcia’s killer is finally being brought to justice. The whispers are building here in town. Maybe, one day, I’ll find a way to write a story about Marcia that gives her some justice. If you’ve read All The Pretty Girls, you’ll recognize that the opening scene shows Taylor waiting for a death sentence to be carried out for one of her first cases, a little girl named Martha who was raped and murdered and left her DNA in the tears she shed in her killer’s car. That was my first nod to Marcia. I doubt it will be my last.

My prayers go out to her family right now.

I don’t want to bring anyone down with this post. I debated whether or not to even go here today. But this is what happens in the background noise of crime writing.There’s some pretty horrible stuff out there in the real world, stuff that we find ways to deal with with grace and humor and even despair on the page. Our shells have to be thick to assimilate the evil we see and research to make our books real. For some reason, on this particular journey, I didn’t want to be alone. Thank you for indulging me.

Maybe the discussion today could focus on cold cases you’ve been touched by, or a research topic that’s gotten under your skin. Some sort of assurance that I’m not alone in sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the reality in our fiction.

————————————
Apologies in advance, I’m traveling this morning and won’t be able to comment until later. If you’re in New Orleans, come visit with me tonight at 7 at the Borders in Metairie. I’ll be in Jackson, Mississippi tomorrow at 2 (the Borders in Flowood) and on Sunday in Memphis, again at 2, at the Borders in Germantown. And then I’ll fall over.

Also, in much happier and exciting news, www.JTEllison.com has been nominated for a Black Quill Award for Best Author Website by the incredibly cool Dark Scribe Magazine, an honor that I’m pleased as hell to hand over to my wonderful husband, who designed and maintains my site. Click here for the list of all the Black Quill nominees, you’ll see I’m in some seriously good company. Take careful note of the book trailer category. Congratulations, Alex!!!!!!

Wine of the Week: Honestly? I’m thinking scotch. But let’s do a 2005 La Tonnellerie Du Chateau de Segonzac , on special at Geerlings & Wade. Ask for Mark, and tell him I sent you.

Out Of The Blue

I was reading back over some old posts and I came across a remark made by Murderati’s own Alex S. She asked me why I felt it necessary to put my characters through hell. I put it down to my talent for disaster. I am usually the catalyst for some small calamity to come my way. Sometimes, it’s my own damn fault, but sometimes, I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. This trait reminded me of something that happened a fair few years ago. A small incident led to something that had the potential for something much larger.

I used to race cars in England in the early 90’s. I ran a pretty shoestring outfit and was forever wheeling and dealing to stay to stay in business. Not all my sponsors paid me. Some provided valuable resources I couldn’t afford. One such resource was a truck to transport my car. A company provided me with free use of a shiny new Ford Transit van. Someone else lent me a trailer. I used to drive to Staines to pick up the trailer in the Transit before each race. Truck and trailer made me a pretty sizable obstacle and naturally people would be eager to get around me. One lady pushed her luck a little hard at a roundabout. She tried to sneak across me as I attempted to get off the roundabout. We ground to a halt on the roundabout just shy of hitting each other. The problem was we’d blocked all traffic on the roundabout. The lady and I traded insults as it took us several minutes of maneuvering to get off the roundabout. I went on my merry way. The lady didn’t. She drove up on my tail flashing her lights and honking her horn. I was pissed off too, but I had the race on my mind and I like to be a little Zen in the run up to the race, so I ignored her. The lady buzzing around my bumper lost interest and went on her not so merry way.

I thought that was that until after the race a couple of days later when my sponsor told them the police had contacted them about a road accident. Being my supportive sponsor, they immediately handed over my details to the police.

The police officer assigned the case came for me a few times, but I was always away at a track when he called. This wouldn’t have looked so bad if the officer made an appointment but he chose to arrive unannounced. Eventually he caught up with me as I was unloading my racecar into my storage unit. He asked for a word. The word I gave him was yes.

He was a nice guy and I liked him. He seemed to be a down to earth guy and very un-cop like with his attitudes. He helped me lock up and we chatted about racing on the way back to my house. In the living room, he asked if I knew about an incident. I said I did and told him what happened. He told me a different account. I’d hit the woman on the roundabout, totaling her car and driving off.

“I beg your pardon,” I said and went to object, but he cut me off. He cautioned me and read through a little of charges that included but weren’t limited to fleeing the scene of an accident, reckless driving, and reckless endangerment. I was looking at a driving ban at the minimum. This was a major problem. A ban on the streets is a ban on the track.

I tried to protest. If I’d hit the car, there’d be damage on the Transit and the trailer. There wasn’t any. If I had any doubts to the damages to the woman’s car, I caught sight of a Polaroid pinned to his file. The car was caved in on one side. The cop cut my protests short. He needed my statement and I gave one. It was obvious what was going on here. This chick crashed her car on the way home, looked to someone to blame and chose me.

I talked and the policemen wrote. He handed me the statement to sign. Unfortunately, I wasn’t looking at a statement, but a confession. Where I said I hadn’t done something, he wrote that I knowingly did, not just once, but all the way through the account. I said we had a problem and policeman smiled and said, “Do we?”

“Yes, this says I did it.”

“Must have been a slip of the pen,” he said.

Somewhere in the region of 25 slips in fact.

I don’t know if he knew I have difficulty reading or not. He had met my mum a couple of times when he came looking for me and she might have said something about it. If not, I’m not sure how he thought he was going to sail this one by me. My mum was present and I had her read the statement aloud. I had to cross out and initial “errors” throughout the document. The policeman made no apology and left.

I didn’t agitate the situation by reporting the cop. It was pretty obvious what he’d tried to do. But I saw no point in raising the ire of a police department. I already had this woman in the other car trying to screw me over. I was pissed off, but I let it go. If they got even trickier, I’d speak up.

Luckily, they didn’t. The charges were dropped two months later. It was hard not to. For all the collateral damage done to the woman’s car, there wasn’t a scratch on the van and trailer.

Nevertheless, the situation bugged me. It could have all ended differently—and badly for me. I think I was most pissed off by the cop. I’d totally misread him. The upshot is that it’s a nice demonstration of why I put my characters through hell. It might be fiction, but it has its origins planted in reality.

Safely yours,
Simon Wood

I Don’t Want to Bring Anybody Down or Anything

by J.D. Rhoades

Hi, my name’s Dusty, and I have a confession to make.

I actually like Christmas.

Oh, I know, as soon as the first candy canes hit the supermarket shelf, and the first radio station goes over to all Christmas all the time, the complaints begin. It”s too commercial, it starts too early, there’s too much pressure to have fun, it’s just too hectic and crazy…it used to be that people who didn’t like the holidays were saying they felt isolated and alone, but now it seems they’re in the majority. and don’t even get me started on the people who’re trying to pick a fight over ‘Happy Holidays".

But I can’t help it. I’m a freak. I love the whole season. I like parties. I like giving presents. I like receiving presents. I like going with the family to get the tree and then putting it up. I like wearing the tie with the Grinch on it to court and seeing that the judge has one too. I enjoy seeing the family members that I only see at Christmas. I like the Christmas TV specials, the older and cheesier the better. I even like the music (although my Christmas tapes and CD’s run more towards Al Green, "Cajun Christmas" and "Celtic Christmas" than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir).

I’ve been enjoying recent Christmases even more because for the past few years, my kids have been old enough for toys that *I* want to play with, too. Wii anyone? And does anyone know where we can find one?

And to bring this entry back on topic, I love getting books for Christmas. I quit buying new books around November 1st, and everyone pretty much knows what to get me. God bless the Amazon wish list (as well as the people who look at it to get ideas, then go buy the books from their local independent bookseller)

Most of all, I try to keep in mind the guy whose birthday it is. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not particularly religious. But whatever you think of Jesus or his more demented followers, his core message of peace and hope and caring for each other is not such a bad thing to at least aspire to.

Joyeux Noel, y’all!

And now the discussion questions:

1. What do you REALLY want for Christmas (or if not Christmas, your chosen winter holiday)?
2. Do gift cards or certificates disappoint you or do you go "Yippeeee!"
3. What’s the best gift you’ve ever given?
4. Favorite holiday movie?

Writers & Money: What the h*ll are we doing?

by Pari Noskin Taichert

A long time ago, when I moved in to live with a boyfriend, my father said to me, "Why pay the cow, when you can get the milk for free?"

Okay, there was too much wrong with his offensive question, but . . .

I’ve been wondering about writers, money and the whole PR thing lately.

For years, I’ve been the poster girl for the "Everything-You-Do-Is-PR — Everything-You-Do-Is-Worth-It" school. I’ve gone to any event to which I was invited, simply because it was "good publicity." I’ve prepared talks, bought nice clothes and makeup, ordered promotional materials — just to put on a good show.

Yet, I’ve gotten the sense during the last few months that a lot of this effort has merely been a distraction (kind of like what J.T. wrote about internet social networking on Friday). It’s taking me away from writing and returning little of value professionally, socially or emotionally.

Worse, it may be damaging. If I’m willing to do all of this for free, how much are my time, words and work really worth?

These questions really hit me last Wednesday when I was a panelist at a professional women’s luncheon. The organizers were delighted with a much larger than normal turnout. We authors were a draw. We were given a paltry lunch (not even chocolate in the dessert) and had to sit through at least 30 minutes of oral ads and testimonials about the organization. And then, poof, we were the entertainment.

No pay.
Few books sold.
Three hours down the drain.

What good came of it, other than making some nice women laugh?

Compound this with the compelling arguments I’ve heard from people I respect — people who are making money writing fiction — about how we writers should spend our time writing, producing product. Their view is that the business end of pr/marketing should still be the purview of publishers.

I’m flummoxed, bamboozled, confused.

When did we novelists begin to buy into the idea that we needed to spend our own cash to market our works? Has this model always been so? It’s incredibly counterintuitive when you consider how much most of us actually make. Go here to see romance author Brenda Hiatt’s impressive brass tacks info about advances and royalties at many publishings houses.

Then, I ran across this YouTube video with screenwriter Harlan Ellison. There’s strong language in it, but his point is well taken. Why do we writers give our words away for free?

Ah, the old refrain: "It’s good publicity."

These questions come at a lousy time in my career. Right now, the University of New Mexico Press and I are lining up out-of-state booksignings for THE SOCORRO BLAST. I’ve signed up for three conventions in ’08 and may go to more. I’ve ordered 5,000 postcards and have come up with at least as many new PR ideas.

Am I being stupid?

Should authors hop on planes, pay for hotel rooms, rent cars and sell the heck out of their books when these actitivies keep them from doing their real work — writing?

Have we backed ourselves into this corner? Is it a corner? Do we even want to get out?

Again, I don’t know.

The ego and social parts of me love doing public events and going to conventions. I adore making people laugh and think.

And then there are the friendships cultivated and nurtured through these on-site trips. They’re worth so much to the quality of my life.

But . . .

The business side of me — and my husband, the accountant — wonder what the hell I’m doing.

Should we authors spend so much time giving our milk away for free?

turning off and tuning in

One of the great things about being a writer is that my office is wherever I happen to be. There’s no dress code, no specific work hours, no boss breathing over my desk, no time clock to punch and plenty of snacks when I want ’em. I get to interview lots of interesting people for research, and it’s amazing how many doors will open for the statement, "Hi, I’m an author, and I’d love to ask you a few questions."

There’s also no one to tell me to stop working, take a break, go have fun, be with my family.

It’s hard, sometimes, to turn off the writer-within. The person who listens to the trivia around, listens for the little factoids that are a boon, meets new people and sees potential characters. But it’s critical to do so, especially with family.

Turning off the hyper-focused writer, and just… being. Not carrying around all of the stories, the characters lives, their joys, loves, consequences, heart-breaks, laughter.

So I’m… well, vacationing. I’m in beautiful Colorado (in the snow) and having a wonderful time watching major events in my family’s life.

I still have a hard time turning off the writer within. How about you? How do you set aside work (no matter how much joy it brings, no matter what your employment)? Give me some tips, because I just saw about six people I want to immediately go sit down and describe for future characters.

Update on the Writers’ Strike

by Alex

On November 29, the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) disseminated this press release:

The AMPTP today unveiled a New Economic Partnership to the WGA, which includes groundbreaking moves in several areas of new media, including streaming, content made for new media and programming delivered over digital broadcast channels. The entire value of the New Economic Partnership will deliver more than $130 million in additional compensation above and beyond the more than $1.3 billion writers already receive each year. In response, the WGA has asked for time to study the proposals. While we strongly preferred to continue discussions, we respect and understand the WGA’s desire to review the proposals. We look forward to resuming talks on Tuesday, December 4.

We continue to believe that there is common ground to be found between the two sides, and that our proposal for a New Economic Partnership offers the best chance to find it.

Golly, sounds great, right?

Wrong.

When the WGA Negotiating Committee reported back to us, what we learned was this:

“In fact, for the first three days of this week, the companies presented in essence their November 4 package with not an iota of movement on any of the issues that matter to writers.

Thursday morning, the first new proposal was finally presented to us. It dealt only with streaming and made-for-Internet jurisdiction, and it amounts to a massive rollback.

For streaming television episodes, the companies proposed a residual structure of a single fixed payment of less than $250 for a year’s reuse of an hour-long program (compared to over $20,000 payable for a network rerun). For theatrical product they are offering no residuals whatsoever for streaming.”

— Let me repeat that. The current residual rate on a TV show is $20,000 for a year, and they’re offering $250. That’s if it’s not deemed “promotional.” If it’s promotional there’s no payment at all. And the residual on movies is still $0.—-

“For made-for-Internet material, they offered minimums that would allow a studio to produce up to a 15 minute episode of network-derived web content for a script fee of $1300. They continued to refuse to grant jurisdiction over original content for the Internet.

In their new proposal, they made absolutely no move on the download formula (which they propose to pay at the DVD rate), and continue to assert that they can deem any reuse “promotional,” and pay no residual (even if they replay the entire film or TV episode and even if they make money).”

How did the writers respond? We’re furious. And galvanized. We had 90% membership support for the strike to begin with, and after that “proposal” I’d say it’s more like 99%. I haven’t heard a single voice saying that this was an acceptable offer in any way.

Let’s just compare some numbers from the writers’ side. The WGA has prepared a comprehensive economic justification for our proposals.

“Our entire package would cost this industry $151 million over three years. That’s a little over a 3% increase in writer earnings each year, while company revenues are projected to grow at a rate of 10%. We are falling behind.”

This is the part I want you to read closely:

“For Sony, this entire deal would cost $1.68 million per year. For Disney $6.25 million. Paramount and CBS would each pay about $4.66 million, Warner about $11.2 million, Fox $6.04 million, and NBC/Universal $7.44 million. MGM would pay $320,000 and the entire universe of remaining companies would assume the remainder of about $8.3 million per year.”

We all know those numbers are a drop in the bucket compared to what those corporations make on our work every year. We will never back down from our goal of getting a fair share of the internet.

And if the AMPTP thinks we’re tired, they’re asleep. At the latest membership meeting members yelled at the board for cutting back the picketing hours. One writer shouted, “This is a strike, not a vacation!”, and got thunderous applause.

It’s our future, and we’ll keep fighting for it until we win a reasonable share.

Now, here’s some good news:

Out of 180 TV shows being tracked, only 12 are still in production.

Advertisers are starting to realize that they’re not going to be getting much bang for their buck with the whole regular TV season shut down.

And if you’d like to help put pressure on the companies to start negotiating seriously and fairly, this site, Consumers Support the WGA, has links to feedback forms for major advertisers and is conducting an organized effort to push major companies to help end the 2007 writers’ strike.

The User Information link on the page tells you everything you need to know about the project. (Direct link to instructions here

Thanks, as always, for listening.

(More background on the Writers’ Strike and actions you can take here:)

So it’s Sort of Social, Demented and Sad, But Social

by J.T. Ellison

Earlier in the week, I was seriously considering committing Facebook suicide. Can you believe that there’s such a morbid term applied to the decision to stop playing for hours on a social networking site?

I don’t know about you, but Facebook was losing it’s charm for me. MySpace never held any charm for me, it was a necessary evil that I sucked up to early on. I always feel vaguely dirty after having a series of communications there. But Facebook, the more "adult" version, is downright silly. It’s fun. Yes, I’ve found some old friends. Yes, I’ve added a 1,000 applications that have absolutely no bearing on my day-to-day work life. Yes, I’ve been guilty of throwing sheep, taking shots, drunk-dialing, and more various and sundry diversions from SuperPoke.

But is it furthering my goals to be the best writer that I can be? Is it helping me get my work done? Is it doing anything for me at all outside of wasting my time, and being able to openly spy on other people wasting their time, in turn wasting even MORE of my time? I’m exhausted even thinking about that, and I’ve only got a fraction of "friends" that some of my other "friends" have. I can’t imagine how they keep up with this social platform and still complete their work.

I read a great article a few weeks back about the Facebook suicide phenomenon. Granted, this woman’s experience is completely opposite of mine. I’ve only have fun on Facebook, and for the most part, on MySpace as well. Yes, I’ve had old beaus contact me. Thankfully, my husband is an exceptionally confident man and when I tell him (and I always tell him) he doesn’t have a freak out. And none of them are proposing that we get back together or asking me to meet them in dark alleyways, it’s all been nice and aboveboard — see you’ve written a book, good for you, I’m married/divorced/partnered now (yes, the last one gave me a moment of pause…Really? I always thought there was something — sorry, I’m getting off track.)

Crimespace I abandoned early on because I could see that it was going
to be a huge time suck — there’s just too much good information there,
but the spam was starting to get to me. Daniel Hatadi does a brilliant job of running that particular show, and I do stop in on
occasion to read what’s happening. I thought for a while there that the
blogs were going to bite the dust and Crimespace’s virtual bar was
going to supersede all of this, but that didn’t shake out the way I
expected — as is wont to happen, a few people were exceptionally strong-voiced and that took the communal joy out of it for me.

I can’t seem to abandon DorothyL; it’s fascination lies in the incessant flame wars that spring up. There’s always one or two people who have opinions about everything under the sun and feel it necessary to share said opinions. After five years there, I recognize the signs early. It’s pretty much guaranteed who is going to jump into a conversation, bite people’s heads off, get sent to review… sometimes it’s just fun to step back and watch the bloodbath. Mostly I learn, and glean, and take away fabulously important information that I use on a daily basis in my writing and my promotion, but sometimes it’s fun to watch the sharks circle the bloody bait. I mean come on already, are prologues so important/not important that it’s worth sacking London over? Apparently so. Jeez, I’m becoming a virtual sadist.

But here’s the point.

Every moment I spend in this online world is a moment that I’m not working on my material. I’m not writing when I’m glancing over friend requests on MySpace to make sure I don’t add some creep. I can’t seem to give up my blogs, but the ones I read religiously have declined in number. I bailed on my online lists months ago — outside of DorothyL, they were becoming much too time-consuming.

It’s all procrastination, really, in the guise of social networking to give it a purpose. We MUST market ourselves, stay on top of the industry, read every ounce of information each and every person has posited about life, liberty, and the pursuit of a 2,000 a day word count. And let’s be honest with ourselves. How many bestselling authors do you see trolling the lists? Not too terribly many. They’re busy writing their incredible books, are WORKING, not playing. They’ve learned the discipline of the Internet, have harnessed the creative juices to the page, rather than finding creative ways to interact or argue with their friends. This is the goal I’m shooting for.

Don’t get me wrong, I do like the communication. I’m starting to understand that I thrive on it. The Internet is our office. Instead of walking down the hall and sticking our head into someone’s cube, we throw sheep. Instead of having lunch or hitting the gym or having a drink after work, we point and click our way into each other’s worlds. It’s no longer a phenomenon, it is our lives. And I’m afraid it’s here to stay.

But I feel that tick, tick, ticking in the back of my head. I’m getting ready to start writing a new book. When I crawl under that rock, I don’t want the lure of outside temptations, the siren call of procrastination, to be there. I want to focus all my time and energy into the new manuscript. The story is a doozy, it’s going to take independent research as well as field research, including an overseas trip. I won’t have time to throw sheep, or watch my hatching egg grow into a kitten (whoever sent me that, it was adorable!), or compare movie tastes or take likeness quizzes, nor will I have time to read the results of everyone else’s activities.

Couple that with the disconcerting new situation that was bound to happen, the ultimate big brother-esque programming that shares buying habits and demographics with our "friends", and it becomes a slippery slope of privacy invasion. Where do we draw the line?

I don’t know why I’m struggling with this question. After writing this, the answer seems blatantly obvious. Yet I continue to ask, should I commit Facebook suicide? Would the "out of sight, out of mind" adage ring true for me? I certainly don’t want to give up my virtual friendships, I value the opportunity to communicate with each and every one of you. But I don’t seem to have the balance that I want. Writing, reading, Murderati, and promotion. Those are my priorities now. The priorities I should have.

Don’t stop poking me just yet. I’ll admit, every time I see those sheep, I laugh. I had a friend in college who used to read us a book, late at night, under the influence of adult beverages, called "Sheep on a Ship." If you can imagine the inserted lisp… Scheeep on a Schiip… "Scheep sail a schip… on a deeeep sea trip…" and the sheep are pirates… Dear God, I’m in tears thinking about it. So the sheep have a place in my heart.

I’m dying to hear your opinions. Is social networking out of control? Do things like Second Life truly have any bearing on our lives as writers? Are we destined to slog online in an online world, or can we go all hippie, throw out the Internet like giving up a television, trade gigabytes and fast-access DSL for Tess of the d’Urbervilles? And don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the new delivery methods for getting books into the hands of readers, I’m simply wondering about our personal mindset.

Wine of the Week — 2003 Truchard Cabernet Sauvignon A delightful Napa Cab, and no migraine…

P.S. Hubby wants to send me to Facebook rehab, I say, No, No, No!

Not Sweating the Big Stuff

There’s a lot of gloom and doom floating around these days when it comes to the future of the printed word. People are reading less and less. Publishers are consolidating both in numbers and in authors. Technology is changing the way books are made and the way they are read. Everything is going digital. The internet has created a mentality of it has to be free or I’m not paying for it. The rise of YouTube means the world is preoccupied with people’s homemade entertainment. The book is a dinosaur. The future is a meteorite that will make the novelist extinct.

While all this has more than a little merit for it to be worrying, I don’t really care. Now, I’m not being obtuse and breaking out the fiddle while the flames are licking around Rome. No, I don’t really care, because I can’t do a damn thing about it. These things are beyond my control. I can’t halt the march of technology, despite what my pen pal Teddy Kaczynski says. I can dictate how publishers choose to run their businesses as much as I can control the tides—did that once, got my feet wet. I can’t dictate what the public does with its disposable income (but they will when I’ve perfected my mind control antenna, then we’ll see who’s the king of all media). I can kvetch all I want, but it’s not going to change anything, so what’s the point of worrying? All I can do is hope things don’t change so significantly that I find myself marginalized, then abandoned.

If the book (in all its connotations) is to change, then I will change with it. The book is a medium. It’s packaging. Storytelling is what counts. Storytelling can’t change. It’s a constant—like dishonest politicians. It’s always been there and it’s always going to be there. So what if all books go to audio? Who cares if in a hundred years the book is a pill you swallow and as it dissolves into the bloodstream, the story is carried to the brain where it is experienced as a memory? At the end of the day, a storyteller is needed—and that’s where I come in.

And that’s where I take hope. Stories need storytellers. The way stories are told may change but not the need for a story to be told. Movies and television are stories projected on a screen and told with images. Plays are stories acted out by people. These formats arose through technology. The book itself is an advancement of oral traditions. Despite these formats and advances, the story still remains.

It doesn’t matter what happens in the future, but every movie, TV show, video game, magazine, podcast, audio book and cigarette packet warning requires a writer—and that’s where I come in.

Those who need me know where to find me…

Yours for now and forever more,
Simon Wood

The Domain of Mental Disturbance

by Robert Gregory Browne

Rituals have been around for about as
long as man has walked the earth. Every culture, every religion,
every government, every sport, every one us us, have our share of rituals, many of
which are functional and some that, let’s face it, are just plain
silly.

Writers aren’t immune to such things.
Do a quick Google on "writer’s rituals" and you’ll get over
a million and a half hits. In fact, one website I found — an
education site — suggested that teachers should encourage their
students to cultivate productive writing rituals. Which only makes
sense.

They can even save your life.

In Misery (or at least in the movie
version — I confess I haven’t read the book. So sue me.), Stephen
King (or William Goldman, who wrote the screenplay) uses a
ritual in the climax of his story. Early on, the protagonist, writer
Paul Sheldon, celebrates finishing a book with a glass of champagne
and a cigarette that have been carefully laid out for that moment.
Later, Sheldon uses that very same ritual to help him overcome his
captor, the psychopathic Annie Wilkes.

I, naturally, have rituals of my own.
Whenever I sit down to write, I make sure that I have some sort of
white noise going, most often the recorded sounds of Niagara Falls.
I call it my Back to the Womb method of writing and have found that
it’s extremely difficult for me to start without it.

I even keep the audio file on my laptop
so that I can listen to it while I’m on the road.

Once I’m set with the white noise, I
spend ten to fifteen minutes checking mail, reading favorite websites
and blogs, before I finally shut the browser down and get to work.

Work means going back to the beginning
of the chapter I’m on and reading it aloud, making small changes as I
go. Then, hopefully, by the time I’ve reached my stopping point,
I’ve come up with something worthwhile to say.

If I’m stuck, it’s back to the browser
to cruise more websites or to look for the answer to some bit of
research that might help get the brain working.

While the ritual itself remains the
same, I find that the starting time changes, depending on how close I
am to deadline. At the beginning of a book, when I have months of
freedom ahead of me, I usually write whenever the mood strikes me.
Then, as I start feeling just a little crowded, I tend to go to bed
early and wake up about three a.m., when the house is quiet (except
for my waterfall) and there are no distractions.

During crunch time, like now, I find
that I can get more work done if I take a nice long nap around five p.m., get up at about eight, have dinner, then start to work and
keep working into the wee hours. This doesn’t do much for my social
or family life, but fortunately the kids are out of the house now and
I have one of the most understanding wives in the world.

My ritual is pretty tame. I know there
are obsessive-compulsives out there who have some pretty odd rituals
like checking the locks three times before they go to bed, or
smoothing the left corner of the hallway throw rug every time they
pass — and I’m sure that many writers have little quirky things they
feel they have to do before they get started.

As John Schumaker said, "Without cultural sanction, most or all of our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance."

So that’s my question to you today.
What are your writing rituals? The stranger the better.

Don’t be afraid, we won’t laugh. At
least not too much.

Hula Girls

By Louise Ure

It would have been my brother’s 62nd birthday last month, but he didn’t make it that far. Sad to say, he’s been gone longer now than he was here. He died – a virgin – at twenty-nine. And I did everything in my power to change that.

Billy was the eldest of us, a jiggly, awkward child who could set your teeth on edge with his constant spoon-on-salt-shaker tapping and small petulances. A boy with no physical prowess, he became a quiet, shy man with a rich internal life and a love of music.

He was never the leader of a pack, but he had friends. A gang of dreamers whose walk and stories had no swagger to them.

He could play any instrument set before him. Guitar. Piano. Trumpet. Sitar. Flute. Saxophone. And like a dog with keen hearing, he recognized fine sounds long before the rest of us, introducing me to then unheard of Laura Nyro and Willie Nelson. The transcendent Joni Mitchell. A baby-faced Bob Dylan.

His house – one of four adobe bungalows in a creosote-studded patch of desert – was never clean, but always orderly. Dust covered record albums were alphabetized. Shirts were arranged by color and sub-categorized by sleeve length. Mourning doves and cicadas wrote their own desert symphony outside his bedroom window.

The cancer arrived when he was nineteen, a bit of bad news, but not insurmountable. Then a new word was added to our vocabulary: metastasis. A tumor near the spine. Important glands affected. A lung gone. A new addition to his brain. His young body was a sharp-crested map of scars in a terrain that should have been meadows and soft rolling hills.

He said he didn’t want to die in a hospital. We said okay.

My mother did the brunt of the work, tending him during the day, sleeping on a cot at the foot of his bed at night. My sister and I came home from graduate school on the weekends to spell her.

We made up stories to coerce his morphine-addled mind into accepting food. Beef broth was a wizard’s magic elixir. A steamed green bean became a warrior’s sword. We wrapped bean sprouts around grapes and waggled them in front of him. “It’s a hula girl.” He let them dance into his mouth.

Cousin Fred came by late at night with his guitar and played his saddest song, the one about a young bride’s haunted bed.

Don’t go away again, stay by my side
Don’t go away again tonight
This bed is where I’ll be, holding you tight
If you will stay
Tonight

That’s the night Billy told me he didn’t want to die a virgin.

I could understand it. To know that moment of total giving. And total taking. That unsurpassable pas de deux in celebration of life.

I promised him he wouldn’t.

I found a hooker on Congress Street near the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. She had a round face and flat features, but she was soft spoken and seemed kind, willing to accept my money and take on the job. I drove her back to my brother’s house and waited outside in the car.

She could have lied to me but she didn’t. “He couldn’t get it up,” she said, sliding back into the passenger seat twenty minutes later. I paid her anyway.

My friend Gretchen tried the next night with no better luck, although Billy smiled – at peace – when she fitted herself alongside him in the bed, cradling him against her soft, loose breasts.

Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” leaked from the next room.

I would have made love to him myself if I’d thought it would do any good.

He died two days later, my promise to him unfulfilled.

I twisted early Catechism teachings to ease the pain. “If he died a virgin then he was in a state of grace. Just like a child. He’s sure to go to heaven right away.”

I couldn’t admit then how wrong I was. There is no holier state of being than to love and be loved in return.

Later that year, the university created an award in his memory, to be given annually to the student who best exemplifies the traits of “courage and modesty, altruism and honesty: the hallmarks of its namesake.”

He may not have lain in the sun-kissed arms of a Hula Girl, but I think Billy did pretty well in the being-loved-in-return department after all.

L-