by Rob Gregory Browne

 

I don’t know how many times we’ve talked about conferences here. Probably more than we should.

 

But with Left Coast Crime coming up next week (holy shit, time flies!), in Los Angeles no less, I’ve kinda got conferences on the brain.

 

Before I sold my first book, I had no idea what a writers’ conference was. I vaguely remember something called Bouchercon — which I pronounced boo-shay-con — but I really had no idea what the heck it was, even though I knew it was named in honor of William Anthony Parker White, otherwise known as Anthony Boucher.

 

But other than that one small kernel of knowledge (ha!), I was completely clueless about such things.

 

The way I looked at it, I really only had one shot at selling my book. That shot was my former screenwriting agent, who I hadn’t spoken to in a couple years and who I hoped would agree to read what I’d written and pass it on to one of her contacts in New York. Which, fortunately, is exactly what happened.

 

Had my ex-agent not loved the book, I’m not sure what I would have done, because I really had no idea how to go about getting a literary agent to read my work.

 

If I’d been smart and had been paying attention to the novel writing community (although I didn’t even know there WAS an actual novel writing community), I would have noticed that these little get togethers are not only a great place for authors to get drunk and gripe about their lives (let’s face it, we’re all lonely, isolated sonsabitches who need some simple human interaction), they’re also a truly terrific place for unpublished writers to get their feet in the door.

 

When I went to my first conference — Thrillerfest #1 in Arizona, still the best conference I’ve ever been to — I was surprised to find that there were a LOT of unpublished writers there. In fact, I was surprised there were any unpublished writers there at all. For some reason I had the mistaken impression that there would be writers and readers, with no crossover.

 

Shows you how stupid I am.

 

So it surprised me to meet so many aspiring writers. But it also delighted me. Because I knew that these people were playing the smart game. There is no better way to get your work read by those who can really make a difference than to MAKE FRIENDS WITH THEM.

 

Yes, I put that in caps.

 

MAKE FRIENDS WITH THEM.

 

So next time you’re at Bouchercon and Lee Child walks by, be sure to grab him by the elbow and shout, “Lee! Lee! I love your books, will you be my BFF?”

 

Because I’m sure Lee will love you for it.

 

Okay, maybe not.  That’s actually a pretty terrible idea. This ain’t Facebook. And even though Lee is one of the kindest gentlemen you’re likely to meet, you wouldn’t want to subject him to such abuse.

 

So it’s probably not a great idea to grab anyone by anything. That kind of behavior could potentially get you arrested.  Or hurt.

 

What you DO want to do is not target any author or agent or editor in particular, but to simply start talking to the people around you. Make real friends. Share the moment.

 

Strike up a conversation with Joe over there, and Barbara over here, neither of whom have a book deal yet but may well introduce you to Bill or Trudy, who do. And who knows, by this time next year Joe and Barbara may have deals themselves. If you’ve become drinking buddies with all these published or about-to-be-published authors, sooner or later one of them may agree to read your book and give you the help you need.

 

But only if you’re sincere. Because insincerity will be spotted right away. If you try to be cynically manipulative you will be ignored. People aren’t interested in that kind of bullshit. Just be honest and real and, most of all, yourself. And remember that we were all in your shoes at one time — outsiders looking for a way in. So we understand.

 

And unless we’re total douchebags, we’ll be happy hang out with you and offer encouragement and sometimes even offer to help if we can.

 

I know because I’ve done it. There are a couple of people I’ve met at conferences whose books I agreed to read — books that turned out to be so good that I sent them on to my agent.

 

But this was after seeing these people time and again at different conferences and signings, developing a genuine friendship with them and knowing that they are sincere, talented people who just needed a little nudge from someone who has been fortunate enough (and I do think luck plays a part in it) to get published.

 

And if you want to get a good jumpstart on it all, one of the best things you can do is come to blogs like Murderati, make comments, have interesting things to say. Then, when you do show up at a conference, the first hurdle has already been made. We KNOW you. And we’re happy to see you.

 

I think I’m rambling at this point. I’ve been working so hard lately I tend to do that. Ramble.

 

So, I guess the point is, if you want to get your work read, if you want to be inspired to keep writing, then don’t be a clueless clod like I was and get your butt to the next available writers conference.

 

There.  That should do it.

 

I’d love those of you who have been to conferences to tell me your best author-meet story and how it affected you and your career, if at all.

 

Oh, and see you next week in Los Angeles. In the Omni Hotel bar, of course.

 

Lee? BFF?

 



By Allison Brennan

 

Yesterday, I made the time to attend my local RWA meeting where New York Times bestselling author Alyssa Day spoke about heroines. Alyssa is a talented paranormal romance writer who has a reputation for writing alpha heros AND alpha heroines. I asked her permission to talk about her workshop on this blog because I think it would benefit ALL writers, not simply romance or romantic suspense authors.

Alyssa’s workshop was hugely inspirational and beneficial to me. A lot of people might think that after 13 published books why would I want to attend a craft workshop? The same reason why I bought Donald Maass’ FIRE IN FICTION last summer–I am still learning. While I believe my strength in writing is centered around my heroines, I also believe that all writers, no matter what their level or how many books under their belt, published or unpublished, can learn something simply by listening to others. Sometimes it’s not like we learn something particularly new, but we are given a new way of looking at something we know and it broadens our perceptions and our craft.

Yesterday was just such a day for me.

I write strong heroines. My hardest characters are the heroines who are not in a naturally kick-ass professional. For example, Julia Chandler (prosecutor in SEE NO EVIL) or Robin McKenna (night club owner in KILLING FEAR.) Why? Because when your heroine has a role like cop or FBI Agent or P.I. reader expectations are that the character knows how to take care of themselves, that they are independent and strong-willed. Female cops are not wimps, for the most part, and I don’t have to convince my readers that Detective Carina Kincaid (SPEAK NO EVIL) knows how to investigate a murder. I can simply put her in the middle of the investigation and give her the label “detective” and readers get it.

I’ve judged the Thrillers for four years, and there are a lot of fantastic books I’ve read–the finalists and some that haven’t finaled. I love thrillers, suspense, mysteries, romantic suspense, anything with twists, turns, high stakes. One thing I’ve noticed is that some writers–many male writers, but even some female writers– create stereotypes for their female characters. The femme fatale. The man-hating cop. The wimpy Perilous Pauline. Some books are more about the hero’s journey–and that’s fine. But good books have strong secondary characters, too, and while stereotypes can (and often should) be used in writing, they should be relegated to the third tier characters.

The female protagonist–whether she is a true heroine (i.e. equal to the hero, like in a romantic suspense novel) or a secondary character (such as a partner or an ex-wife)–is crucial to a strong story. Alyssa’s advice to writers is terrific. For example, is your heroine strong or passive? Does she DO things or is she always having things DONE for her? Can she solve her own problems, or is she always looking for the hero to do it?

There is nothing I hate more than a woman who can’t do anything for herself. This doesn’t mean she has to do EVERYTHING for herself, but she should have common sense. If she has a flat tire, she might not know how to change it, but she damn well knows how to use a cell phone. Or flag down a truck. Or capable of walking a mile to the nearest gas station. (And yes, some women–not me–know how to change a tire.)

If you have an important female character, does she advance the plot in any way? Or is she standing around wringing her hands waiting for the big, strong guy to save her? (Gag.)

Alyssa identifies five core character traits of a strong heroine:

 

• She’s an independent thinking and makes intelligent choices.
• She has a sense of humor–she can face conflict and adversity and be able to laugh at herself or her weaknesses.
• She’s ready and willing to fight, either it’s physically or not. Meaning, she should be able to defend herself verbally or physically, to stand up for what’s right, and not always cave to those seemingly bigger or stronger.
• She should accept her hero as he is and not try to change him.
• She should be able to face everyday situations with strength and resilience.

 

Smart choices, the first point, is crucial, but often misunderstand. It’s not always that we can make the RIGHT choice. Sometimes, we don’t have all the information we need. Sometimes, we have to do something we know is wrong because the stakes are so high. Sometimes, we’re in a lose-lose situation. ACTION is what’s important, that inaction is a sign of weakness. Inaction in fact is a character trait. But strong heroines will do what they think is right given the circumstances–they have strong motivation in doing what they do.

Some writers, Alyssa points out, take the idea of a strong heroine to mean she has to be perfect, flawless, beautiful at all times. WRONG! I love Alyssa’s comment, “I believe in Kryptonite.” Meaning, every character has a fatal flaw. Perhaps the flaw is physical or emotional or situational. Every character has their own Kryptonite. (This goes for heroes, heroines, villains, secondary characters–doesn’t matter who! But it’s doubly important for your protagonists and your villain.)

But in the end, what I loved most about Alyssa’s workshop was when she ended with when you’re stuck, just think:

What would Princess Leia do?

So now I have that phrase etched in my mind as I finish the copyedits for CARNAL SIN. My problem in writing is not usually the heroine–my heroine’s are generally strong. Sometimes TOO strong. In FEAR NO EVIL I had my first hero who wasn’t in law enforcement paired with a heroine who was a renegade FBI Agent. I had to make sure that my trained, smart, and talented heroine wasn’t stronger than my forensic psychiatrist hero. So to resolve the central problem, it was my hero’s ability to think like the villain that gave them the edge to save lives–not my heroine’s training or law enforcement background.

A female character I’ve been hugely impressed with is FBI Agent Olivia Dunham from FRINGE. Olivia is trained, strong, independent, but she also has a vulnerable side. She can love, she has a sister and niece she is close to but her job keeps getting in the way of her promises. This bothers her, but she is driven to do the job well. She is not hardened, but she can be tough. She doesn’t make too-stupid-to-live decisions–when she makes a risky decision it is always with the purpose of saving an innocent life. She is smart and capable and not too rigid. 

In LIFE, the erroneously canceled NBC series starring Damian Lewis as Det. Charlie Crews, his partner Dani Reece is another example of a strong female character who has flaws but still gets up every day to do the job. She’s a recovering drug addict. She has a problem with relationships and therefore has one-night stands instead of any steady boyfriend. She’s a good cop, but is overshadowed by her well-known retired father, also a cop. She changes over the course of the two-season series to be able to have 1) a friendship with her partner and 2) a relationship that last more than one night (not with her partner) and 3) the courage to try to move up the ladder on her own merits.

And of course Princess Leia. She was a princess, after all, but she was also capable of taking charge. (So what if she got them trapped in the trash compactor? At least she DID something rather than stand around and be shot at!)

I’d love to hear more examples of strong female characters, and some of your pet peeves about heroines and female characters . . . rant away!

 

By Cornelia Read

I got an email from Lee Lofland a couple of weeks ago, asking whether I could donate a book to an auction at The Writers’ Police Academy event he’s organizing (September 24-26, 2010.) When I looked up the Academy website, I was overwhelmed with determination to go–it just sounds amazing.

I wrote him back saying I’d be honored to send a book, and asking whether I could interview him about the event here on Murderati, because this seems like something a lot of us would love to take part in.

Cornelia: I’m not someone who uses the word “unique” very often, but in this case it’s justified: yours is the most unique writing conference I think I’ve ever run across, and the one I’d most give my eyeteeth to attend this year. You said in your original email that “This is not a writer’s conference. There are no agents, no pitch sessions, and no editors – just plenty of handcuffing, police cars, firearms training, crime scene investigations, accident reconstruction, fire and rescue training with real fire and rescue equipment, explosives investigations (airport and other), SWAT, homicide investigation, and much, much more. All things to help you get your police, fire, EMS, and forensics facts straight.” Awesome!!! How did the conference come about?

Lee: First of all, thanks for having me here on Murderati, one of my favorite blogs. I spend so much time on my own site that I have little time to visit others. But this is one of my pet lurking spots. I am indeed a fan.

The Writers’ Police Academy was an idea that came to me as a result of stumbling through bad police information in books written by some of my favorite authors. Also, TV is not very accurate in its portrayal of police procedures and forensics. Of course, TV has a better excuse for fudging facts—they only have thirty to sixty minutes to cram in as much excitement as possible.

As a reader, I’m not as forgiving (although you’d never know I cut TV any slack if you’d ever read my Castle reviews) when I turn to page forty-seven and discover a modern-day officer smelling cordite while racking a round into the chamber of his department-issued Sig Sauer. Or, when a plainclothes officer wears an ankle holster containing a pistol that’s far too large and bulky for that purpose. Ten minutes online, or a quick email to me (or a peek at my blog) and you’ll know that neither of those things should/could ever happen.

Over the years, many writers have transferred, without thought or care, what they’ve seen on television into their books, possibly thinking that information is fact. And why not? We’ve been seeing this stuff for years. Television and film have crammed this garbage down out throats as fast and furiously as they can. Well, I’d finally had enough and set out on a mission!

First I started speaking at conferences and other similar events. Then I wrote my book a couple of years ago for the sole purpose of helping writers learn the truth about police procedures, police tools and equipment, and forensics. Of course, I’d like to think I can write like James Lee Burke, so that when you open the pages of my book you smell gunpowder and swamp water. Still, the book wasn’t enough, so I followed up with my blog. But I still wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t doing enough! I felt that there had to be a better way to help writers experience this stuff for themselves.

I wanted them to have the opportunity to activate their senses, not just read that when an officer sits, the flesh on his side is sometimes pinched between his Kevlar vest and gun belt. 

Writers should smell real burnt powder from a concussion grenade. They need to hear the explosion when that grenade is tossed into a building where a murderer is hiding out. They really must experience the rush of having a suspect point a weapon at them and then fire! They need to feel that heart-pounding moment when a little old lady suddenly pulls a weapon during a domestic dispute call. Do you shoot, or not? Well, you’d better, or she’ll blast you before you can bat an eyelash, for the last time.  I’ve been there and done that. Now it’s your turn. We’re giving you an opportunity to experience a very realistic day in the life of your protagonist!

Attendees of the Writers’ Police Academy will be doing all those things—facing old ladies with guns, seeing burning buildings, arresting bad guys and taking them down, smelling the after-effects of explosions, and more. Never before has there been anything like this. We’re very fortunate to have the opportunity to offer this event.

We hosted a mini version of the academy last year at a conference just outside Cincinnati and it was a huge success. So, I contacted some friends at an actual police academy in North Carolina to see if there was any interest in hosting the event. Well, since many of the folks at the North Carolina police academy are readers and fans of mystery, romance, romantic suspense, and thrillers, they welcomed the idea to help stop the nonsense they read in books written by their own favorite authors. We quickly set up a meeting with the powers in charge, and within days the project was a go. We’ve had full cooperation from the entire staff since that day.

As soon as I had the go ahead, I contacted literary agent Verna Dreisbach (Verna’s also a former police officer) to see if she’d be willing to sign on as my partner in this madness, and we’ve been making preparations since. I’ve also been fortunate to have the assistance of a fantastic planning committee—Susan Greene, Nancy Kattenfeld, Lynette Hampton, and Mari Freeman, members of SinC, MWA, RWA, and local romance writers chapters. We wouldn’t be able to pull this off without them.

Believe me, this is a ton of hard, hard, work, because not only do we have the usual logistics to work out, we also have the added worries of lining up real police officers, academy instructors, actual police equipment, canines, bomb experts, jail cells, police cars, weapons, lab equipment…well, you get the idea. This event is the real deal!

You told me in your most recent email that “We’re actually going to blow up stuff, set a building on fire, investigate a murder, reconstruct an auto accident, train on a firearms simulator, handcuff, learn defensive tactics, spray someone with pepper spray, Taser someone, examine evidence in a real crime lab, and…well, you get the idea.” I LOVE the idea of blowing stuff up, of course—and everything else listed here– but who gets to be Tasered and pepper-sprayed?

I was hoping either you, Tess, or Alafair might volunteer to be our bad guys. No? Well, in that case, we’ve lined up actual police academy recruits (remember, we’re hosting this event at a real police, fire, jail, and EMS academy) to act as our unfortunate victims. I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s no picnic getting pepper-sprayed, or shot with a Taser. I’ve experienced both. Never again!

Your keynote speaker will be Jeffery Deaver, who’s terrific. Tell us a little about the other people on your faculty…

Jeff Deaver is a fantastic speaker. He always delivers a message that’s not only inspiring and entertaining, it’s very informative. We’re lucky to have him on board. We also have Jonathan Hayes as a special guest. Jonathan is a wonderful writer, and he’s also a senior medical examiner in New York City. He’ll be presenting a few pathology-related workshops, and he’s also presenting a major session on autopsy in the main auditorium on Friday afternoon.

Immediately after the Friday evening reception (we have a special musical guest from Atlanta lined up to entertain us during the reception) I’ll be presenting a night owl session where I’ll be taking everyone through an actual homicide case, involving love, drugs, homicide, and dismemberment. This is a case that I’ve been a part of for quite a while, and I’ll be sharing actual crime scene photos, and other evidence. It’s a very compelling story, a story that’s perfect to experience just prior to turning in for the night!

We’re also featuring:

ATF Special Agent Rick McMahan, who’ll be teaching workshops on weapons and fight scenes.

Verna Dresibach is scheduled to teach classes on jail searches and DUI’s (there may be some actual drinking involved in this workshop).

Dr. Denene Lofland will be conducting workshops about microscopic murder and bioterrorism (chemicals, poisons, bacteria, and viruses).

Forensic psychologist Rick Helms will be dazzling us with his vast knowledge of serial killers.

We also have many, many actual police academy instructors who’ll be leading workshops on crime scene investigation, crime labs (you’ll be testing actual evidence in a real crime lab), FATS training (firearms training simulator), SWAT, building searches, arson investigations, explosives, accident reconstruction, fire department operations, and much, much more. We’re also going to have representatives from several police departments on hand through out the academy to answer your questions. They’ll have booths set up displaying police and fire equipment, as well as offering live demonstrations on Friday and Saturday, such as SWAT, motorcycles, fire trucks, ambulances, and canines. A few of those instructors as follows:

 

• Eric Holloman, Dept. Chair Criminal Justice – Accident reconstruction:
• Susan Pons, Assoicate Professor, Criminal Justice- Crime lab (fingerprint and impression evidence):
• Mike MacIntosh, Bomb and HazMat Expert
• Jerry Coble, Ass’t  Fire Marshall for Guilford County – Arson investigation and basic firefighting 
• Jerry Cooper – FATS training/Taser Demo  
• Deputy Catherine Netter – Jail searches 
• Bob Walters, BLET Coordinator; Lt. Randy Shephered, Deputy Vic Maynard – Police equipment and tools:
• Defensive tactics/Handcuffing and arrest techniques: Guilford County Sheriff’s Dept.  
• Bill Lanning, Assoicate Professor in Criminal Justice

 

Where and when will the conference be held?

The Writers’ Police Academy (remember, this isn’t a conference) will be at Public Safety Academy on the campus of Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., which is just outside of Greensboro, and very near Mayberry and Mt. Pilot. The event kicks off on Friday September 24, 2010 and ends Sunday at noon after a fun de-briefing session.

By the way, the Mayberry Days celebration takes place the same weekend—I planned it that way—so if you’d like to drive on over while you’re in the area, you can see Thelma Lou, The Darlings, Otis, Floyd, Karen Knotts (Don Knotts’ daughter), the old Mayberry Jail and sheriff’s car, the Andy Griffith Museum, and more. You can even participate in the apple peeling contest or enjoy a pork chop sandwich in the diner while the Mayberry patrol car zips by on the street outside. You might even see Otis stumble by on his way to the courthouse. Oh, there are mule-powered wagon tours of the town, too. It’s a real hoot!

The conference website mentions The Don Knotts Silver Bullet Writing Contest and the Krispy Kreme Golden Donut Award for best short fiction. Who can enter, and what are the deadlines? And, of course, the most important question: will real donuts be involved?

The Don Knotts Silver Bullet novel contest is named after, of course, Don Knotts from the Andy Griffith Show. Don’s daughter, Karen, is a good friend of my blog, The Graveyard Shift. She once wrote a wonderful article for the blog about her famous dad, and even supplied us with a couple of never-before-seen photographs.

Karen has graciously offered to let us use her father’s name in connection with the contest, which is open to everyone and anyone. The Silver Bullet award will be presented for the best manuscript presented to our panel of judges—literary agent Kimberly Cameron of Kimberley Cameron and Associates, literary agent Elizabeth Pomada of Larsen Pomada Literary Agency, publisher Benjamin LeRoy of Tyrus Books, and Poison Pen Press acquisitions editor, Annette S. Rogers. The winner will not only receive the physical award, they’ll also be afforded the opportunity to submit their entire manuscript for possible representation by one of the agents, or for publication by the publishers. Of course, the winning manuscript must be worthy of publication for the publishers to accept it.

The Krispy Kreme Golden Donut contest is a short story contest. Writers can submit a story about a common theme ( a photo by photographer Sunday Kaminski) similar to the monthly contest seen in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. There’s a reason for that particular rule, and we’ll tell all a bit later. (Sunday Kaminski’s work has been featured in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and quite frequently on my blog).

Details for both contests will be available on our website within the next few days.

Of course donuts are involved. In fact, Krispy Kreme is the sponsor of the Golden Donut contest. They’re also furnishing donuts and coffee for the event. We simply could not have a real police academy and not have donuts on hand!

Conference proceeds benefit the Criminal Justice Foundation of the college that’s hosting the event, Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C. What are the aims of this foundation?

The Criminal Justice Foundation is in place to help fund basic and in-service training needs for police officers. The money we donate to the foundation will be used for equipment, teaching supplies, and other necessary items that simply aren’t available through normal state funding. Times are tough for education, especially when it comes to training law enforcement officers. And this particular group of police instructors have a special connection to writers. Many of them are the experts who’ve answered police-related questions, either directly or through me, or they’ve provided some bit of information for my book and blog. 

Anything else you’d like us to know?

Yes. If you can only attend one event this year, the Writers’ Police Academy should be it. Writers conferences comes and go—they’re fun and I love them, but they’re the same old, same old. But you may never have this opportunity again. There’s not another place in the world where writers can train like real police officers. This is not a watered down citizens police academy. Not at all. We’ve put all our energy into making this event special. We want everyone to learn and have tons of fun while doing so.

This will be an action-packed weekend. In fact, we’re starting Saturday off with a BANG (literally). Do yourself a favor, and be there. We’ll need help putting out that fire!

Thanks again for having me, Cornelia. I hope we see you there. I think we have a pair of handcuffs with your name on them.

For details and updates, please visit the Writers’ Police Academy website at http://www.writerspoliceacademy.com/index.html

Or, visit The Graveyard Shift at http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/ for more of the same.

If anyone has questions they can contact me at lofland32@msn.com.

I would like to take time to thank our sponsors, if I may.

Writers Digest

The Oak Ridge Boys

Singer/recording artist Joe Bonsall, The Oak Ridge Boys

Author Deborah LeBlanc

Just Write Sites

They’ve all been wonderful and quite generous with their contributions, and with donations for the academy attendees. In fact, The Oak Ridge Boys have donated a really nice raffle basket containing several of their CD’s, signed books, and other neat items. Joe Bonsall (the voice on Elvira) and the Oak Ridge Boys’ manager/agent Kathy Harris have been simply wonderful. We’ve been in almost daily contact since they first signed on. What a great group of people!

Writers Digest has gone all out with their generous offerings. One of the items they’ve donated for the raffle is a complete set of the new Howdunit series, which includes Poisons (Serita Stevens and Anne Bannon), Police Procedure and Investigation (my book), and Forensics (D.P. Lyle). The new Weapons book may be out by that time as well. Just Write Sites designed, hosts, and maintains our fabulous website (they also take care of my website and blog), and author Deborah LeBlanc dug really, really deep into her bank account.

See you in September!

Lee

*******

Okay, don’t you totally want to go to this, ‘Ratis? I think I might even agree to be pepper sprayed… totally worth it!

(BONUS: Everyone here on Murderati will be donating books for a group blog basket at Lee’s WPA auction. Yea!)

 

By Cornelia Read

Okay, it’s FUCKING FEBRUARY and I now live near the arctic circle, here in Cow Hampshire. I hate February. I know deep in my tiny black heart that T.S. Eliot was totally, irredeemably, hopelessly misguided about that whole “April is the cruelest month” crap. April is a big fat snooze of a year-twelfth, by comparison–taxes and all.  The only thing that can be said in February’s defense is that it’s the shortest, even though of course it actually consumes five years of mental time because, (oh, did I mention this already?) February SUCKS SUCH GINORMOUS BUTT!

Like I was filling my car with gas so I could drive down to New York last weekend, and it was so goddamn cold it almost made me cry, no shit. So cold it made my face ache the minute I opened the car door and I unscrewed the gas-cap and thought my hands were going to shatter and fall off, which is not something you want when you’re on deadline.

Luckily, I did not actually burst into tears, because they probably would have frozen before leaving my tear ducts and made my head explode. Or implode, or whatever. I don’t actually know, because I got a D-minus in chemistry back in high school, which allows me to disavow all knowledge of such things. Except that it was too fucking cold out.

Having lived in the northeast before, however (starting at age fifteen, when I left California for an east-coast education), I know that the only way to get through this shitbox of a month is to stockpile happy things. I don’t mean kittens and puppies (especially because they’d freeze to death, HELLO), but the kind of things that can nurture the human spirit even when it’s fully dark by four in the afternoon and you begin considering the option of investing in a balaclava with especially tiny eyeholes. (the gun would of course freeze to your hand, so bank robberies are probably out until April).

Yes, if you live somewhere as cold as here and you’re not one of those genetically Calvinist psychos who run outside yelling “Yea! Now I can go build a hut out on a big lake and catch fish through a hole in the ice!”, I know you probably just want to curl up under the sofa with a cake-mixing bowl of mashed potatoes with four or five sticks of butter shoved into the middle, but this is not a sustainable plan of attack on a daily basis. Trust me, I’ve tried.

 

 Herewith, the ten things that have sustained me through the worst month of past winters:

1. Anti-Depressants

 

Why not start with the big guns? And remember, they’re cheaper than cocaine and probably not cut with Italian baby laxative. Bonus!

2. Web Comics

Free, available, funny. How awesome is THAT?

http://www.savagechickens.com

 

Dinosaur comics at http://www.qwantz.com

 

 

 

http://xkcd.com

 

3. SPAM Haiku

 

SPAM by candle light
What could be more romantic?
Open the Night Train.

–John Mitchell

 

unlabeled tin cube
purchased it in a thrift store
thoughts of Pandora

–Anonymous

 

SPAM, too, needs a wife.
What consort for my Pork Prince?
Ah! The Velveeta!

–John Mitchell

Munch serves his guest SPAM.
The next day he paints “The Scream.”
Mere coincidence?

–Chris Fishel

Thank you, John Nagamichi Cho, S.P.A.M. (Spam Haiku Archive Master):

http://web.mit.edu/people/jync/spam/archive.html#select

4. Vintage Eddie Murphy

How does he make the boomerang-shoe noise? Genius! And so NSFW…

 

5. The car air freshener my pal Maggie bought me.

Because you* deserve a laugh after you’ve just scraped your windshield off with a metal spatula from IKEA, since even though you left California in August, you keep forgetting to buy a real ice-scraper thing at Wal-Greens. (*And by “you” I mean “me.” But you probably figured that out already. {And that last time, “you” actually meant “you.”})***

And also, it makes your incredibly bone-chilling car interior smell like tomatoes and basil.

***asterisk humor totally stolen from Daisy James, my writing-group pal.

6. Road trip to Manhattan to hang out with pals.

 

Because all the good stuff there happens INDOORS, and everyone delivers.

Not to mention free cold sesame noodles:

Oh, and you can take your kid out to buy H&H bagels that are still hot, along with some Tem-Tee whipped cream cheese and a pound of Nova from Zabars (since unfortunately Barney Greengrass, “The Sturgeon King,” is closed on Mondays), which totally doesn’t suck.

Because all they have in Cow Hampshire are these:

Which are the goyish-carbohydrate answer to SPAM.

 

7. Go outside SOMETIMES

Like to watch the sun set over the frozen waters of the mighty Squamscott, very happy that they will light up those cupolas for the long dark night ahead.

 

8. Practice some “Snowman Noir”

 

 

9. Drink some Haitian rum

 

I don’t mean on an hourly basis or anything, but hey, every once in a while when it feels like it’s been the first week in February for the last twenty seven years, go for it. I mean, there’s got to be SOME upside to the sun going down so early, right?

Plus which, at this point it’s for a good cause.

 

10. Remember that there are still people in the world who stand up for what’s right. Then get to your feet and stand up beside them.

 

An example, this morning I re-read Joss Whedon’s essay “Nothing But Red,” written in response to the “honor” killing of Du’a Khalil Aswad on April 7, 2007.

Here it is:

May 20, 2007

(Du’a Khalil as a child)

 

Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death. This is not my blog, but I don’t have a blog, or a space, and I’d like to be heard for a bit. 

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

               (Du’a at seventeen)

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool. 

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

(Screenshots, camera-phone video of the stoning of Du’a Khalil)

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

(Next to her in this shot is a cinderblock used by her attackers)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear. 

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.

(Her grave)

 

Inspired by Whedon’s essay, a group of people decided to collect essays and artwork for an anthology, called Nothing But Red. Here’s the website: http://nothingbutred.wordpress.com/

Here’s where you can buy the book, edited by Skyla Dawn Cameron: http://stores.lulu.com/nothingbutred

(Now that’s a case where self-publishing is AWESOME.)

If only Du’a Khalil’s death were an aberration… but no.

According to the website http://www.peacepalpitations.com/dua.html:

“Killings of young girls and women in Kurdistan are rapidly rising and such killings occur even more openly than before. After the murder of Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17-year-old Yezidi girl stoned to death in public, at least another 40 women have been killed – among them Amina, a 12 year old girl killed by her father, under the pretext that she was ‘in love with a neighbor,’ and Sara an 11-year-old.”

My pal Susan sent me a link to a Huffington Post article written by Peter Daou this morning, which is what got me thinking about the Whedon essay.

It was this part of the piece that compelled me to search for something to ease my sense of despair:

“13-year old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was stoned to death in Somalia by insurgents because she was raped. Reports indicate that she was raped by three men while traveling by foot to visit her grandmother in Mogadishu. When she went to the authorities to report the crime, they accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. Aisha was forced into a hole in a stadium of 1,000 onlookers as 50 men buried her up to the neck and cast stones at her until she died. A witness who spoke to the BBC’s Today programme said she had been crying and had to be forced into a hole before the stoning, reported to have taken place in a football stadium. … She said: ‘I’m not going, I’m not going. Don’t kill me, don’t kill me.’ A few minutes later more than 50 men tried to stone her. The witness said people crowding round to see the execution said it was ‘awful.'”

The sky isn’t evil, but it sure can feel like it.

Buy a copy of Nothing But Red. Proceeds benefit Equality Now, whose mission statement reads:

Equality Now works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through the mobilization of public pressure. Issues of concern to Equality Now include:

RAPE * DOMESTIC VIOLENCE * REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS * TRAFFICKING * FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION * POLITICAL PARTICIPATION * GENDER DISCRIMINATION

That’s something we can all get behind, especially in February.

By Cornelia Read

Since I just found out I’m supposed to be driving to Vermont TODAY and not tomorrow, this is going to be a bit of a drive-by post (I’m going to Aunt Julie’s benefit auction for Haiti, to donate a character name in my WIP.)

I have been thinking about poetry lately. Here are some current (and perennial) favorites of mine:

 

This Be The Verse

          by Philip Larkin

 

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

    They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

 

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

 

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

 

(of course, now that I’m a parent myself, I also like Judith Rich Harris’s rebuttal:

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth

    To hear your child make such a fuss.

It isn’t fair–it’s not the truth–

    He’s fucked up, yes, but not by us.)

 

The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered

by Clive James

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-praised effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life’s vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one’s enemy’s book—
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and the banks of duds, 
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys,
The sinkers, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of movable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.

Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the glare of the brightly jacketed Hitler’s War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyard with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed in by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretence,
Is there with Pertwee’s Promenades and Pierrots—
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor’s Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
‘My boobs will give everyone hours of fun’.

Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error—
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.

 

Frustration

By Dorothy Parker

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun

Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell. 

 

Provide, Provide

By Robert Frost

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag, 

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood. 

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state. 

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone. 

Some have relied on what they knew;
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you. 

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard. 

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide

Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City 

by Thomas Lux

Early germ

warfare. The dead

hurled this way look like wheels

in the sky. Look: there goes

Larry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall,

and Mary Sausage Stuffer, see how she flies,

and the Hatter twins, both at once, soar

over the parapet, little Tommy’s elbow bent

as if in a salute,

and his sister, Mathilde, she follows him,

arms outstretched, through the air,

just as she did

on earth.

 

Natural Music

Robinson Jeffers

The old voice of the ocean, the bird-chatter of little rivers,

(Winter has given them gold for silver

To stain their water and bladed green for brown to line their banks)

From different throats intone one language.

So I believe if we were strong enough to listen without

Divisions of desire and terror

To the storm of the sick nations, the rage of the hunger smitten cities,

Those voices also would be found

Clean as a child’s; or like some girl’s breathing who dances alone

By the ocean-shore, dreaming of lovers.

What’s your favorite poem?

by Rob Gregory Browne

Last time I spoke about the things I hate.  Trivial matters, most of them.  Petty annoyances that drive me crazy.

Today I want to talk about something I truly detest.  Something that I don’t think is in the least bit petty, and has created such a crisis in our society that I can only believe that we’re doomed if we continue as we have been.

No, I’m not talking politics. 

Although I have strong political feelings in my private life, lately I’ve been trying to step away from such things.  Politics has become such an ugly, ugly part of our world (yes, uglier than usual), that I’ve come to find myself being annoyed even by some of the people who share my own political points of view.  (I say “points” because nothing is black and white, and I’m all over the map sometimes.)

So no politics.  At least not the in-your-face, vote-for-my-candidate/cause kind.

And yes, there are many things that I detest about this world (and many things I love), but I only want to speak about one of them today.

My typical writing day, now that I no longer have a “real” job, is spent getting up fairly early in the morning — 6 AM or so — drinking a cup of coffee (cream, two sugars), then sitting down at my brand new iMac (admittedly one of the things I love, even though I’m a PC guy) and writing for a few hours.

When it comes time for a break, I usually grab some breakfast, then sit down, watch something on TV or Netflix, or do some chores while listening to a book (currently Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow).

For the last couple of days, however, I’ve found myself immersed in a documentary on Netflix called America the Beautiful.

Now, I’m sure a lot of you are thinking “politics” again, but no, this documentary isn’t really about politics, but about the systematic breaking down of the human spirit — particularly the female spirit — and replacing it with an insecurity so strong that some women are willing to destroy themselves in order to feel whole again.

I’m talking the beauty, fashion and advertising industries that go out of their way to make just about every woman in America (if not on the planet) feel that she is not nearly as beautiful as she should be.

According to the movie, the United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, but consumes 40% of its advertising.  And advertising is shrewdly designed to destory our psyches, then promise to make us feel better by giving us the “cure.”

I suppose this isn’t really anything new or relevatory.  Most of us know this has been going on for decades, maybe centuries, yet we continue to let advertisers manipulate us all the way to the bank.

Two of the worst industries, which are particularly good at preying on women’s insecurities are the beauty and fashion industries, where we’re led to believe that a woman can only be truly beautiful if she’s 5’9″, skinny as a rail, has flawless skin, perfect hair, a small, tight ass and large, gloriously symmetrical boobs.

This image, however, is presented through photographic manipulation that turns even the “most beautiful” women in the world — the models — into creatures that no god could ever create.  A woman so perfect, so flawless, that such beauty in the real world is completely unobtainable.

This, in turn, not only destroys a woman’s self-confidence, it conditions young men to crave only perfection, and to look at normal women as something less than desirable.  Even the filmmaker himself admitted that he broke up with a beautiful and loving girlfriend because she couldn’t live up to his distorted view of what true physical beauty should be.

And that, to me, is just heartbreaking.

But even more heartbreaking is the twelve year-old girl he features throughout the film, who has taken the modeling world by storm — not dressing and acting as a twelve year-old, but looking closer to twenty-two.  The effect this has on her life, and on the lives of her friends, is something to see.  And learn from.

But most heartbreaking to me, was a short interview with another twelve year-old who, to my mind, was just as beautiful as the young model.  Yet she tells us that when she looks in the mirror, all she sees is ugly.

Another girl tells us of a friend who was so unhappy with the way she looked that she starved herself to death.  This, unfortunately, is a story that is all too common in this country.

I won’t go on any more.   Murderati is generally a feel good place and I know I’m not making anyone feel very good right now.  But I think it’s important that we look around us and consider these things.  That we realize that we’re part of the problem, too, if we allow ourselves and our children to be conditioned and indoctrinated and ultimately destroyed by this cynical exploitation.

It’s something I detest.  And I hope you do, too.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good.  We all want to look our best.  But it’s our best we should be striving for.  If we allow an industry that’s only trying to make money off of us to define what looking good means, then we’re in very serious trouble.

Last thing:  the documentary includes a a couple of short films which some of you may have seen before, but I wanted to show you again.  I think they say it all:

By Cornelia Read

(Apologies because this is going to be totally random. I’ve flown 12,000 miles in the last couple of weeks and am still kind of messed up from the final redeye. Also, it was a strange vacation. As you will see.)

I remember the first time I stepped foot on Oahu. It was 1967, I was four years old, my parents had just split up, and it had been a damn long flight from New York.

They still had roll-up stairs at the Honolulu airport instead of jetways, and when we walked down them to the tarmac young women in grass skirts placed white plumeria leis around my mother’s, my, and my little sister’s necks. Then someone took our picture, and we walked inside and poured ourselves glasses of fresh pineapple juice out of the complimentary dispensers–the kind of perpetual-waterfall aquarium things they used to have on all respectable five-and-ten luncheon counters.

 

I remember being amazed that the photograph of us in our leis was waiting for us the following day at the drugstore near my godmother Charla’s house, where we stayed for the first few weeks before we rented our own place on Portlock Road near Hawaii Kai.

 

(It was apparently kind of a common ritual, which is cool. They don’t do it anymore though.)

We lived there for about eight months, in that house on Portlock. My mom remembers that the rent was $300 a month. We were right on the beach, with a view of Diamond Head, and the house was most excellently funky. It was actually two military officer’s bungalows someone had bought at auction and stuck together, so that there were odd features like interior windows that opened into closets and stuff.

It no longer exists, of course, having been replaced by a McMansion that I believe sold for five mill, the last time out. 

 

Ho hum.

The yard looks like this now–big pool, etc. We used to just run through the sprinkler. I mean, there’s a beach RIGHT THERE behind those bushes, too. But whatever.

I can remember every room, though, especially the lanai (covered outdoor porch, for the uninitiated.) The renters before us had been stewardesses, so the walls of this were decked in vintage travel posters, about ten layers deep: Paris, Venice, Tahiti… all in that swirly mid-century style that JetBlue apes these days along its own jetways.

It’s bizarre to have the 3-D walkthrough of a house that no longer exists in my head–down to what each of the doors sounded like. For some reason I spent about fifteen minutes trying to describe it to my husband when I was in labor with our twin daughters, back in ’94, right before they stopped my epidural and wheeled me into the room where everything got really intensely serious and I was too busy screaming obscenities for any further nostalgic architectural anecdotes.

 

 

I was just back there over New Year’s, for Aunt Charla’s youngest son’s wedding. It was really trippy. Felt like home, in so many ways, even though I hadn’t been there in twenty-one years.

 

There were all these barefoot little blond kids running around the edges of the lawn, in twilight, and I kept wondering what had happened that I wasn’t streaking through the half-dark with them instead of sitting with the grownups inside the tent. Didn’t seem right at all.

I mean, even my daughter Grace is too old for that. But still, it’s imprinted, you know?

I lived in that Portlock house for another six months when I was eight. I learned to swim there, went to my first school (we didn’t have to wear shoes–they’d send notes home if we had a field trip reminding our parents we couldn’t go barefoot.)

I spent almost the entire time wandering around topless in a little yellow-and-white aloha print bikini bottom that tied at the hips, in ’67, though I remember wearing white Navajo moccasins, thriftstore lederhosen, love beads, and a Primo Beer t-shirt with King Kamehameha on it the day I first hiked up Diamond Head.

The first time I ever heard “Light My Fire” on the radio we lived there, and I remember going into the funky old bathroom while Mom was taking a shower one morning to tell her that Hendrix had just died. I think I was eight.

We had a young guy who was AWOL from the army, hoping not to get sent back to Vietnam, hide out with us for about a week. We took him to the Honolulu Zoo and he went incognito in a wig and bell-bottomed pantsuit of Mom’s. I thought that was hysterical.

I still speak pretty decent pidgin, it turns out. And feel like a local even though I haven’t been in forever. (When I was little, I thought “haole” meant tourist. Tremendously disappointing to discover it meant “white person,” and that I was one.)

I still remember my local history–that Kamehameha pushed all the opposing soldiers off the edge of the Pali, to unite the islands, and that Captain Cook’s remains were chopped up and laid out on a big rock, from whence he was eaten, some Hawaiians having mistaken him for dog. And good riddance, I say, though that’s not my kind of luau.

I am also well aware that you shouldn’t be carrying any pork in your car when you drive over the Pali, because Pele the fire goddess will con you into picking her up as a hitchhiker and steal it from you, and she is NOT someone you want to piss off.

Meanwhile, Mom met Michael (my stepfather #1) at a cocktail party in Honolulu early in our ’67 sojourn. The first time he took her out to dinner, he asked whom she’d voted for in the last election. When she said “Goldwater” he called her a dumb cunt, and she went to the ladies room and tried to climb out the window, but it was too small so she went back to their table instead.

Years later I asked her why, in that case, she’d married him, and she replied that she felt like such a failure as a twenty-eight-year-old divorcee at loose in the world that he seemed sort of astute when he said that, rather than just an asshole. Live and learn.

They went to see Hendrix on Maui together, and at the Monterey Pop Festival after we’d all moved to California.

They also used to get stoned with friends and then all go down to Waikiki to stare into these giant golden floodlights out in front of some hotel. Apparently when you looked up, everything was totally purple for a couple of minutes. They called this “doing Purple Haze.”

Last week we took Michael out for dinner for his 85th birthday. He was kind of cranky at first, but I got him talking about when he was a press agent for Edward R. Murrow, and about an autographed group photo in his apartment of Betty Grable and Red Skelton and Ethel Merman and Basil Rathbone and a whole bunch of other people that I remembered from when I was little–from some early TV special he promoted (just Googled it. “Shower of Stars.”)

(This would be Betty Grable, on set. Sorry about the watermark.)

Michael’s always been kind of a pain in the ass with a nasty temper, but he was relatively nice to me when I was little so I don’t mind kissing butt a little to assuage his ego.

I also asked him to remind me how to say the Japanese phrase he memorized, back in the day, which I never remember. This time I wrote it down on my iPhone: “Tayo agay detekoy.” That means “Come out of the cave with your hands up.” Michael did five tours in the Pacific during WWII, semper fi.

He also remembers storming a beach one time that the Marines had already won and lost once… there was billboard erected above them in the sand that read “Kill The Little Yellow Bastards!” with Bull Halsey’s signature inscribed below. Michael said the average life expectancy on that beach was seventeen seconds.

This all really made him hate war, especially the Vietnam conflict. He’s pretty much responsible for my political worldview, for which I’m grateful. I learned to despise Nixon and Kissinger and Joe McCarthy from him, and still have a picture of Angela Davis that he took in the Seventies on my desk.

He worked for the U.S. government’s foreign office or something in the field in the late Fifties, during this border war between India and Pakistan. He said he realized pretty quickly that both sides were wearing American-tailored uniforms, listening to American military advisers, and firing American-made weapons at each other, to a bunch of Yankee warmongers’ great profit.

Michael was asked to sit in on a meeting there, considering new titles for US-AID’s magazine (which had been called “Food for the Poor” or whatever up to that point.) The committee wanted his PR expertise, saying they hoped a new name could broadcast the greater scope of work being done by the organization, blah blah blah.

Michael leaned back in his chair and said “so why don’t you call it ‘Guns for Dictators’?” then strode out of the room and resigned. First person ever to do that while abroad, apparently.

Anyway, the kind of guy you give way to, on his 85th birthday, you know?

Meanwhile, the lady we were staying with on this visit–my very favorite babysitter back in the day–was apparently an early lover of Obama’s. She said he was a great guy even in his teens, and confirmed that he did indeed inhale.

Right on, Barry.

I first met this woman when I was five. She and her sisters lived down the beach, hence the babysitting. One of her nieces and I now have the same publisher (curiouser and curiouser.)

We were reminiscing about old times on Oahu and in California (she came and stayed with us in Carmel for a while), when she asked “do you remember the time Michael had a gun and wanted to shoot himself in the middle of the night, so I snuck you and your little sister out to the car and drove you around for a few hours?”

“Yeah,” I replied, though I hadn’t thought of it for decades. I’d been eight, my sister six, and this wonderful lady would’ve been about seventeen, at the time. The Sixties were kind of boundary-free…. So much so that they kept going for a good chunk of the early Seventies, as I recall.

We spent a lot of time on her lanai talking story, as the locals say. It was really beautiful. So is she.

So, I don’t know… my childhood. Kind of surreal. I remember all this stuff and am somehow not surprised I ended up being graced with a somewhat noir outlook.

I’m glad Grace got to come with me, to see all of this. Especially to meet Michael because hey, at 85, that could be a limited-time opportunity.

I did take her to do some wholesome touristy stuff, too, like climbing Diamond Head.

 

It’s all hollowed out near the top, with all these cool observation posts and gun emplacements and tunnels.

She was a little sick of me taking her picture, once we’d reached the summit.

And I have to say this attitude did not mellow over subsequent days. 

 

When she wasn’t being forced to pose, she was great, though.

 

Also, I got to do some very nostalgic Hawaii kid stuff, like eat Li Hing Mui and other kinds of “crack seed” (mostly Chinese preserved fruit flavored with sugar, salt, licorice, and saccharine–kind of an acquired taste.)

 

And have manapua and pork hash dumplings for breakfast in Chinatown.

And now we’re back in New Hampshire, which seems like kind of a lame place to move after your first divorce, by comparison (mine was final on December 13th. YEE HA!)

(view from car windshield at airport bus parking lot in Portsmouth, NH. Note conspicuous lack of palm trees.)

Luckily, I seem to be able to relive stuff in my head rather well. Hope that gets me through February.

Happiest of new years to all you ‘Ratis. May you and yours have good health, good luck, good prospects, and a lot of gentle time to talk story with those you love….

 

By Cornelia Read

 

Yes boys and girls, it’s that time of year again: the advent of Cornelia’s Annual Shopping List for Those not Overly Enamored with Holidays, Generally.

1. Steampunk Taxidermy.

New Zealand artist Lisa Black has a new take on the whole “cute baby animals” thing:

 

Her “Fixed Deer” has been sold, but you could probably commission something equally un-Xmas/Chanukah-esque if this floats your boat.

 

2. When “Love” just doesn’t cut it:

 

A mere $19.49 from the good folks at Harnk.

 

3. Killer Boots

 

Hand-tooled “62 Muertos,” only $1995 at bootstaronline

 

4. Brain-Flavored Zombie Mints

 

A mere $2.50. What’s not to love?

5. Inflatable Fruitcake.

 

Reusable. Just like the real thing. $6.95

 

6. Trebuchet Kit

Start your own arms race… in the year 1235. This is a 1/200th scale model, for $189.

7. Hitchcock Barbie

 

The perfect add-on gift with a pair of budgies. Priceless.

8. Harley-Davidson Ken

Barbie’s Malibu Meth Lab sadly not included…

9. A Salt With a Deadly Weapon Messenger Bag

Come on, is this awesome or what? $46.95

10. Free Tibet* t-shirt

*this offer not valid in China. $20

11. A Jetpack. Finally.

 

 

Available in late 2010, for only $100,000. I want it.

12. I Also Want This

 

First edition. $136,000.

13. But I’d Settle for This:

$85. What a bargain.

14. Nouveau Retro

A limited-edition repro of a classic pulp cover–stretched canvas, 36″ x 48″. $450

15. And This Wouldn’t Suck, Now That I Live in New Hampshire

 

A sculpture by Peter Grondquist, who also did Chanel grenade launchers and Gucci shotguns and other groovy things for his “The Revolution Will Be Fabulous” show in LA a while back. This one is sold, but I want everything else.

 

What about you, ‘Ratis? What do you want for a present this year?

By Cornelia Read

I am having Thanksgiving in Vermont with my cool auntie and uncle-y and life is good. I was thinking Thursday about all the things I am thankful for this year, and would like to share my top ten in the hopes you will do the same.

1. I am thankful for my kids.

2. I am thankful for my health.

 

Some day, I’d like to be thankful for health insurance, too.

3. I am thankful for my friends.

4. I am thankful for the thousands of hours of pleasure reading has afforded me, and thankful that I might in some small way return the favor.

6. I am thankful my divorce is almost final.

7. I am thankful for my gigantic nutty extended family, without whom I’d have very little to write about.

8. I am thankful for my new home, even if it’s probably going to snow eleven months out of the year here.

9. I am thankful that things are looking up.

10. I am thankful that my third book is coming out in March, and that my fourth book seems kind of okay so far.

 

How about you guys? What are you thankful for?

 

By Cornelia Read

I started keeping a book of quotations when I was about eighteen–just little snippets of things that were written so well, so exactly, that I wanted to somehow possess them outside the pages in which I’d initially read them. Most are a mere sentence long, and I return to my little egg-yolk yellow notebook weekly, at the very least, not for inspiration, per se, but to run my eyes lustfully over the lapidary specimens all gathered in one rich place.

A good sentence has cadence, poetry, and a little bite, in my estimation. It skitters across the surface of things, hinting at boundless depth with no obvious exertion. A perfect sentence suggests an entire world, sharply delineated in a few master strokes–its meaning as much to be found in what is not said as in what is.

Herewith, a few recent things I’ve added to my collection:

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

–Saki

The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water. 

–Maya Angelou

 

And, of course, that is what all of this is – all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs – that song, endlesly reincarnated – born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket ’88’, that Buick 6 – same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness.

— Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather

 

Weren’t lovers interchangeable when you thought back about them? Maybe that was true in the future too…. I always loved odd things: the blue curacao bottle, the wet asphalt, my own insipid fear.

–Darcey Steinke

 

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

–Colette

If you have any doubts that we live in a society controlled by men, try reading down the index of contributors to a volume of quotations, looking for women’s names.

–Elaine Gill

The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.

–Bella Abzug

 

Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes in a gym bag.

–Diane Ackerman

 

You tell me of degrees of perfection to which Humane Nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.

–Abigail Adams (letter, 1775)

Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.

–Diane Arbus

I would be a socialist if I thought it would work.

–Nancy Astor

 My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine.

–Tallulah Bankhead

I ask the support of no one, neither to kill someone for me, gather a bouquet, correct a proof, nor to go with me to the theater. I go there on my own, as a man, by choice; and when I want flowers, I go on foot, by myself, to the Alps.

–George Sand

And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion. 

–Vladimir Nabokov

 

I’m deeply suspicious of anything with a whiff of the New Age about it—not because of the practices themselves, which as far as I can tell from a safe distance may well have a lot to them, but because of the people who get involved who always seem to be the kind who corner you at parties to explain how they discovered that they are survivors and deserve to be happy. I worry that I might come out of hypnosis with that sugar-high glaze of self-satisfied enlightenment, like a seventeen-year-old who’s just discovered Kerouac, and start proselytizing strangers in pubs.

–Tana French

And then, of course, there are these guys:

 

How about you, sweet ‘Ratis? Have you read a perfect sentence lately?