Bob Sanchez

Am I old yet?

2012-01-20T00:01:00.004-05:00

My guest this week is author Morgan Mandel, who explores the dark side of eternal youth. Take it away, Morgan...

Am I old yet? I’m not sure. If so, when did it happen? Was it when I turned twenty-one and plucked out my first gray hair? Or when I got married three years later? People tied the knot much younger in those days.

I remember watching Bonanza on TV, and discovering Adam Cartwright (Pernell Roberts) was thirty-one. That seemed horribly ancient, until it happened to me.

All of a sudden I turned middle-aged, then before I knew it, I found an AARP application in the mail. I was kind of proud of my card, yet sad at the same time, realizing I’d already existed for half a century.

When my parents passed away, it hit me that I was officially a member of the older generation, as they and others had been before me.

Now, when I stare at myself in the mirror, it’s strange to realize this is the same person who once climbed monkey bars and played hopscotch, went to sock hops, wore mini-skirts and bikinis, learned to disco dance and checked my mood ring to see if it had changed color.

Am I old yet? Inside, I still feel like the same person, but I don’t look the same. Would I like to be young again? Most of the time, I’m content with being who I am right now. Other times, I wonder what life would be like if I could delve into the Fountain of Youth and re-emerge young.

Writing is a blessing. Not only can I enter into the make-believe world of my characters, but I can also share that experience. Forever Young: Blessing or Curse, is a result of my musings about being young again. It was written not only for Baby Boomers like me, who’d like to imagine reliving their youth, but also for those who don’t need to ask if they’re old yet.

About Forever Young

Fresh beginnings turn tragic when Dorrie Donato’s husband, Larry, is killed in a hit-and-run accident a few months after starting a new job at the Life is for Living Institute. Discouraged and desperate after suffering countless setbacks, Dorrie accepts an offer by Larry’s boss, the famous Angel Man, to be the first to test an experimental pill designed to spin its user back to a desired age and hold there, yet still retain all previous memories. The pill seems too good to be true. Maybe it is.

About Morgan Mandel

Before writing books, Morgan Mandel freelanced for the Daily Herald newspaper. She’s a past president of Chicago-North RWA, the former Library Liaison for Midwest MWA, and is a member of Sisters in Crime and EPIC. She enjoys writing thrillers, mysteries and romances, and has fun combining the genres.

Her latest paranormal romantic thriller Forever Young: Blessing or Curse, Book One of the Always Young Series, is available on Kindle, Nook, Itunes, Kobo, and Smashwords, plus other electronic venues. Morgan’s previous novels, also available electronically, include the romantic suspense, Killer Career, the mystery, Two Wrongs, and the romantic comedy, Girl of My Dreams. Morgan is now working on Book Two of the Always Young Series, called Blessing or Curse: A Forever Young Anthology, where readers will learn what happens to others who take the Forever Young pill. Another book will follow, bringing back the original heroine, to close out the series.

You can find Morgan Mandel at her blog: http://morganmandel.blogspot.com, website: http://www.morganmandel.com, on Facebook: http://facebook.com/morgan.mandel, on Twitter: http://twitter.com/morganmandel, as well as other social media networks and egroups.

Ten Tips to Make Your Manuscript Shine

2012-01-09T15:19:00.000-05:00

We self-publishers fight a lonely battle, finding readers for our wit and wisdom. We write alone, and now we sell alone and search for ways to market our work. How do we entice readers to open their wallets?

Those questions are often premature. Before asking how you're going to cope with all those book orders, you need to make sure you have a quality product. So here are ten tips to make your book, fiction or non-fiction, the best it can be.

#1 Use a spell-checker, but only as a first line of defense. Then you look for misspellings the spell-checker won't catch, such as then/than, to/too/two, tail/tale, or its/it's.

#2 Read your manuscript critically, as though you weren't the author. Some things to check include complete chapters, well-organized paragraphs, complete sentences, and accurate punctuation.

#3 Be consistent. If you capitalize a word once in the text, chances are you always want to capitalize it. Decide whether you want one space or two at the end of a sentence, and stick with it. Never change your font or type size without good reason. If your work consists of more than one file, be sure that every file is formatted identically.

#4 Get honest, competent critiques. Leave your mother and spouse alone; your family has better things to do than fawn over your work. Avoid critiques from anyone who has an emotional stake in making you happy, because that isn't what you need. The Internet Writing Workshop (http://internetwritingworkshop.org) is an excellent source of constructive, informed criticism.

#5 Use your judgment. Even good critiquers may give you conflicting advice. Remember that it's your project, so the final decision is always yours.

#6 Refer to a style manual such as the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the most widely accepted guide for standard writing.

#7 Make a style sheet. A novel or other large manuscript can involve lots of small stylistic decisions by the author. Keep a pad of paper with a running list things you don't want to have to keep looking up. For example, a cartoon I liked showed a bank robber writing a note and asking the teller, "Is holdup one word or two?" Think of words you often misspell or don't know how to capitalize, and write them correctly on the list.

#8 Follow your publisher's guidelines religiously even if they don't insist.

#9 Repeat tip #2.

#10 Review the publisher's proof carefully. When you receive the publisher's proof isn't the time to look for typos; you should have done that already. At this stage, the publisher may even charge you if you fix many of your own mistakes at this stage. Instead, look for their errors. Are illustrations in their proper places? Are pages and chapters numbered properly? Look at every page's overall appearance. Is each one properly aligned? Is any text missing?

If you follow these simple (but not always easy) tips, I can't guarantee best-sellerdom for your book, but I can promise you this: Your book will be far superior to the vast majority of self-published books. You will have a quality product.

This article first appeared in Ezine Articles in 2007.

Review of Forever Young

2012-01-01T13:06:00.002-05:00

Dorrie is a beautiful middle-aged woman who watches her husband Larry die in a tragic accident. Larry had worked for the Life is for Living Institute, which then offers Dorrie a job that includes being spokeswoman for their brand-new Forever Young pill. She can choose to revert to any age and stay there virtually forever without the worry of death by disease, so with some trepidation she becomes a gorgeous 24-year-old again. That's a blessing, right? Wouldn't we all love to revert to the prime of our lives?

But as the subtitle "Blessing or Curse" suggests, it gets complicated. Wouldn't you know that Larry died knowing a secret, and that not everyone wishes Dorrie well? What follows is a fast-paced romantic escapism with generally good dialog and interesting characters. Nitpickers will note that the Forever Young pill has been released to the public without FDA testing or approval. Dorrie is a well-crafted, likable heroine whom romance fans will surely root for.

Forever Young is a fun read even for a guy like me who's never read a romance before. It is available on Kindle and Smashwords.

Review of Welcome Home, Sir

2011-12-30T12:38:00.000-05:00

Welcome Home, Sir takes the reader into three realms that may well be unfamiliar territory: the biochemistry lab, Israel's Golan Heights, and the world of hypochondria. The main character, Doctor Ethan Meyer, has served in Israel's military, and key experiences show up in frequent brief flashbacks. Now he runs an American university lab and deals with the inevitable politics that turn vicious and may destroy a career almost before it begins. Privately, he worries that every twitch, every variation in his pulse is the first sign of a terminal disease. He knows he's a hypochondriac and sees a doctor to help him struggle against it.

All of this makes for a good premise. The idea is that Meyer's hypochondria stems from his military experience, but that doesn't come through clearly enough in the novel. The chapters are too short and need development. As far as it goes, the novel is well-written and enjoyable, but it literally falls short. I recommend the novel for its insights into new territory, but it really needs to be at least twice as long.

Review of The Stasi File

2011-12-25T15:14:00.001-05:00

The Stasi File impresses on several levels: author Peter Bernhardt knows Germany, he knows opera, and he knows how to write a solid thriller.

The time is the early 1990s, and Communism is crumbling. The Berlin Wall has fallen. East Germany is a failed state with an uncertain future. Will it even remain independent, or will West Germany absorb it? Some fear a resurgent, powerful Germany, while others see reunification as crucial to the future health and stability of Europe.

The Stasi, the newly defunct East German secret police, hate and fear the prospect of reunification. Attorney Rolf Keller is sent from America to Berlin to obtain a secret Stasi file that may be critical to the West. Meanwhile, the opera singer Sylvia Mazzoni has a past that embroils her in a dangerous game of espionage, whether she likes it or not. She sings a key role in Bizet's Carmen. What is in store for her? A bright career, arrest, or death? Keller and Mazzoni have to work together, but can they trust each other? And what is the real threat?

The Stasi File reads smoothly as Bernhardt builds the tension from multiple viewpoints and brings the story to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. This is the work of a pro that deserves a wide audience.

Review of The Power of Validation

2011-12-21T18:56:00.001-05:00

How can parents raise a child who has the confidence to avoid peer pressure, deal with bullies, avoid self-harm, and get a proper grip on emotions? That is the goal of The Power of Validation, a practical, commonsense book on child-rearing that many readers may wish their own parents had known about.

What is validation? It's "the recognition and acceptance that your child has feelings and thoughts that are true and real to him regardless of logic or whether it makes sense to anyone else," the authors write. No, it doesn't mean giving in to their demands or necessarily agreeing with their feelings. It might well mean "Yes, I understand that this is what you want to do, but we're doing something else right now."

This book shows that validation promotes a healthy, well-deserved self esteem that is based on children fulfilling their potential. Parents learn how to deal not only with children's worry, anger, fear, and jealousy, but with happiness, joy, and having fun. "The idea is to allow independence, interests, and imperfection while recognizing and accepting your child's weaknesses and strengths," the authors write.

The book has occasional exercises that help readers try out the principles themselves, and they are all easy to understand.

If only I could, I would travel back in time with two copies of The Power of Validation. One would go to my parents when they had their first child, and the other would be for when I became a parent.

Review of Totally Buzzed

2011-12-19T23:04:00.001-05:00

Totally Buzzed is a lively murder mystery that's full of humor and potential.

A body turns up in the crawl space underneath a Wisconsin farmhouse, and the vic turns out to be a local woman named Carole Graff. Who killed the poor woman, and why? Luckily, retired investigator Buzz Miller takes on the case. She's smart but a little crazy, just like the friends and family who get mixed up in the case.

The story has all the elements of an intriguing mystery and contains plenty of interesting detail about forensics. There is no problem with the plot.

The question that comes to mind, though, is this: Is Totally Buzzed a murder mystery that happens to be funny, or is it a comedy that happens to include a murder? At times it's hard to tell as the story pauses for a joke or for some totally unhinged silliness that may or may not advance the plot. Buzz, who is fifty-something, has a sister Margaret, whom she regularly calls "Maggot." That's the talk of a twelve-year-old, and much of the dialog is laced with mild profanity. That is fine for establishing a character trait or for showing how a person talks in certain situations, but it's greatly overdone here. And for the family dog to pass gas once might be cute--and is probably enough. Humor can be tough, because not everyone laughs at the same things. As a general rule, though, not many people laugh at the same clever line or funny event twice.

Also there are lots of cliches and some repetition, for example "Dead bodies piss me off," followed later by "As I said, dead bodies piss me off."

This looks like a good first draft. Fix some typos and get rid of most cliches. Give the reader an occasional rest from the nonstop daffiness, and try to incorporate more of the humor into the story itself, to keep things moving. Cut the repetition. There's no need to call the same person a "rat-bastard" three times.

The crime detail is good, and the story as a whole can be fun after it gets a little TLC.

Review of I'm Not Muhammad

2011-12-16T22:20:00.000-05:00

I'm Not Muhammad attempts to show what it is like to be a Muslim in post-9/11 America. Based on what I have gleaned from reading non-fiction books on the Middle East, author Jason Trask's details seem to be quite accurate.

Yusuf Alsawari is a devout Muslim and a native-born American living in New York City with his wife, Ruth. The crisis begins when at her mother's deathbed Ruth declares herself a born-again Christian, renouncing Islam. Yusuf is mortified and decides to leave her. The World Trade Center attacks provide a seemingly good cover for him to simply disappear, pretending to have perished in the rubble. He re-emerges as Muhammad Muhammad, determined to lead a new life.

But then he is kidnapped--hooded, whisked away, and imprisoned without explanation. As an Arab he is automatically suspect, though no one tells him what crime he is thought to have committed as Muhammad Muhammad. Meanwhile, no one misses him because Yusuf is presumed to be dead. Despite his protestations that "I'm not Muhammad," he is placed in a jumpsuit for days on end, not even allowed to use a toilet. The consequences are described in cringe-worthy detail several times, whereas once would have served well enough.

Yusuf's imprisonment without trial forms the core of the story. Will he remain a prisoner forever? Will he ever see Ruth again? What will happen to his faith in Allah?

Jason Trask's novel is well-written and well-researched, and offers a useful glimpse into Islam and some of the darker corners of American security. There are, though, a couple of problems with the story. A good fictional struggle should have both a protagonist and an antagonist where there is some hope for a fair fight. Here the antagonist is an impersonal, crushing system represented by no one in particular, and Yusuf never has a chance. His only hope is that Allah will rescue him. The other problem is that the resolution comes too soon. For the last ten percent of the novel, the tension is gone.

Books, books, books

2011-12-09T12:57:00.001-05:00

There is a stack of books on my desk, bookcases behind me, a Kindle and an iPad with more TBR. Where to start? How about the books I'm being paid to read for Kirkus? And then the books I've promised friends or acquaintances I'd read, such as Karyn Hall's The Power of Validation or Jason Trask's I'm Not Muhammad? Most of the books that arrive in the mail from publishers go back out to reviewers for the Internet Review of Books, unless I can't find a willing reader--Taliban: The Unknown Enemy, anyone? That one's been sitting in my office for months, serving no other purpose than to hold down the stack of papers I haven't looked at in just as long.

But this isn't a complaint, not really. After wife and family, books are my first love. If there is too much on my TBR list, so be it. May I die many years from now with a book in my lap. The trouble is, that Taliban book deserves a review while there are still any Taliban left, and the pages may be yellow before I get to it.

Now, come on. Who wouldn't want to read a book about the Taliban?

Mystery & Me: When Pigs Fly

2011-12-01T16:30:00.001-05:00

I couldn't resist reposting this review by Allene Reynolds. Basically positive, but ...

Mystery & Me: When Pigs Fly: When Pigs Fly , by Bob Sanchez, is the most unorthodox book I've ever read. I'm not referring to the religious connotations of unorthodox, ...

NaNo Lite wrapup

2011-12-01T13:12:00.000-05:00

For years I avoided NaNoWriMo because pouring out words quickly has never been my style. And all those other items on my to-do list clamored for too much of my time. Not this year, though. Fifty thousand words just was unrealistic, unless my goal was producing gibberish. So I set out to write 1,000 words per day and kept an old-fashioned log on my desk to track progress. Oh, and my project was to continue a novel in progress, so I began at about 39,000.

How did I do? Well, there was that 12-day Thanksgiving break followed by some 600-word days, so November wrapped up with about 13,000 words added, bringing me up to 52 k. Now let's see. A thousand words a day every day in December, and the first draft of my 70k mystery is done. Voilà! (Or viola, for the musically inclined)

Huh? Who's kidding whom here? The distractions haven't disappeared, and my internal editor is knocking on my skull and demanding to be let back into my brain. My first draft may not be finished by New Year's Eve, but the important thing is the steady progress.

Presidential aptitude test

2011-11-26T21:36:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking there should be a PAT (Presidential Aptitude Test) for anyone who wants to be president. Not a legal thing, of course, and it would have nothing to do with one's views on issues. It would just be a minimum bar for the wannabes to clear. It would be open book, multiple choice, and cover factual knowledge of broad topics: world religions, demographics, culture, military, technology, economics, U.S. history, and the Constitution. There would be no trivial questions about capital cities or leaders' names, just a test of what might reasonably be considered as core knowledge for a potential leader. I would make it, say, 100 questions with a passing grade of 70. No grades, just pass/fail. And no loaded questions, just strictly factual. And to be entirely fair, no trick questions.

Sample questions:

Which of the following is true about the Middle East?
a. All Muslim women must wear burkas.
b. Iran is an Arab country.
c. Turkey has secular leadership.
d. Saudi Arabia's Muslims are primarily Shia.
e. All of the above.

Which of the following is NOT guaranteed by the First Amendment?
a. Freedom of assembly
b. The right to vote
c. The right to petition for redress of grievances
d. Freedom of religion
e. Freedom of speech

What other questions should we ask of our potential leaders? (By the way, the answers are c and b.)

A NaNo Lite update

2011-11-06T16:45:00.001-05:00

This is a practice I should have started a long time ago, setting aside a specific time to write. Now I roll out of bed, watch Morning Joe over two cups of joe, eat breakfast, shower and change, and then sit down to write a thousand words--that's all, just one thousand. So far, so good from last Tuesday through today. My little log records a modest 6,426 words, steady as she goes. And it's not that hard. The words flow without agony, because my Inner Editor has taken the month of November off. My writing time lasts approximately from 10 a.m. until noon, when it's on to other things. This NaNo Lite is at my own pace, but perhaps it's one that can extend beyond November. Too much to hope for? I hope not. We'll see.

One of those other things yesterday was writing a guest post for Make Mine Mystery, a fine blog run by Morgan Mandel.

Back to Confession

2011-11-01T15:11:00.000-05:00

Now how hard was that, going back to writing Confession? I'd set myself a modest daily goal of 500 words and broke 1,000 today. It felt good, almost like free writing. I tried to give my internal editor a rest, not worrying for a change about exactly how anything fit. Most likely, though, it fits pretty well with the overall plan of the story. A little girl has been kidnapped and will be in serious danger, though I promise she will be fine. A general rule of thumb, for me anyway, is that the writer can put children in danger but not hurt them. In fact, her captor will be much the worse for wear.

NaNo Lite?

2011-10-31T13:22:00.000-05:00

Call it cheating. Call it NaNo Lite. First I came up with an idea for a new NaNo novel. Then another idea. Wrote ~500 words to test it out and wondered where the heck I could go with it. Actually, both ideas are probably okay, but they don't catch my fancy right now. My mystery in progress, Confession, deserves finishing. So this morning I spent working on plot points and looking for a satisfactory ending (none yet).

My goal for November is to write about 500 words per day, every day. The 15K won't be enough to finish a draft, but they should give me a good head of steam. Yes, yes, it's probably too modest, but I have never been one to write long bursts in a single sitting. The best thing NaNo can do for me is to get me back into the habit of daily fiction writing.

Desert stargazing

2011-10-28T23:53:00.001-05:00

Last week I wrote this blog entry on my iPad and didn't get around to posting it. Here it is now:

Monument commemorating Geronimo's surrender
to the US Army in nearby Skeleton Canyon in 1886

This evening we are sitting outside our RV and waiting for the stars to show themselves. The sky is still pink over one of the several mountain ranges, I think the Chiricahuas. A partial cloud cover is blowing to the east, promising a starry night. Behind us about thirty yards, a gaggle of geese cluck quietly by a small pond that seems to be made for them. We are at Rusty's RV Ranch in Rodeo, New Mexico for our second of three nights--maybe four if we decide we can't bear to leave. The owner of the park says her place is starting to attract astronomers because of the complete lack of light pollution. Last night we saw the Milky Way directly above us, and we cranes our necks in awe. Tonight we are out again with our lawn chairs. It is 7:21 p.m. At the extreme western edge of the Mountain Time Zone, and the sky still shows the faintest tinge of pink over the mountains. A few stars are beginning to emerge, although I can't identify them. Picking out Mercury and Mars are usually the best I can do. Last night the moon didn't appear--while we watched, anyway--and tonight looks like it will be the same, a good night for stargazing.

Going my own way

2011-10-28T13:02:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what the NaNoWriMo rules are, though it should be simple to check. A lady in my fiction group is participating and told me I must--must--start a new novel, because that is what someone at NNWM says. Nice person that she is, the gal can be a little bossy. My first reaction was that I am retired and no one tells me what to do anymore. But then I went home and diddled around with a few ideas, even to the point of writing about 500 words of a new story that might or might not pan out. Did I break some bloody rule by starting before November 1? The fact is that I already have an NIP that runs about 39,000 words so far. I consulted the oracle pictured below, who was no help. So I'm just going to continue working on the novel I've already started, and if NaNo or my bossy friend wants to strip off my epaulets, so be it.

This li'l guy lives in the Chiricahua Desert Museum in Rodeo,
New Mexico. He turns out to be not much of an oracle.

2011-10-13T12:42:00.000-05:00

So. I just signed up for NaNoWriMo, despite my having always shied away from it in the past. Frankly, it's darned intimidating. Years ago, I wrote about 35,000 words on my current novel and have barely touched it since. On the one hand, I've never written lots of words in short bursts. On the other, my novel will never be done at this rate. Recently I sat down to work on it and wrote only one line, for goodness' sake. The current word count is 36,800, or about half the length of my first three novels.

It's not clear if NaNoWriMo is right for me, but November will be a good month to glue my butt to the chair and crank out the rest of the first draft. Was it the great Lawrence Block who wrote that the best guideline for getting writing done was "ass in chair"? It was either him or someone else--how's that for narrowing it down? It will be okay to write a crappy first draft, by the way. At least for me, second drafts are much easier because there is something to work with. It's getting past the terror of the blank page, because words I can see are easier to fix that words I can't see. And waiting one more year won't work, because 2012 will be busy in other ways. I'll always be able to fit revisions.

Have you participated in NaNoWriMo? How well has it worked for you?

Party time at the El Paso Writers' League!

2011-10-07T12:23:00.000-05:00

There are big doin's at the El Paso Writers' League tomorrow. Every year we have a writing contest for members, and for the last three years we've published an anthology of the winning entries. So tomorrow the 8th we're having a big whoop-de-doo Launch Party with the winners reading their entries from the book. Yesterday I ordered a sheet cake from Sam's--they call it a photo cake--with the likeness of the cover on it. It makes me a little nervous, though, since the bakery lady said they'd never actually done one before. I'll swing by Sam's and pick it up on my way to the meeting in El Paso.

Here is the cover of this year's Border Tapestry, designed by member Maritza Jáuregui:

In addition to bringing the cake (please God, don't let me drop it), I'm bringing the 100 copies of Border Tapestry for distribution to members at the meeting. I've been editor and co-editor for the first three issues and am turning over the whole project to Sulta Bonner next year. Such fun!

The great e-book giveaway!

2011-09-13T14:05:00.000-05:00

Left to right: serious, funny, noir

Here's a great offer for e-book readers: Leave a comment with your email address on this post, and I will send you a free ebook for your Kindle, Nook, or iBook! You may choose from When Pigs Fly, Getting Lucky, or Little Mountain.

My hope is that you will enjoy the freebie enough to post an honest Amazon review, but you are under no obligation.

Book review: Defining Zach

2011-08-28T13:04:00.000-05:00

My friend Vonda Frampton has written a YA novel entitled Defining Zach, and she asked me to review it for Amazon. Writing honest reviews of friends' books can be touchy; how do you write something less than positive without putting your friendship at risk? In this case, the book is fine, though YA isn't what I usually read. My only issue, I told Vonda, is that at times it seemed a tad preachy in spots. She graciously accepted the comment.

Here is the Amazon review:

Zach Patterson wants to dazzle the world. At thirteen, he will try the most daring stunts he can think of, as long as witnesses are on hand to verify his derring-do. Hurtle in his toboggan off a ski jump at the risk of life and limb? You bet. He hopes one day to match the great Evel Knievel. There is the problem of slipping grades in school, though, and the fact that his stunts don't win him all the acclaim he feels is his due. Worse, he must deal with a menacing classmate named Gary, whose personal problems make normal growing pains seem like a picnic. Their mutual hatred drives the plot to a different level than first seems apparent. Author Vonda Frampton understands adolescents well, and she understands how to build the tension in a story. What looks at first like a normal YA tale turns dark and potentially deadly as the underlying conflict becomes clear. But Zach often hears a Voice that no one else can hear, a guardian angel who tries to nudge him away from complete disaster. The angel has his hands full.

Defining Zach will appeal to mature pre-teens and young teenagers and to their parents. Sometimes the life lessons are laid on a bit thickly, which might put off a few readers, but those lessons are right on. Parents of young children will certainly appreciate this well-written book as a reminder of how hard it is to grow up.

Trying out Scrivener

2011-08-14T13:48:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting on my sister-in-law's deck in New England, 2400 miles from home, waiting for the mosquitoes to leave and my older brother to arrive from New Jersey. Meanwhile, I have been trying out Scrivener to write my new novel. The actual writing will still be in Word, but Scrivener seems like a nice tool for building the elements, including characters and plot points. Plotting has always been a problem for me; I get it done, but usually the hard way. Let's see if this software makes it any easier. At least I'll know what scenes to write.

Jean Henry Mead's Murder on the Interstate

2011-08-07T00:01:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading Jean Henry Mead's Murder on the Interstate on my Kindle today, and I recommend it as a fast-paced, lively read. Two little old ladies--well, they're about 60, which from my vantage point is still the flush of youth--have the rather odd and dangerous hobby of solving murder cases. Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty are toddling along in their RV when they discover a car that's gone off the road. They stop and discover that the driver has been shot dead. Soon they realize that as witnesses they become targets themselves. Eventually Dana's daughter Kerrie gets dragged into the adventure as well, making the case a family enterprise. The women are relentless. Between the fact that "A beautiful young woman died needlessly" and "It got personal when he tried to kill me as well," the bad guys ultimately don't stand a chance.

At the beginning, it looks like an ordinary murder case, but our heroines soon learn that they have uncovered a plot with national implications. What first seems like a relatively light mystery turns dark and tragic, but the women never flinch and remain in the thick of the trouble right to the end.

Mead's road mystery made for a good summer read as I took my own RV road trip this week. It's a nice addition to my Kindle library.

How he sold 1 million ebooks

2011-08-05T12:09:00.001-05:00

Today I am re-reading How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! by John Locke. Some of this short book comes across as a salesman's cheerleading, but that's fine with me. He does get down to specifics that seem both possible and sensible, and his book is well worth the $4.99 I forked over. By all means self-publish, he suggests, and decide on your target market before you begin writing (Now he tells me!). Then price your ebook modestly, but at a price where people who don't know you will readily take a chance. His novels are all 99 cents each, which obviously works for him. He claims not to be a great writer, although it's perfectly fine. Writers need for their writing not to "suck" and for their stories to be entertaining; meet those two criteria and follow his marketing advice, and you'll probably sell some books.

There are so many people wanting to make a buck off wannabe authors. The other day I saw an 11-minute video where someone was offering his publication secrets, stuff the big guys supposedly don't want the little guys to know. The video itself offered absolutely nothing of substance, but promoted its $400 package that would tell you everything. When I published with iUniverse, they once tried to sell me a $20,000 publicity package, honest to God.

You can pay hundreds for email campaigns that blast a message about your book to a half million book buyers, or for advertisements or press releases. As my New Jersey brother would say, fuggedaboutit! Don't waste your time and money. Just buy Locke's book for five bucks. Read it, underline the good stuff, and re-read it. Then go follow his good advice.

Ode to Our Cats

2011-07-25T16:33:00.006-05:00

George lands on my head as I lie here in bed.

His claws need trimming for certain.

I toss a pillow as he nips at my elbow.

Soon he’ll be climbing the curtain.

I’d risen before at quarter to four

Commotion assailing my brain.

He’d got in a race, he’d chased sister Gracie

My sweet dreams aswirl down the drain.

Now I might as well rise with sleep in my eyes.

Is that shiny object the sun?

The cats plan to nap when I give them my lap.

Contented, their work here is done.

You should be sixteen

2011-07-22T21:38:00.000-05:00

I notice a lot of roadside crosses marking traffic deaths in the Southwest, much more so than in New England where I came from. My trip from Taos today inspired this poem about an imaginary young woman. (A Quinceañera is a party for girls who turn fifteen.)

You should be sixteen now.

You grew up so fast,

You left us so soon

It feels like yesterday

Your Quinceañera had

Brought prideful tears

To mother and father.

Your gown with pink ruffles

And pendant of pearls

Tresses cascading

Framing your dark eyes

Not seeing your future

Blind to the white cross

And corsage of lilies

Remembering you sadly

Mere yards off the road.

The Internet Review of Books

2011-07-07T16:18:00.001-05:00

This is an unhappy day, because my good friend Gary Presley and I have decided to stop publishing the Internet Review of Books effective October 1. Our staff once numbered six, but with the recent resignation of our fiction editor, we are now just two people: Gary for the blogging and me for the editing. We could continue--we're not overwhelmed--but as with others who left before us, we believe it's time to move on.

Our enterprise began in the mind of Carter Jefferson, who noted the shrinking outlets for book reviews in the press. With his leadership we launched our website in October 2007; four years and roughly 1,000 reviews later, I believe we have accomplished a lot. Granted, we never made any money, but we have earned a solid reputation as an outlet for honest, professional reviewers. We made a point to be open to self-published and small-press publications that looked worthy.

So don't stop reading the Internet Review of Books. We'll continue publishing high-quality reviews through the summer.

Musical shorts

2011-06-30T00:01:00.001-05:00

Technology simply baffles me. I have a laptop, an iPad, and an iPod Touch, which I commonly carry around in my pocket. The Touch has a nice note-taking app, so when a brilliant idea occurs to me I can tap-tap the screen and record it. That's much better than stuffing my shirt pocket with jottings on scraps of paper napkins from Subway, or forgetting the idea altogether. It also has a little camera that's let me snap images of street signs in case I've forgotten where I left the car. Often, though, I'll place it on my desk and play classical music from my iTunes collection.

All that is very nice, but there is this one little quirk: it doesn't have an Off button. Oh, it has a button to turn off most of its functions, but none for the music. If I've had enough music for one day, there is only the Pause button. And ninety percent of the time, that's just as good as Off.

But then it goes into my shorts pocket, and perhaps I go to a writers' group meeting. It can be handy there, especially to jot down those to-do's that inevitably arise. Then when someone is talking, usually making a serious point, we're all treated to a lovely orchestra playing Brahms's Fourth or The Red Army Choir bellowing out The Volga Boatmen.

My iPod Touch just goes on by itself, perhaps to liven up the meeting, perhaps to embarrass me. Has it bumped against the side of my chair and activated Play? Maybe, but sometimes I could swear I wasn't fidgeting in my seat.

Apple makes terrific gizmos, sleek and efficient, without a smidgen of superfluity. It even goes on without prompting.

Who needs a button for the sound?

Remembering the Sixties

2011-06-27T21:18:00.001-05:00

This is an essay I plan to submit to a local writing competition. Any suggestions, comments, or memories of your own are most welcome.

Robin Williams joked that if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t there.

I remember. How could I forget?

China took its Great Leap Forward and almost leaped off a cliff. The Cold War nearly heated to thermonuclear temperatures over the Cuban missile crisis. Vietnam burst into America’s consciousness like a bad LSD trip. The civil rights activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner ended up in a Mississippi landfill. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy all died by gunfire. My father died of a heart attack. Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon. The Beatles conquered America. I married my girlfriend.

I commuted to Boston University back then. As a transfer from a junior college, I decided to join ROTC in my sophomore year to make the most of my inevitable military service. A sergeant in the Army ROTC office told me incorrectly that they didn’t accept transfer students, so I stumbled into the Air Force ROTC program. One afternoon, I walked into Economics class to hear that President Kennedy had been shot. Our instructor grimly refused to cancel class, but I could not focus on her lecture.

After my graduation in 1965, the Air Force sent me to the deep South to be a weapons controller, a job that placed me in front of a radar screen to direct fighter pilots running practice intercepts in case of a Soviet bomber attack. Many of those pilots went on to fly combat support missions in Vietnam. The experience convinced me not to become a civilian air traffic controller.

That first duty assignment landed me in Montgomery, Alabama, from where I toured radar sites in the Southeast. Once I looked up a cousin in Biloxi, Mississippi, and had trouble finding him, so I rolled down the window of my Volkswagen bug and asked a young black woman how to get to Kuhn Street. She kept walking as though I didn’t exist, which I suddenly wished were true.

After three years I received orders to spend 1968 at Fire Island Air Force Station in Alaska, within sight of Anchorage and the Chugach Mountains. Fire Island is about three miles long and a mile wide and accommodated about one hundred unaccompanied men and an unknown number of moose. People drank too much, slept too much, and in early summer played softball until after 10 p.m. Once at midnight, the ghostly lights of Aurora Borealis shimmered above us.

One day, a light plane tried to land on the narrow beach but caught its landing gear on a power line, flipped over, and exploded. In December near the end of my tour, I said goodbye to an Army officer who had been assigned to our unit on temporary duty from Fort Richardson. Lieutenant Murphy hailed from Southern California, so we called him Murph the Surf. A couple of days after our farewell, he boarded a plane to the Aleutians, replacing his boss who had come down with a cold. The plane disintegrated in mid-air in sixty-below-zero weather, its pieces scattering across a frozen lake. No one survived.

Alaska put me far from the battlefields of Vietnam and America, but the daily disaster reports reached us by television. We heard Walter Cronkite read the daily body counts from places like Pleiku—with dead enemies stacked so high, how could we not be winning? Life Magazine reported a visit by General Westmoreland to his troops who had just returned from combat. A soldier said he had killed an enemy.

“How did you know he was dead?” asked the general.

“Because I cut him in half,” the soldier replied.

“Good,” said the general.

I wondered if America had gone mad.

In Chicago, the Democrats convened amid disaster, while police beat both war protestors and innocent onlookers. Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic presidential nominee, but by the time I mailed in my absentee ballot, his position on the war seemed little different from that of Richard Nixon, except that Nixon said he had a “secret plan” to get us out of Vietnam.

After my discharge in 1969, New York Life hired me to sell insurance. Around the time of the Woodstock Festival, I sold a $6,000 policy to a recent Navy veteran who killed himself in a car wreck a week or so later. Months later, the company issued a $12,000 double indemnity check to the 19-year-old widow and mother. I’d planned to quit my job anyway, so my delivery of the check to the woman’s father-in-law marked the end of my sales career.

For me personally, my marriage to Nancy provided the one enduring legacy of the Sixties. In 1961 we went to the high school senior prom together, and in 2011 we will attend our fiftieth high school reunion together.

So I do remember the Sixties. How could I forget?

Slang from the bad old days

2011-06-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

Do you ever think back to expressions popular in your childhood? In my case, that's the 1950s. If you write about an era, it's good to recall the jargon people used then. My childhood was surrounded by blatant racism. Back then blacks were widely called negroes, and anyone who thought they had any rights was likely to be labeled a nigger lover. An important secret, especially an unsavory one, was the nigger in the woodpile, but if you did someone a kindness, that was mighty white of you. If you asked too many questions, you might be asked in return if you were writing a book. Of course, we all knew there was a sucker born every minute, so you shouldn't take any wooden nickels. If you were lazy, you'd better get on the stick, and if you said something stupid, your friends would want to know if your mother had any kids that lived. And you didn't want to call that palooka a homo, because he'd have a cow. Then you'd be cruisin' for a bruisin' and hurtin' for certain. You'd wind up with a knuckle sandwich, maybe even be pushin' up daisies.

How about you? What were your decade and the expressions you wouldn't touch today with a ten-foot pole?

Mesilla gate

2011-06-25T15:20:00.000-05:00

This is the lovely gate to Josefina's Restaurant in Mesilla, New Mexico. A few short steps away is the town center and the site of the jail Billy the Kid broke out of after he'd been sentenced to hang. Walk a little farther and you arrive at El Comedor, where our Fiction critique group meets.

Emailing to your Kindle

2011-06-09T20:14:00.002-05:00

If I send you one of my novels for your Kindle, there are a few things you have to do (Amazon's rules, not mine):

1. Go to http://tinyurl.com/topnav. You'll need to sign in to your Amazon account.

2. Scroll down to the section marked Digital Content, and select Manage Your Kindle.

3. Add my address, desertwriter1@gmail.com, to your Kindle Approved E-Mail List.

4. Send me your Kindle email address, which you can find on your Kindle under Menu/Settings/Device E-mail.

This will allow me to send the file directly to your Kindle. Unless I'm on your list, they will automatically screen my mail out as spam.

All three of my novels are available in Kindle format. Happy reading!

Midwest Book Review on Little Mountain

2011-06-07T12:08:00.000-05:00

Here is a brand-new review of Little Mountain that captures the essence of the novel:
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/jun_11.htm

Introducing Dorothy Webb and Chindii Woman

2011-06-01T20:27:00.002-05:00

Let me introduce Dorothy Webb, a writer who lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Dorothy's murder mystery, Chindii Woman, is set on the Navajo reservation where she grew up. The heroine comes to the reservation to learn about the apparently accidental death of her brother and gets in serious trouble when she asks too many questions.

I've read Chindii Woman and found the story, the characters, and the setting appealing. Dorothy recently answered a few questions about the book.

Your main character, Darcy Redbird, is a Lakota Sioux. Why does she feel so out of place among the Navajo?
From being raised in Chicago by her adoptive parents, Darcy knows nothing about being a Native American, much less the Navajo culture. But she tries to learn. She is aware that the Native Americans are closer to nature but cannot accept their belief in the supernatural, like spirits and other things that cannot be seen.

How much research did you do for Chindii Woman, and how much came from your personal knowledge?
All of the information in Chindii Woman is from my personal knowledge. There really was a legend of the Chindii Woman who lived in a very dangerous canyon called Satan's Pass that we had to go through in order to get to Gallup from Crownpoint. The other taboos, spirits and ceremonies were part of my daily life. I asked friends who continue to live on and near the reservation to read parts of Chindii Woman to insure that I had them interpreted correctly.

What are the traditional beliefs that drive the story, and to what extent do Navajo still hold to those beliefs?
Of course, the legend of the Chindii Woman drives this story. Depending on the Navajo individual, the traditional beliefs continue to be practiced. For example, a deceased person's name may be mentioned within the three days after the death only if it is done respectfully.

Darcy is an appealing heroine. Do you have another adventure in store for her?
Many who have read the book have asked for a sequel, using Darcy and Raymond. As soon as I get to a place where I can concentrate, I'll see what I can come up with.

Learn more at Dorothy's web site, dorothyancewebb.com. Books can also be obtained from Author House (authorhouse.com). Search on her name and the book will pop up. It is available in hardback, soft cover and e-book. Chindii Woman is also available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For an autographed copy, contact her at redtruck66@comcast.net. ($15 plus $3 postage).

Tour schedule for Little Mountain

2011-05-24T15:22:00.022-05:00

Coming soon to a blog near you! I'll be a guest blogger at ten sites in June, writing about my new mystery, Little Mountain. Please plan to visit the tour. I'll be giving away a prize at every stop, so you'll have ten chances to win!

Blog book tour schedule

June 1 – Blog Book Tours (Winner: Kathryn Craft)

June 2, 3 – Stephen Tremp (Winner: Lynn Kelley)

June 7 – Marian Allen (Winner: Cara Lopez Lee)

June 9 – Diane Wolfe (Winner: Karen Lange)

June 10 – Alex Cavanaugh (Winner: Michael De Gesu)

June 11, 12, 13, 14 – Helen Ginger (Winner: Christopher Hudson)

June 15 – Acme Author’s Link (Winner: Deb Larson)

June 20 – Make Mine Mystery (Winner: Maggie Toussaint)

June 21 – Blood-Red Pencil (Winner: Maryann Miller)

June 23 – Patricia Stoltey (Winner: Simon Hay)

Grand prize winner: Cheryl Malandrinos

Book review

2011-05-19T12:30:00.002-05:00

Here is a thoughtful review of Little Mountain that Lynne Hinkey posted it on Amazon:

Bob Sanchez's latest murder mystery, Little Mountain, offers an engrossing look into the Cambodian refugee community that came to the US after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. A departure from Sanchez's previous two comedic detective romps filled with quirky Hiassen-esque characters, Little Mountain is gritty and gory. Set in Lowell, MA fifteen years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, it explores the relationships of immigrants to each other, their new country, and the horrors of the place they fled.

Detective Sambath Long, fully integrated into his life as a US citizen and police detective, tries to distance himself from his painful past in Cambodia, where the rest of his family was killed by the Angka - the brutal organization in charge of the Khmer death camp, Little Mountain. As Sam investigates the murder of a Cambodian landlord, the past pushes its way into his life, reminding him, and us, that the past makes a person who they are today. Little Mountain will draw you in to Sam's life, and that of the Cambodian community.

Initially, I was worried about navigating the many unfamiliar, foreign names of the characters, but Sanchez has created such unique and authentic personalities they quickly become easy to distinguish and identify. The mystery behind the murder, the slow revelation of Long's experience as a teenager at Little Mountain, and his relationship with his American wife and her family keep the story fast paced and complex. Sanchez skillfully intertwines Long's past and present, and personal and professional lives into a compelling, haunting story with a thoroughly satisfying ending.

Thanks, old girl

2011-05-17T12:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I officially retired my old, dependable LaserJet 4L printer after 20 years of dedicated service that dated well before the reign of Carly Fiorina at HP. Purchased in 1991, the darned thing just wouldn't quit. But it lately started printing heavy gray streaks on the pages and wouldn't respond to my cleaning ministrations. The HP website acknowledged that yes, they once made such a model but offered no specific information about it.

The old faithful LaserJet 4L and her Brother
at her retirement party

That old gray mare must have printed tens of thousands of 300-dpi black and white pages for me, and truth to tell, it still works. But for sixty bucks, less than the price of any replacement parts, I bought a Brother laser printer that cranks out 600-dpi black and white pages and may well serve me into my dotage.

So thanks, old girl. You've given me my money's worth many times over.

Reviews of Little Mountain

2011-05-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

There are three quite complimentary reviews of Little Mountain on Amazon. Have a look at what readers think.

Cambodians and local politics

2011-05-10T15:03:00.001-05:00

Soon we learned that Tong was the young girl's nickname, apparently given by her hated brother-in-law. Her real name is Mni Sarapon. She and Sceur Ly asked for our help in gaining permission for members of their family to come to the United States from one of the camps, so we filled out detailed paperwork for them and sent it to the State Department. The group was large--13 family members--and the bureaucratic wheels ground for months. A number of other Americans got involved, most notably our congressman Chester Atkins. But my paperwork was critical, and someone--I will never know who--got it into his head that the lack of progress in reuniting the family was my fault. So one day I received a phone call from Kitty Dukakis, who said she'd been told I was ruining everything by not sending in the paperwork. I gave her quite an earful, letting her know exactly what I had done and when and to whom it had gone in the State Department--and by the way, she had a nerve calling me when she didn't know what she was talking about...blah, blah. The paperwork was quite involved, and I said I'd do it once more and only once more. She backed off. I felt defensive and angry, but it sure felt good to tell off a big shot.

But the person who went way out on a limb was Atkins. He made a big public show of helping reunite the family, which eventually occurred. He lived in the affluent town of Acton, in the same district as Lowell but culturally like the other side of the Moon. A whole lot of people resented all the attention he paid to refugees as opposed to the needs of his working-class constituents. The local news carried a man-on-the-street interview where a young working-class man expressed his anger that Cambodians were coming to Lowell and the government was giving them cars, which was completely untrue. What did happen was that several members of a family would pool their resources and buy a car for all of them. There was welfare, but there were also many refugees who had jobs and worked hard at them.

The political upshot for Atkins was that he lost his congressional seat. Other factors came into play, but my Cambodian friends were an unwitting factor in the election.

Learn more by clicking the Little Mountain tab at the top of this page, or purchase a copy by clicking the book image at the right.

Our Cambodian friends

2011-05-07T00:01:00.010-05:00

The family was deferential to us, but when we weren't around they fought among themselves. Song tried asserting his authority, but his ten-year-old sister-in-law was having none of it. He occasionally hit his wife Sceur Ly, and when word of the abuse got back to us, we told him that wife-beating would land him in jail. "It's okay," he insisted. "It's Cambodian custom." We reminded him that he was in America now, and he had to obey our laws or else. Some other Cambodians we consulted indignantly said that it was not a Cambodian custom, but I came to suspect there was a degree of truth in his claim.

We had a large dog at the time, a sweet-tempered black Lab-Doberman mix named Divot. When Song wanted to say something was excellent, he'd say, "Oh, that's number one." Something bad was number ten. My wife and I were going to work and dropping our son and Tong off to school, leaving Song and Sceur Ly home alone with their baby. Song hadn't found a job yet. Divot stayed outside on a leash and a run. Song told us that in Southeast Asia, dog was excellent food. "In Cambodia, dog is number one!" he said. That scared me, because I didn't know how big a cultural or language gap we were dealing with. Did they plan to cook Divot? "If you hurt my dog, you're number ten," I told him. He got the message that Divot was a pet and not a food source.

Our good friend Tong

Our guests proved unpopular among the increasing number of refugees living in the Lowell area. Song had a hard edge to him--his English was rapidly improving, and he did a good deal of translating for other people. But he quickly gained a reputation for cheating his fellow refugees in various business dealings. He always dealt with us honestly as far as we could tell, but among some Americans helping other families, his reputation threatened to rub off on us. Luckily, many people who disliked him actually liked and felt sorry for the rest of his family. A rumor even circulated through the city that Song had once been a Khmer Rouge--now, wouldn't that have been interesting? I spoke privately to his wife and sister, whom my wife and I were trying to protect from him. "Is it true? Was Song part of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia?" No, they both insisted, he wasn't Khmer Rouge. He was just a jerk.

Even that was only partially true. The whole family including Song were hard-working. Song was an entrepreneurial sort, apparently outworking most of his fellow countrymen. Sceur Ly got a job on an assembly line where she became known for her hard work and reliability, and Tong assimilated well into public schools, eventually going to George Washington University. They always showed us respect and gratitude for sticking with them.

After they moved away from the area, Sceur Ly from time to time drove back to Lowell to visit friends. Invariably she would show up at our house unannounced (without her husband), with her little boy in one hand and a box from Dunkin Donuts in the other. She used to talk to us about divorcing her husband, but she never did it. We haven't seen them in years now, but I think they've made their peace.

Learn more by clicking the Little Mountain tab at the top of this page, or purchase a copy by clicking the book image at the right.

Little Mountain background, part 3

2011-05-05T00:01:00.005-05:00

Dancer at Cambodian New Year celebration,
Lowell, Mass. 1980

One day in late 1979 or early 1980, I heard on the radio that a family of Cambodian refugees were being flown into Boston and had no place to stay once they landed. My wife and I decided to offer them temporary shelter, but by the time we called, those people had found help. Soon, though, we found ourselves hosting a family: a man and woman, their baby son, and the ten-year-old sister of the woman. Only the man, named Song, spoke a few words of English, and none of us had any idea what we were getting into. Why are all the trees dead? was one of Song's first questions--he'd never seen a deciduous tree before.

Various members of the community pitched in to help provide linens, used clothing and other necessities to help the family get started on their own. We had a little trouble getting them launched, and they stayed with us for seven weeks. That was longer than they or we wanted, but then they moved into an apartment in Lowell.

Meanwhile, we were generally miserable. I came down with double pneumonia, and Song shook with a terrible fever. He had a relapse of malaria, the first but hardly the last such case that the local hospital would ever see. His wife, named Sceur Ly (pronounced sir-LEE) and her younger sister, nicknamed Tong, had ailments of one sort or another. Only my wife Nancy stayed healthy, and she was a rock.

One evening we all sat down to watch The Poseidon Adventure on television. In the midst of all the fictional disaster and chaos, Song kept exclaiming "Choi mai! Choi mai!" We cheerfully imitated him, repeating the phrase until I learned that it was a strong vulgarity.

Many Cambodians started coming to the Lowell area, for reasons I'll write about later. We were all invited in February to a Cambodian New Year celebration, where Nancy thought the women and children looked happy and the men looked like lost souls.

It was only after Song and family moved out when we learned that our new friends' issues ran much deeper than their physical illnesses.

Learn more by clicking the Little Mountain tab at the top of this page, or purchase a copy by clicking the book image at the right.

Background for the murder mystery Little Mountain, part 2

2011-05-03T00:01:00.023-05:00

This is more background for my novel, Little Mountain. Future posts will include some of the experiences of the refugees who came to the United States, as well as my own interactions.

Statues at Angkor Wat, the ancient temple

In late 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew Pol Pot's vicious regime, releasing vast numbers of Cambodians from camps where they were being starved, worked to death, or murdered outright. Any connection, or suspicion of a connection, with the outside world resulted in death--that included having an education, knowing any French (it once had been part of a French colony), working in any profession. People without calluses on their hands might be taken for bourgeoisie and murdered. Those who were too ill to work were either clubbed to death on the spot or sent to the "hospital," from which few came out alive.

A great many of the freed Cambodians walked through the jungle to Thailand, where refugee camps were set up to provide safe havens where people could get food and medicine and look for lost loved ones. France, the United States, and other countries provided aid--justifiably so, as between them they had made such an impact on the region since World War II. Many private organizations took part as well, including church groups who helped people resettle in other countries. Many Cambodians hoped to go home again once it was safe and stable; in the meantime, they came to France and the United States.

Learn more by clicking the Little Mountain tab at the top of this page, or purchase a copy by clicking the book image at the right.

Background for the murder mystery Little Mountain

2011-05-01T00:01:00.006-05:00

At about the same time we in the United States were celebrating the birth of our nation, very different events were taking place in Southeast Asia. Our decade-long war in Vietnam came to a dramatic close in 1975, leaving over 58,000 Americans and over one million Vietnamese dead.

One aspect of that tragic war included the secret bombing of neutral Cambodia, intended to deny the communists sanctuary from American forces. The bombings couldn't remain secret for long, and the killing of non-combatant Cambodians fueled increasing outrage around the world and here at home.

With the departure of the Americans came the collapse of both South Vietnam and Cambodia. The destruction and chaos spilling over from Vietnam left an opening for the small, tightly-knit Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) to take over, and they did so with a vengeance seldom seen. They emptied the cities, sent everyone to the countryside, butchering vast numbers of their own countrymen along the way. The Khmer Rouge renamed their country Kampuchea and declared it to be a completely agrarian society, killing all professionals and people with any culture or education. In 1975 they closed off the country to all outsiders and put their people to work in slave camps, creating a terror lasting until about 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded. In the meantime, an unknown number of Cambodians died--a million, two million--probably no one knows for sure. Survivors began flocking to the safety of refugee camps in Thailand, and some of them were allowed to come to countries such as France and the United States.

This is some of the back story to my third novel, Little Mountain. Future blog posts will describe some of the experiences of Cambodians in America as well as my own experiences with them. To read more about the book, go to the Little Mountain tab at the top of this page.

Joaquin Alone

2011-04-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

The other day, I spotted a young boy climbing on the back of a pickup truck in a grocery store parking lot. He appeared to be about three years old, and he was alone. He played around the vehicle, sticking within a couple of feet of it. A woman walked by carrying a bag of groceries, and I asked her if the child was hers. Surprised, she replied, “No, he’s not mine.” Another woman responded the same way. This annoyed and worried me, that a boy so young would be left by himself.

“Where is your Mom?” I asked. The boy looked at me and said nothing. “What’s your name?” No reply. Soon two employees wearing orange store aprons came out and tried to find out who he was. “¿Quiere es su nombre?” they tried in Spanish. Nada.

I called 911 on my cell phone, and there was no answer after about twenty rings. Now that was disturbing. I hung up and tried again, this time reaching a 911 operator. She asked detailed questions, and I volunteered the plate number of the vehicle. A police cruiser would arrive soon, she promised.

Meanwhile, another boy showed up, a plump fellow aged eight or so. He cheerfully talked. “He’s my brother,” he said. “His name is Joaquin. I’m Miguel.”

“Are you boys alone?”

“No, my Dad’s in the store, shopping.”

“Is your Mom there too?”

“No. She’s in jail.”

“Oh. You know, Joaquin is much too young to be left alone.”

“He’s not alone. I’m watching him.”

“You weren’t. He was alone for quite a while.”

Miguel shrugged. “I just went inside to the bathroom. I was only a minute.” He’d taken a lot longer than that, and he looked too young to be responsible anyway.

A couple of us adults stayed with them until their father came out with his groceries. He was a burly man with a smile, but I sensed it unwise to provoke him. “Gee, we were worried about this boy,” I said, nodding toward Joaquin. “He was all alone for a good while.”

“No, he wasn’t. Miguel was watching him.” Clearly they were both too young, but it seemed time for me to stop talking. They drove away, and about five minutes later a patrol car showed up. The officer and I chatted and said he would visit the man’s home to make sure the boys were okay.

Z is for Zee final post

2011-04-29T00:01:00.002-05:00

...in the A-Z Challenge, that is. This has been a lot of fun, trying to come up with short, interesting posts on whatever subject occupied my fevered brain. This month I visited far more blogs than I used to and far fewer that I'd hoped to. A quirky Internet connection is to blame, as some of the A-Z blog links came up slowly or not at all.

This experience has inspired me to blog more often, and I plan to visit all 1,200 or so A-Z participants in due time.

Longer days and a livelier connection, that's what I need.

Y is for Yahoo!

2011-04-28T20:40:00.001-05:00

Yahoo because this is my 25th blog post this month and because I've just published my third novel, a murder mystery entitled Little Mountain. It centers on a murder that takes place among the Cambodian refugees here in the United States. It's available in paperback and on Kindle via Amazon at this link, and I'll be writing about it in future posts.

X is for Xanthippe

2011-04-27T12:40:00.000-05:00

I had to go to my Merriam-Webster for this one, because not a whole lot of words begin with X. Xanthippe, it seems, was the ill-tempered wife of Socrates. Therefore, a Xanthippe is a shrewish wife. Am I the only one who didn't know that? Probably, as I am often the last to learn such things.

The question is, how can we writers use this nugget? In a murder mystery, perhaps?

Through the walls I heard the screams from the Professor's apartment.
"You've been seeing that coed again!"
"Maria is a Ph.D. student. We were merely discussing her research."
"Over what? A glass of ouzo?"
"I have always been faithful to you, but only the good Lord knows why."
"And what's this on your jacket? Feta cheese? You had lunch with her, didn't you?"
"For God's sake, Julia!"
"I'll bet she nibbled your kalamatas!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Skirt-chaser!"
"Shrew!"
"Cheater!"
"Xanthippe!"
A shot rang out.

W is for What an idiot

2011-04-26T20:32:00.000-05:00

A year ago, a neighboring town got a horrible shock with the murder of a woman, her husband, and their business partner who were shot as they entered the couple's home. The couple were due in court the next day because they were suing a man over a business matter. Wouldn't you think the man being sued would be the obvious suspect? Since we live near Juarez, I speculated that the perpetrator had hired a killer who crossed the border, did the deed, and drove home, never to be found.

Surprise, surprise. This week the police arrested Mr. Obvious on three counts of first-degree murder, based largely on a tip from the only apparent witness. Said witness drove Mr. O. to the victims' home. Mr. O. then drove the victims' car downtown, where he abandoned it and was picked up again by said witness, who drove him to a public park. Mr. O. carried a bag into a public toilet and came out without it, perhaps believing that the police would never, ever think to look for his semiautomatic weapon in the septic system.

Duh. Apparently the cops knew their man a long time ago and have just working to build their case. This evil man killed three people who were by all accounts fine citizens. What an idiot.

V is for Very

2011-04-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

Very is such an overused word. I edit a lot of book reviews and notice that some writers use it a lot. Okay, so do I. One of the many items on my editing checklist is to look for that word and determine whether it's necessary--probably 90 percent of the time my answer is "no." Very is an intensifier that often adds little meaning. Bill Gates is very rich? Okay, I'll give you that one. I love you very much? Yes, we'd better keep that one handy. But trust me, it's a word that bears scrutiny.

U is for Unique

2011-04-24T12:35:00.002-05:00

Somewhere in grade school, I learned that some adjectives are not subject to comparison. Unique means one of a kind, so if you and I are both unique, you cannot be more or less unique than I. People often take unique to mean unusual.

A couple other examples are anniversary and desperate. How often do we hear of the one-month or six-month or the one-year anniversary of an event? However, an anniversary by definition is an annual event. And desperate, I learned, means without hope. We will conduct a desperate search for survivors, by which we mean anxiety-filled. If it were literally a desperate search, then hope would be gone and the search pointless.

Oh yes, literally is another one. We may say we were literally blown away, but that's not likely to be true except in a tornado or on a battlefield. Okay, no one is going to say "I was figuratively blown away," but I would be literally delighted to hear it.

Language evolves, in part with careless usage by local TV news announcers. Words mean what people want them to mean, and then one day the dictionary accommodates the changing usage.

T is for Testosterone

2011-04-22T19:26:00.001-05:00

Surprise, surprise...our neutered male cat has excessive testosterone. That explains some of his aggressive behavior of late. He gave my wife a fairly nasty bite on the arm today, and that's a first. He's due for an ultrasound on Monday to ferret out the physical source of the problem. Luckily for George, he is normally a sweetheart whom we wouldn't give up for anything. So we think if the vet can get his testosterone level down, we think he'll be okay.

Have you seen that TV ad asking men if they have "low T"? Maybe we could make some money selling off George's surplus.

S is for Self-publishing

2011-04-21T12:03:00.002-05:00

S could be for so many things, of course, such as syringe-feeding George, one of my handsome Bengal cats. The poor guy has been through a lot lately and faces an uncertain future, but for now he's perked up considerably after a few days of force-feeding by his owners. But more on my feline pal in another post.

So much has already been said about self-publishing. Whatever its merits, the practice is certainly shifting the publishing dynamic by weakening traditional publishers and booksellers and devaluing the literary market. Agents have served as gatekeepers by screening out work that's unready or even unreadable, so what does reach traditional publishers meets certain standards.

Today, all you need is a computer, an Internet connection, and a word processor, and you too can be an author. Standards? Who needs 'em?

It's not that simple, of course. The standards are still out there, but if you self-publish there's no one to hold you to them. More than once I've heard people say they'd self-publish first, then get the story "picked up" by an agent or publisher, who would clean up any problems with the manuscript.

Um, no. Not on this planet.

So as one who has three self-published books (after having three agents and no traditional publishers), I'd like to offer an incomplete, unordered list of tips to potential self-publishing authors:

1. Don't hurry your work. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. And no matter how inspired you feel, your words are not gold. Be willing to revise.

2. Write because you love to write. Don't write to get rich. With the former, you'll generally be happy; with the latter, you'll generally be disappointed. (I know, J. A. Konrath is an exception, but your name isn't Konrath, is it?)

3. Get objective critiques. Don't ask for comments from your parents, sibs, spouse, lover, or anyone else who has an emotional stake in making you happy. That gets dicey.

4. Read the masters in your genre. Observe how they handle dialogue, description, transitions. Analyze their plots.

Oh, wait...that advice applies to writing in general, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. You have to be your own gatekeeper. In other posts I'll offer more specifics; meanwhile, if you stick to these basics, your self-published book will be superior to 90 percent of the self-pubbed stuff out there.

R is for the Road to hell

2011-04-20T11:01:00.000-05:00

Stephen King cleverly tells us that the road to hell is thickly paved with adverbs, those modifiers of verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. They don't always end in -ly, although they often do. (In the previous sentence, always and often are adverbs.)

Adverbs get a bum rap, in my opinion. Like salt in our suppers and passive voice in our writing, they are essential to our language but are easily overdone.

Q fills the gap

2011-04-19T11:24:00.000-05:00

Last night I awoke thinking to make my Q about Quitting and how that's a Bad Thing. My inspiration came from a woman who had committed to a local group to run a major project, then got her knickers in a twist over an unrelated issue and promptly quit, leaving many people in the lurch. I was going to mention my first job, where my boss admonished me that "Winners never quit, and quitters never win." Life is never as simple as a slogan, though, and I've quit more than you want to know.

Then there is the topic of Query letters, briefly considered and quickly discarded. I don't do them well and don't need them for my self-published novels.

No doubt there are plenty of good Q topics, but none I feel competent to write about, except that Q fills the gap between P and R.

P is for Pop-up windows for your blog links

2011-04-18T06:00:00.003-05:00

If you have a link in your blog, you might like it to open up in a pop-up window so your visitor doesn't leave your site. Just click on Edit HTML, find the text being linked, and change it like this:

O is for Osculation

2011-04-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

Osculation and its attendant repercussions play a not insignificant role in modern fiction--in the romance genre to be sure, but also in many murder mysteries. Tough-as-nails private eyes often engage in osculatory actions in their off hours or after they've offed the awful villains. As a writer, I find I must osculate frequently with my wife in order to keep the details clear in my mind. Of course, an occasional Noodle (see yesterday's blog post) helps as well.

The writer must stay sharp.

N is for Noodling around

2011-04-16T15:22:00.002-05:00

Hmm. N is for Nabokov? No, I never read him and have nothing to say. Necrophilia? Nightshade? Noodle soup? Nattering Nabobs? Negative. So I'm just Noodling around, looking at other folks' blogs and writing a little Nonfiction about the Sixties, which I remember unfondly. Since I missed out on both Vietnam and hallucinogens, some may say I wasn't even there, but I do recall a whole lot of upheaval. The progress of the civil rights movement and the technology generated by the space program are the main pluses I can think of from that decade. But the political murders and the war thoroughly poisoned the atmosphere.

Someone please help me. There must be other major events/phenomena that justified the Sixties. Oh yeah, the Beatles. What else?

M is for Murder

2011-04-15T16:28:00.000-05:00

One evening last year, several of us writers met at a friend's house out of town. My friend Dora said to us, "Did you hear about the awful shooting?"

We hadn't. Dora had just seen one of the victims at a Sister Cities meeting the night before. Apparently the woman and her husband stopped to run an errand on their way home from that meeting, then met up with a business partner. The three drove to her house, and when the woman went inside an intruder shot her. The woman's husband was shot apparently as he tried to help her, and then the business partner was shot as well. All three died.

Police have revealed little so far, but what is known to the public is that the woman and her husband were suing someone and were due in court the day after the murder. Any witnesses or clues are either non-existent or a closely-held secret. Juarez, Mexico, called by some the world's most dangerous city, is less than an hour's drive away.

Another triple murder occurred at a local bowling alley twenty years ago, and that case remains unsolved.

Many of us love murder mysteries when they are figments of our imagination. We transport ourselves into a world of make-believe mayhem and then maybe share the tale with friends if we enjoy it. Then real mysteries come along and don't necessarily reach neat conclusions. They might in time provide grist for the novelist's mill, perhaps with location and circumstances changed. Can you think of any murder mysteries that were clearly inspired by real events?

Writing when you’re stuck

2011-04-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

Here is a blog entry I wrote for Dawn Goldsmith last summer, entitled Writing when you’re stuck:

If you’re not a professional writer, then writing is one of those activities you wedge into your day when you can. My friend Patty used to get up at 4 or 4:30 every morning to work on her novel until her husband and children got up. Then she would get herself ready for a full day’s work as a bank officer, come home to cook supper, then dash off to school committee meetings. Patty’s writing friends admired her, but we never wanted to emulate her.

Others keep saner schedules but set aside specific times for writing and perhaps specific quotas of words. Still others put writing on their to-do list or simply get to it when they can.

If you accomplish everything on your list, you have imposed a sense of order on your world (or your list is too short). Writing is usually one of the items on my list, but often it has no special priority and gets done after the daily errands or not at all.

Email is one of the great interrupters, followed by Twitter. I always marveled at the great advantage of email that we can write each other at any time, and we can read your messages at any time. But if that’s the case, why do I feel the compulsion to check for messages a hundred times a day? Maybe it’s a need for affirmation that there’s a cyber-someone who thinks I’m important.

Yesterday I decided to abandon Twitter and my 750 or so “followers.” It had seemed like a good venue to advertise my books, but in fact it’s a tsunami of trivia with little of value floating by. Simply checking out the invitations to follow others takes up time better spent writing.

This morning I determined to finish my monthly Southwest Senior column about Las Cruces writers before looking at my email once. While it wasn’t difficult, it did require a conscious decision on my part to disturb an ingrained habit. Now it’s finally done.

Now suddenly there is a vacuum in my schedule. It won’t last, of course. A jumble of jobs both worthy and unworthy of my time will try to fill the void, and eventually they will do just that. For now, though, my office is silent but for the hum of the hard drive. Even my neighbor’s dog isn’t barking—is she all right?

This should be the time when my fingers fly, pausing only occasionally to let the keyboard cool down. So why am I staring at the screen, waiting for the thoughts to come? Can it be that literary bête noir, writers’ block? Maybe I should stop for lunch and think about it.

That raises a question, though: What do you do when you’re stuck? One trick that’s worked for me is to open a new file and write about the problem. In a draft of a novel I’d write a note to myself: This is the character and this is the situation, and now I don’t know what to do with him. He can’t just hang around, but has to earn his keep by advancing the story. Think about what the character wants and about possible roadblocks. Maybe your hero is having it too easy, in which case it’s high time for an unwelcome event. What if he wins the lottery? Think about the possibilities: he suddenly has too many friends or loses them all; he hosts a party where someone O.D.’s; he becomes a target for criminals. Meanwhile, all he ever wants is to retire and build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

In other words, if you get stuck that’s a good time to brainstorm. Ask yourself “What if?” and see where the answers take you. The event doesn’t have to be disastrous or even negative, but it should keep the story from moving in a straight line.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a knock at my door. I’ll be right back…

(note: Twitter and I have since made up.)

L is for Little Mountain

2011-04-12T12:23:00.000-05:00

We came home from a trip on Sunday, and two boxes of books awaited me--copies of my brand-new murder mystery, Little Mountain. Wahoo! My plan is to do a nice roll out, including a blog tour and all that. Meanwhile, though, because I need to use the letter L for something in the A-Z Challenge, let me make an offer: For $15 (the list price of the book) I will mail you an autographed copy of Little Mountain. I will pay for shipping.

Send me a private email to desertwriter1[at]gmail.com, with "Little Mountain" in the subject line. In the body, send me your mailing address. I will reply with mine. Then just mail me a check for $15, and I will send the book right out.

So what's the book about? A Cambodian refugee has become an American citizen and a homicide cop in Lowell, Massachusetts (I used to live nearby). He investigates a brutal murder of a Cambodian man that churns up memories of his life under the Khmer Rouge, and his search for the killer may be his own undoing.

K is for Keeping visitors on your blog

2011-04-11T06:00:00.006-05:00

Normally, when visitors click a link on your blog or web page, they will leave your blog. Wouldn't it be better if they didn't leave you?

All you need is to have the link open in a separate window. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Click on the Edit HTML button and locate the link, which will be structured like this:

2. After the second quotation mark and before the closing bracket, type a space, followed by
target="_blank"

Your code now looks like this:

J is for Journal-keeping

2011-04-10T06:00:00.004-05:00

If you're between writing projects or find yourself at a loss for what to write about, try keeping a journal. Since it's only for your eyes it can have anything in it, but consider it as a place for any number of notes and ideas that you can develop when the time is right. Mine began in the early '80s when my family first came in close contact with Cambodian refugees in the Lowell, Massachusetts area. I'd had nothing in mind at the time, but the notes came in handy when I began writing fiction later in the decade.

If you don't know how to start, the web has some good resources such as http://www.wikihow.com/Keep-a-Journal.

I is for Ideas and where they come from

2011-04-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Where do story ideas come from? Our own lives provide a rich trove of material, whether from our own experiences or from our observations. We read the newspaper, watch TV, learn about other people's troubles and maybe get an idea...so we jot a few notes on our computer for future reference, and then come back to it every now and then. I have a file named ideas.doc with random one-liners that may come in handy some day. They might be possible story titles, character names, "what if" scenarious, snippets of dialog I've overheard somewhere. The idea isn't necessarily to use them all--I don't--but to not forget them and to have a grab bag to dip into.

It's said that Tom Clancy's idea for The Hunt for Red October came from a small news article about a missing Soviet submarine. One day in the early 1980s I heard an NPR report about Cambodian refugees coming to America. That led to an association with some of the refugees and to my eventually incorporating the experience into two novels. At work years ago I overheard two women talking about shaving their legs. One woman said, "If I had legs like yours, I'd get a guy to shave them for me." I scribbled a note right away, and it patiently sits in my idea file, waiting for the right time to use it.

So ideas can come from anywhere. Use them only as starting points, though. Never feel like you have to stick with "what really happened." That only matters for non-fiction.

H is for HTML characters on your web page

2011-04-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

Do you need a cedilla or an umlaut or one of those Ls with a line through it like the Polish language uses? Okay, probably not very often. But when a foreign word calls for it, you'll look much more knowledgeable if your blog uses it. So here is a link to the codes for all of these characters:
http://webdesign.about.com/library/bl_htmlcodes.htm

You'll need to click on the Edit HTML button

G is for George on Prozac

2011-04-07T06:00:00.006-05:00

George, staring at one of his staff

Our Bengal cat George has been unwell lately. We've had him and his sister Gracie since they were weeks old, and now they're six. Lately he's been much quieter than usual except in the middle of the night when we're sleeping, and he's turned sullen (apparently) and aggressive toward Gracie, who's a sweetie. He's in the habit of grabbing her by the neck and holding her down, sometimes looking as if he wants to mate, though they're both neutered. Blood and urine tests at the vet haven't turned up anything, and we're in the process of trying some pheremone diffusers in the house to try calming him down. Today he's better, so maybe the diffusers are kicking in. Also the little guy goes on Prozac tonight. Maybe we'll mix it in with an evening martini.

F is for the Fantasy page of Deirdra Eden-Coppel

2011-04-06T06:00:00.004-05:00

I don't know Deirdra, but she just honored me with her Creative Blog Award. Thank you, Deirdra!

Visit her blog at

http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com/p/awards.html

E is for Essays unfinished

2011-04-05T06:00:00.050-05:00

Going through some old files, I came across a couple of paragraphs I wrote in January of 2006. It was meant to be the beginning of an essay.

My mom died in the hospital a couple of years ago, on a day of perhaps too-invasive tests to find the cause of internal bleeding. I’d stopped by on my way home from work just to check up on her, only to hear from a doctor that she was minutes away from death. To be with her in those last unconscious moments was both my privilege and my heartache.

Now she lies next to my dad, and they are finally at peace with each other. What else is left but fond memories?

D is for (re)Discovery

2011-04-04T14:53:00.000-05:00

Isn't Facebook great? My wife and I are traveling to South Carolina to see an old friend and his wife. Nancy, Charlie, and I were all high school classmates in Massachusetts nearly a half century ago, and Charlie and I had lost contact for most of that time. Then last year we rediscovered each other on Facebook (thank you, Mark Zuckerberg) and they came to visit us in New Mexico. Charlie took Nancy to the Junior Prom, in fact, so I wound up marrying his prom date. He and I both married well.

C is for Creating your own ebook

2011-04-03T06:00:00.016-05:00

You can pay someone from $50 to $150 to format your book for Kindle, or you can do it yourself. All you need is time, patience, and free software. The following is a general outline of the steps to take, and doesn't cover every specific. (The same or similar method may work for the Nook, but I didn't try that yet.)

The tools I used are:
--Microsoft Word (or you can use OpenOffice, free from openoffice.org)
--Mobipocket Creator
--Mobipocket Reader

Both Mobipocket applications are free and downloadable from mobipocket.com:

1. Open your document file in Word or OpenOffice.
2. If you haven't finished all of your edits, finish them before proceeding.
3. Save your file in .doc format (not .docx or .rtf) with a new name. Leave your original file unchanged.
4. Make the following changes to your document:
   A. Use only a standard font such as Times New Roman.
   B. Use tabs for paragraph indents.
   C. Use an extra line break between scenes.
   D. Put a page break at the end of each chapter.
   E. Delete all headers and footers, including page numbers.
   F. Replace em dashes with double hyphens, because em dashes don't display properly.
   G. Get rid of any unusual formatting.
5. Save your file in filtered html format. (Filtered html allows you to create a web page that is still editable as a Word file, though with limited functionality.)
6. Upload the file to Mobipocket Creator.
7. Upload a cover image to Mobipocket Creator.
8. Click the Build button.
9. View the completed file using Mobipocket Reader.
10. Go to dtp.amazon.com and sign in to your Amazon account, then follow their instructions.

B is 'Bout changing the price of your Kindle title

2011-04-02T06:00:00.007-05:00

A friend asked how to change the price on his book that he published on Kindle. Here is how:

1. Go to dtp.amazon.com and sign in with your Amazon account.

2. Click on the Actions button associated with your title.

3. Click on Edit Book Details.

4. The first screen that appears isn't what you want, so click Save and Continue. The second screen has a place where you can reset the price.

Bouillabaise and books

2011-04-01T07:29:00.000-05:00

We're guests this week and next in the Carolinas, so my A-Z Challenge is doubled for a while as I use my hosts' computer but focus mainly on socializing with them. They had three inches of rain just before we arrived, but so far we haven't seen any of that. Last night our hosts cooked up a bouillabaise of shrimp, corn, soft-shell crabs, and mussels. Mmmm-mm!

My new mystery, Little Mountain, is out. A box of copies has arrived at home, but I'll be too busy for a grand whoop-de-do rollout until our return. Much more about that later.

All right, who's in charge here?

2011-03-23T16:56:00.001-05:00

This afternoon I've been trying to visit blogs, but my Internet connection has slowed to a crawl. What the heck is going on here? Where is the Complaint Department? Am I going to be reduced to doing something away from the computer, like lifting weights or reading a book?

This is an outrage. I am officially peeved.

Critique group bounced!

2011-03-22T20:20:00.000-05:00

Today our fiction critique group was kicked out of our meeting place at El Comedor, a small Mexican restaurant. The restaurant staff was apologetic and said they didn't even know why, but someone told them to close immediately and get everyone out. It wasn't a fire or any obvious emergency--no gunshots, screams, fire engine sirens, nothing like that. We never found out the problem, but the six of us moved down the street to a coffee house.

It's nice little hole in the wall. I hope there's nothing serious going on.

Comic relief

2011-03-19T14:26:00.001-05:00

It's been a long, slow slog through Bloodlands, a book I've promised myself to read and review. Hitler has decided to exterminate every last living Jew, while Stalin has been slaughtering his own countrymen for years. When the two evil forces clash, millions of innocents are caught in the middle. The book itself is fine, the product of considerable research, but it seems every other page mentions a body count from some mass execution, with the victims numbered with four, five, or six digits. I've picked the book up several times and put it back down to get a rest. Certainly the book deserves a complete reading before I write the review.

So last night I needed a complete change of pace. I popped the Pixar move Up into my DVD player and thought I'd give it five minutes. If it was too stupid or childish, I'd pop it right back out again.

What a pleasure. Up had me within two minutes and held me for an hour and a half. The animation, the characters, and the voices were charming, and much to my surprise, there was a strong plot. The whole idea that you could escape the encroachment of "progress" by lifting your house with helium balloons and sailing away is original, and it's just the beginning of a good story.

When my brother died some years ago, a good friend suggested after a while that I needed a distraction. Go see Men in Black, she suggested. I took her advice and had some great laughs, exactly what I needed.

Everyone needs comic relief now and then--even Shakespeare's plays have it. What do you do when you need to lift your mood?

Self-Publishing with Amazon's CreateSpace

2011-03-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, CreateSpace emailed me to say that they've shipped the proof copy of my new murder mystery, Little Mountain. The uploading process wasn't too difficult, although it's nitpicky work. Of course you can hire them to do all or part of the job, but that just seemed like an unnecessary expense. They don't have layout guidelines per se, but they do provide templates. Each size layout has its own set of templates--my book, for example, will be 6" x 9", so I first downloaded the appropriate text template. All the margins and font styles and sizes are preset, so you can copy your contents and past it into the template.

Easy, huh? Well, yes and no. Be sure to copy only your text, not your document formatting (don't copy the very last spot in your document, and you should be okay). Then your margins will be fine, but you may have to tweak your font as well as headers and footers to make sure everything is consistent. You may want to justify your text, too. There is a table of contents section that you can simply delete if you don't need it. As with any templates, you can adjust it to suit yourself. Just leave the margins alone.

The cover upload is a separate task. I uploaded the text and then went to work on the cover. Their template is set up for Photoshop users, but if you use something different, you should have no problem. For example, I use Paint Shop Pro X. If you get something wrong, which happened to me on my first two tries, CreateSpace simply rejects your submission with an explanation of the problem. For example, your images must be at least 300 dpi and must fit properly. If there is text too close to the edge, you'll be told to fix it, and there are other details to watch for.

The exact cover template they give you depends on your page count, because that determines the spine width. Then it all has to fit within the specified borders. It's a little tricky, but not difficult. Just be patient, and don't panic if you don't get it right the first time.

I've skipped over a lot of details, but you'll see them for yourself on the CreateSpace website. One last detail you'll need, though. The files you upload have to be in PDF format, and they don't tell you how to do it. Luckily, it's really easy. The PDF Converter website is one of several that will convert your files for free. It's what I used, and it works perfectly.

If you have any questions, please post a comment, and I will do my best to answer helpfully.

Camp Furlong Days in New Mexico

2011-03-15T09:00:00.082-05:00

Last weekend we visited Columbus, New Mexico with friends to see the Camp Furlong Days festivities. In 1916, forces controlled by Pancho Villa attacked the town, which is about four miles from the Mexican border. They killed 18 Americans and lost about 100 of their own before retreating to Mexico. The raid prompted President Wilson to send General Pershing to lead a punitive expedition that turned out to be of dubious value. Pershing never caught Pancho Villa, and the general eventually went on to lead U. S. troops in World War I.

So what were the raid and the response all about? A lecturer at the festival mentioned two theories: first, that "Wall Street" wanted to provoke a war so that the U. S. could capture more of Mexico and seize its substantial oil assets; second, that Germany wanted the U. S. and Mexico embroiled in a war so the U. S. would be weakened in the event it ever decided to enter the European war against the Kaiser.

Today, little is left of Camp Furlong except for a few protected adobe remnants. Every year, two groups ride to tiny Columbus (pop. about 1800)--one from Mexico and one from northern New Mexico--basically, to have a party and celebrate the two countries' friendship. Snowbirds from the U. S. park their RVs in Pancho Villa State Park, a few minutes' walk from the festivities. The horses arrive more or less on time, carrying riders who wear colorful costumes and fly the American and Mexican flags at the head of their column.

An interesting sidelight: the mayor and police chief were unable to attend the event this year, as they were among ten people arrested in a firearms-trafficking bust by Customs and Homeland Security.

Not everyone is happy about the annual event. A descendant of one of the people killed in the Villa raid understandably fails to see what there is to celebrate.

History, bloody history

2011-03-13T12:23:00.000-05:00

Schlepping my way through Bloodlands, a thick history of the slaughter that took place in Eastern Europe. Poles, communists, prisoners of war, Jews, Ukrainians--name a group that lived in that region, and it was probably targeted either by Stalin, Hitler, or both. On virtually every page someone like the SS is trying to exterminate large numbers of people, and it's depressing. Of course, I knew about all of this grim history on a macro level.

The writing is fine, but this is a slow read that I had to put down for a couple of weeks because it's such disturbing material. When I'm finished, I'll write a review for the Internet Review of Books. It should have been done weeks ago.

By the way, the Internet Review of Books is always on the lookout for talented reviewers. If you're interested, or just want to suggest a recent title, let me know. We're light on fiction lately, so leads on promising novels will be especially welcome.

Ebook survey: What would you pay?

2011-03-09T17:23:00.001-05:00

I've read lots of opinions about how to price self-published ebooks. Some have said pricing at $9.99 suggests that it's a quality product and that charging only $0.99 suggests the opposite--that in fact the author doesn't value his or her own product very much. Try 4.99 or 2.99 or ... Yet others have said they think most people will risk a buck on anything.

So let's phrase the question differently, because I am about to publish a book and make it available on Kindle. Assuming you don't know my work but you are at least mildly intrigued by my book, a full-length murder mystery, what would you pay for a self-published ebook by an unknown author?

I'd appreciate your comments on this post. Again, tell me what you personally would do.

And thank you. This will help me a lot in pricing correctly.

Fortune cookie writing advice

2011-02-23T21:35:00.001-05:00

My wife got this fortune at a Chinese restaurant and gave it to me:

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

That sums it up well, doesn't it?

Bisbee, Arizona Peace Wall

2011-02-20T23:14:00.000-05:00

Haven't written with any consistency of late. This coming week my novel gets one final read-through before going to CreateSpace. If all looks well, I'll heave a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, we've done some traveling. Here's something I saw in Bisbee, Arizona, a city built on hills.

Peace, everyone.

Out of the freeze and writing about the heart

2011-02-05T21:47:00.000-05:00

We're thawing out from our recent deep freeze, with temperatures back into the 60s after several days of rolling blackouts for many of us. Yesterday a friend said this was the coldest he'd ever experienced around here since the late 1940s. We had a half-dozen blackouts lasting up to two hours each, while at today's writers' group one person reported a three-hour stoppage and another person reported no outages at all. Above is a view of the Organ Mountains from partway up "A" Mountain on the outskirts of Las Cruces.

Our writers' group meeting went well on a couple of levels. A relatively new member, Connie, moderated the meeting and conducted a 15-minute exercise on writing about the heart. What does the word mean to us? Some wrote about the heart as a pump that keeps us alive, and others wrote about the human spirit. Connie expected that some of us would write about Valentine's Day, but apparently no one did. My own effort tried waxing poetic about the faithlessness of my heart where it comes to writing projects, to not being able to keep a commitment to one project. It was hardly the stuff of poetic anthologies, but it was fun anyway.

Next month, another member will conduct a program about self-publishing.

Coming soon...

2011-01-24T18:42:00.000-05:00

I'm polishing up an old novel. A generous friend just read the manuscript and pointed out inconsistencies and a few out-of-order scenes that I'm in the process of fixing. The story has been essentially complete since the 1990s and once had an agent but not a publisher. One small publisher did say he wanted it, then went out of business instead. After that, one thing led to another--you know how it goes--and for a long time I'd largely forgotten about the project. So I'm going to self-publish it soon. You could call it an ethnic murder mystery, since the protagonist is a Cambodian homicide cop. So whatever else readers might say about it, they're not likely to call it trite.

An uncommon sight

2011-01-02T22:20:00.000-05:00

Temps dropped into the high teens last night and didn't climb out of the 20s until well into today. Meanwhile, an automatic sprinkler went on down the street from us. I hurried on down with my camera and found two other folks with the same idea.

My Dad used to take his camera everywhere and made pocket change selling photos to the local newspaper in Massachusetts, so that inspired me to do the same with this one. Who knows if the Las Cruces Sun-News will use it, but ice is something of a phenomenon in these parts.

A photo can spark memories and inspire a writer to record them. Dad chased many a fire in his day, and I recall seeing old black and white photos of burnt-out houses coated in ice, or firefighters with icicles hanging from their hats and fire hoses. He'd spend hours in his dark room, developing prints that smelled of acetate and placing them between soft towels to dry. When he died, his prints and color slides stayed with Mom in dusty closets, drawers, and cabinets. When she died, they all wound up with me. Unfortunately, Dad didn't label many of them, and I can only guess at the ages and locations. He left behind a glossy 8 x 10 portrait of four young men who were members of a band. They were all dressed up in plaid jackets and skinny ties, smiling at the camera. I can picture Dad with the camera on his tripod, barking instructions on how to pose. He was quite a curmudgeon, and many people found him hard to like. Anyway, in this particular print, one of the young gents has his hands by his side and is giving my Dad the finger.

Good goals and bad beans

2010-12-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

We're in our RV, traveling back from a Christmastime visit with our son in San Francisco. The California coast is lovely, but Lord, did we have rain. Driving the freeways proved scary in the Pasadena area, but all in all was not bad. I had the good fortune to visit with fellow writer and book reviewer Jack Shakely in California yesterday, and we spent almost four hours talking about the Internet Review of Books and lots of other subjects. Jack is a fine writer and, I discovered, an equally good conversationalist.

Last night after we parked the RV, it rocked in the wind as a front blew through and brought cold air with it. We're in Tonopah, Arizona, tonight. The local truck stop served up an awful "Mexican combo" that included unappetizing rice and refried beans, Keebler crackers that smelled like an industrial chemical, and chips without salsa. They were out of salsa. But the tacos were passable, and the Miller Light was cold and good.

Now we're both at our computers, with blankets wrapped around our shoulders. I've been working on my review of the Kindle version of Mark Twain's Autobiography tonight, but the venue isn't ideal. My writing goals for 2011 are all set, spurred in part by other bloggers' posts. Publishing a new novel is high on the list, as is learning how to create and market a Kindle version.

Do you set specific goals for the new year? Most effective for me has been setting measurable goals. Last year I decided to lose 35 pounds but lost only 25. That's okay, though. It gives me a new goal.

Five Stories

2010-12-18T20:32:00.000-05:00

Now and then, an incident in my life tickles people’s funny bones. It knocks around in my brain for a while or hides quietly in an unused synapse. When it comes back to mind, the question always arises: Can the humor survive the retelling, or did you have to be there? What follow are five such incidents.

The Flag

At a writers’ group in the early ’90s, ten of us sat in the home of a man who was attempting his first short story. He admitted he had no idea where the story was going, but he knew for sure that a murder had occurred in the lobby of an office building not unlike his place of employment. Witnesses found the victim stark naked, lying face-down, “with an American flag sticking out of his ass.”

That certainly caught our attention, but the author didn’t know what to do with the absurd calamity he’d created. Over several meetings, he re-read versions of his story, each including the flag in the butt. Finally, as he droned on, I leaned over and whispered in a woman’s ear, “Americans have landed on the Moon.”

The Guard

My brother Larry had been a guard at the county jail, and he liked working shifts no one else wanted, such as holidays and midnights. Often he had little to do but sit at a desk and read novels. He always told me he had a sweet gig. Then one day he died suddenly, leaving all who knew him in a state of shock. At his wake a tall uniformed deputy sheriff introduced himself to me, offered his condolences, and began telling stories about how Larry could make people laugh. One night the deputy walked in on Larry, who had fallen asleep face-first on his desk.

“Larry! What do you think you’re doing?” the deputy yelled.

Larry woke suddenly and sat up straight. “Oh, I was just praying,” he said.

The Moose

Shortly after my stint in the Air Force, I accompanied a group of Jaycees to visit inmates in the county jail. Several of us spoke to an audience of about 30 inmates. When my turn came to speak, my story went something like this:

Guys, I can relate to being in jail. I just got out of the Air Force, where my last assignment was a year on Fire Island Air Force Station up in Alaska. Fire Island is this godforsaken little island about three miles long and a half mile wide in Cook Inlet, within sight of Anchorage. The inlet has the second highest tides in the world, and at low tide the inlet turns into a mud flat that moose supposedly cross over. There were about two hundred guys on the island manning a radar squadron that was on the lookout for Russian bombers. Wives weren’t allowed, so my wife stayed home in Massachusetts. We spoke on a radio phone once every couple of weeks. All my letters to her were the same: I love you, I miss you, nothing’s happening. Once I was so bored that I slept 17 hours straight.

One day an earthquake shook the windows and briefly woke me up. Another time there was a small plane crash on the island, and that was terrible. But that was all the excitement for the year. Outside in the winter you could feel ice crystals forming in your throat. Summer days were so long we played softball until almost midnight.

Anyway, I must have hiked every part of that island, down the dirt road to the shore line, hiking through the trees and bushes and around a little pond. So one day when I’d been there about six months I was walking alone back up the dirt road toward my barracks, and out from behind a small shack walked this moose. He—she—I don’t know—moseyed right up to me. It stared down at me with this bored look. Down, yeah. I’m six feet tall, and I only came up to its shoulders. I was a little scared of pissing it off, because it could stomp me to death or drown me in its drool. So I didn’t move, and eventually it just trotted off into the woods, and I was okay.

So that’s kind of why it felt like I’d been in jail too. I’ve gotta tell you, though, after six months without a woman, that moose looked pretty damned good to me.

The Wake

My brother Roy was married for twenty long years to an abusive, alcoholic woman. A meek soul, he took whatever trouble she gave him. Any time he displeased her, which was often, she screamed or threw things at him and threatened him with divorce.

In time, she developed terminal cancer, but her rants continued all through her illness. Even on her deathbed she was threatening to divorce poor Roy.

She died friendless. At her wake she lay in an open casket, for once at peace. The room contained a half dozen rows of chairs, nearly all empty. Roy stood alone until our mother arrived and gave him a hug. Then he said to her with complete seriousness, “Well, I guess this settles the divorce issue.”

The Goddess Diana

Years ago, I took part in a writing workshop in which each member read a person’s story in advance and came to the next meeting with a detailed critique. One person wrote a lengthy story about a woman named Alice who had difficulty getting pregnant. She tried everything she could think of, but without success. She even purchased a replica of the Greek goddess Diana, described in the story as the goddess of love. Even that tactic was to no avail.

I always tried to critique thoroughly, so when it was my turn to comment on the story I went through the usual set of nits and suggestions. At the end I said, “Oh, and one more thing. I looked up Diana in the dictionary. She’s the goddess of the hunt, not the goddess of love—so that’s why Alice couldn’t get pregnant.”

Writing goals for 2011

2010-12-12T13:25:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow we're heading off in our RV to California for the rest of December to visit with our son in San Francisco. This may give me time to reflect and perhaps refocus my scattered energies.

Already one of my promises to myself and others was not to continue as president of Mesilla Valley Writers for a fourth year. Unfortunately, the person who volunteered to take over had a tantrum and decided to renege. You'd think someone about 70 years old would act like an adult, but no. No one else will take the job except one lady who has no experience running anything and never speaks up in meetings. So we agreed she'll get tasks to help her prepare to become president eventually, like chairing some of the meetings. The job remains mine in the meantime. So that's one resolution already broken, and the new year hasn't even started.

The other writing group I'm active in is 40 miles down the road, in El Paso, Texas. They are a larger and more vibrant group, but El Paso is also five times larger than my home town of Las Cruces. The El Paso Writers' League held its annual awards luncheon and installment of officers yesterday. They awarded prizes in their writing contest, which is highly anticipated all year. I won a few prizes for fiction and poetry, though my non-fiction did less well.

One commitment for 2011 is to co-edit and produce Border Tapestry, an annual book for the League showcasing the contest's first-place winners. It will be the third year on this great project, and it's a lot of work. One of the stories in the book will be the first and so far only chapter in a novel I began about 5 or 6 years ago. The judges' comments were encouraging enough that I'd like to start working on it again.

As for Mesilla Valley Writers, our January program will focus on members' writing goals for 2011 and how to achieve them. My own focus will be to pay more attention to my own writing and less on these peripheral writing-related activities.

How about you? Do you use this time of year to plan realistic writing goals? What do you hope to do differently, or better?

Foolish words

2010-11-09T09:00:00.003-05:00

Words can cut in ways we don’t always intend. While stationed in the deep South in the ’60s, I decided to look up some relatives who lived on Kuhn Street in Biloxi, Mississippi. While my wife and I were trying to find our way, I thought to ask for directions. A young black woman walked down the sidewalk, so I pulled alongside and asked her where Kuhn Street was. She never slowed, never opened her mouth, never looked in my direction. Had she looked at me, she’d have seen not a malicious person, just a foolish innocent. How many times had that woman been mocked?

We found Kuhn Street on our own, just a couple of blocks away. We had a pleasant evening playing cards with my relatives, who were cordial to us Yankees. I sensed that the friendliness would last as long as we didn’t discuss race or politics. When one of them made a passing reference to “darkies,” we ignored it in part because we were their guests and in part because we felt like foreigners. Also, I felt quietly embarrassed over my thoughtless request for directions.

A writin’ pen

2010-11-08T09:00:00.006-05:00

Beth Morgan spoke at Mesilla Valley Writers about oral histories the other day and mentioned capturing colloquialisms. That brought to mind Montgomery, Alabama, in the late 1960s. My wife and I were newly married kids from Massachusetts, and Gunter Air Force Base outside of Montgomery was my first duty station. We lived off-base for a while, and one day I walked to a local mom and pop store looking for a loaf of bread. Not finding any, I asked a clerk, who couldn’t understand me. Then I explained somehow, maybe saying it was for sandwiches, and she said, “Oh, you want BRAYud!”

Another time I came home from that same store, and my landlady asked me what I bought.

“I just bought a pen,” I said.

“What kinda pen, Bob? A fryin’ pen?”

“No, something to write letters with.”

“Oh,” she said, “a writin’ pen!”

What a difference a word makes

2010-11-07T14:13:00.005-05:00

We have a good group of people in Mesilla Valley Writers, where I'm president until the end of this year. At age 67, I am one of the younger members. Most of us live in our own homes, but we gather once monthly at an assisted living facility where Pat, one of our members, lives just a few feet away from our meeting room. Before each meeting, a couple of us arrange comfortable chairs in a cozy oval so that the 16 or 17 who typically attend can see and interact with each other.

Yesterday, we had a guest speaker talk to us about researching and writing oral histories. She talked about interviewing primary sources, listening to and studying but not transcribing what people have to say, and looking for useful anecdotes while paying attention to regional speech patterns. She had members briefly interview each other, so I questioned 80-something-year-old Helen about her trip to America from England when she was a young teenager in 1940. Hitler was in the process of trying to demolish Britain, and the British wanted to protect their children by sending them to the countryside or out of the country altogether. Though British, Helen had been born in the U.S. and was allowed to sail back to the States, accompanied only by her teenage sister. She hadn't gotten much past talking about the threat of U-boats when our interviewing exercise had to end.

Then we noticed the tea in the back of the room. One of our few refreshments in the meeting is the iced tea we purchase from the assisted living facility and which a staff person rolls in on a cart. This time it arrived after the meeting started, and hardly anyone noticed. After our speaker finished her program, Helen good-naturedly chastised me for not announcing earlier that the tea had arrived. So I then announced it to all, saying "Helen is mad at me because I didn't tell you about the tea earlier." After a minute, an elderly gentleman sitting next to Helen pointed to the door and said to me, "You know, Pat's door is open. You can use her bathroom."

Helen and I looked at him. "I'm sorry," I said. "What are you talking about?"

"You said Helen is mad at you because you didn't pee earlier," he said.

Helen and I had a great laugh, but the poor man was simply trying to be helpful.

Cover art for One Must Die

2010-11-02T20:52:00.001-05:00

Here's my novel's new cover, designed by the talented El Paso artist Maritza Neely. I asked her to combine three basic elements: death, Cambodia, and America to suggest the novel's tone and subject matter. The temple is Angkor Wat, which readers won't have to recognize to know that it's Asian.

The manuscript is complete and has been so for years. Once it had a willing small publisher who--alas!--decided to get out of the business. Now with low-cost publishing options like CreateSpace, I'm publishing it myself, with my greatest expense being a reasonably priced cover design. My goal is to publish on both CreateSpace and Kindle by the end of the year--easy enough if I shift around a couple of priorities.

I think people will like One Must Die, not that I'm objective. There is culture conflict, a likable protagonist, and a slant on a cop story that you probably haven't seen before.

If you'd like to work with Maritza yourself, you can contact her at http://www.maritzajauregui.com/studio.

Check out the new IRB

2010-10-15T11:01:00.004-05:00

Today the Internet Review of Books relaunched as a daily blog instead of as a monthly website. Our dear friends and founders Carter Jefferson and Ruth Douillette needed time and space to do other things in their lives, so they've moved on. Now Julie McGuire, Gary Presley, and I are pleased to issue the IRB daily, generally publishing a single review every day. We'll tend to alternate between fiction and non-fiction that have been published within the last six months, with occasional interviews for variety.

Julie McGuire is a dedicated reader and reviewer of novels, and she'll continue as our intrepid Fiction Editor. Gary will manage the blog, doing lots of essential work to keep us rolling. I used to manage the website but now am the new Non-Fiction Editor.

So please stop by our blog, and be sure to follow it. You'll be eligible to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate that we'll be giving out on November 15.

Not a reader?

2010-10-04T20:37:00.004-05:00

My blog isn't meant to be political. Although I happen to like President Obama, I understand that many people don't. Fair enough. But today I walked past a shop that had its windows filled with anti-Obama t-shirts, bumper stickers, and gewgaws. All in all, its tenor was little different from what the left inflicted on President Bush. One slogan said, One Big Ass Mistake America. Okay, that's cool. The freedom to disrespect our political leaders is essential to what makes our country great.

What annoyed me was the bumper sticker with a cartoon of Obama pointing at Bush and saying "It's his fault!" and the slogan, "WE NEED A LEADER NOT A READER." Wait a minute. Are the two mutually exclusive? Doesn't a leader need to be informed, to actually know something? Or does he just need to really, really believe?

Remembering the Sky Buddy

2010-10-02T21:32:00.006-05:00

At my writing group today, our presenter asked us to write on the theme of remembrance. Here is what I came up with.

Our family owned a black metal Sky Buddy radio ever since I can recall. My father bought it in New Orleans during World War II during one of his breaks from duty in the Merchant Marines. It was a short wave radio made by Hallicrafters, and it could pick up signals from everywhere. As

a child, I would turn the steel dial and hear strange languages, Morse Code from ships at sea, exotic and popular music. My mom said that during the war a neighbor reported her to the FBI because the radio seemed like a spy's tool. Over the years I listened to Curt Gowdy announcing hundreds of Red Sox games, to the weekly band concert on local WESX in Salem, Massachusetts, to Queen for a Day with my mom, to Guy Kibbee's show on fishing, and to a show called The Answer Man. I marveled that the Answer Man always seemed to know everything. My brother Larry, the family fisherman, sent in a post card to Guy Kibbee, and the show kept mailing him prizes seemingly for years.

We were of course a family of Communist haters back in the early 50s--who wasn't? I remember hearing Walter Winchell's staccato voice delivering the news every night, and perhaps he was the one who announced Stalin's death in '53. Whoever the announcer was, I cheered the news. My Dad and I enjoyed stopping in briefly to listen to Radio Moscow and laugh when the announcer told his American audience how badly we were suffering under capitalism, and how the Soviets had invented everything from radio to toothbrushes.

But of course for a young boy, baseball was more important than politics. I remember hearing Curt Gowdy's play by play when a Red Sox relief pitcher came in late in a game with the bases loaded and gave up a grand slam home run with his first pitch. In the first game of one season at Fenway Park, the first batter up hit a home run on the first pitch of the year. Harry Agganis from Lynn, Massachusetts played for the Red Sox for a couple of years, then died suddenly from a relapse of pneumonia. He'd been my hero, and I was crushed at hearing the news.

Eventually I grew up and moved away from home. My father died in '67, my mother in '04, and the radio was still in her house, its vacuum tubes dusty and dead. I took custody of it for a while but could no longer get it to operate--and had no room to keep it anyway. In a way I miss the old relic, because for so long it had been a central feature in our family kitchen.

Ban these books!

2010-09-28T11:36:00.006-05:00

Happy Banned Books Week, everyone! I just looked at a list of "most commonly challenged" books in the U.S. and see some great work I've read over the years, such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Young Huck uses the "n" word about 200 times, which irritated me on second reading--but the kid's voice was that of the 1850s and bore no malice. We need to read this book to help us understand how far our great country has come.

Also on the list is Bless Me, Ultima by Rodolfo Anaya, which I'd never heard of until I moved to the southwest. The eponymous Ultima may or may not be a witch, which apparently had some readers' knickers in a twist. So what? It's a touching story.

Then there are To Kill a Mockingbird, a beautiful book that's only objectionable to people who hate justice; Lady Chatterly's Lover, of which I avidly read select passages as a teenager; the likes of Hemingway, King, Angelou, Sinclair, Capote, Morrison--so many scurrilous scribes--little wonder I have grown up to be so depraved.

Perhaps it's the combined influence of all these bounders that influenced my writing a banned book of my own. Did you know that When Pigs Fly was banned in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the same city that burned Harry Potter and other un-Christian books in 2000? In '07 the city's Friends of the Library first invited me to do a reading, then disinvited me because my antagonist (you know, the bad guy) lacked moral character.

In one of my frequently recurring daydreams, enemies of iniquity light a bonfire made exclusively of copies of When Pigs Fly and Getting Lucky--all having been purchased at list price, of course.

Blind but Now I See

2010-09-04T14:49:00.002-05:00

Nonfiction
Music awash on our shores

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson

368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

American music takes multiple forms—classical, jazz, show tunes, big band music, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, and more—and most of these genres have evolved by blending into one or more of the others. But there is one genre, entirely American now, that owes its origins to the Celts, Scots, and Brits who brought their music as they washed up on these shores. It’s the music of the South and the Appalachian Mountains, and it is the music of Doc Watson.

I knew the styles of the music but had never really connected with the people who played it ... I just had this sound ringing in my ears of this beautiful pentatonic, archaic-sounding music sung in a vocal style that left Frank Sinatra far behind.

So said Ralph Rinzler on first hearing Doc play. Rinzler, a young folk aficionado, was instrumental in bringing Watson out of the hills of western North Carolina to perform on a New York City stage. This occurred in 1961, at the initial wave of the folk music revival. Watson’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” at that performance created a sensation, making the old hymn once again part of the American songbook and identifying Watson as an icon of acoustic instruments and traditional singing.

Rinzler soon became a combination of representative, agent, manager, and friend to Watson, even pressuring him to maintain the purity of his repertoire when Watson wanted to incorporate other genres into his performances.

The musical wizard known as Doc was born Arthel Lane Watson in 1923, near Deep Gap, North Carolina on the family farm, a few meager acres of the three thousand passed down from David Watson, a Scotsman who came to America to fight the British “in exchange for the promise of land, should the Americans prevail in their struggle.”

Possibly as a result of an injury from an ill-measured dose of silver nitrate eye drops meant to prevent post-natal infection, Doc has never been able to see, but the blind youngster grew up without being coddled. He was allowed to run free across fields and farmland with his brothers and sisters, and he pitched in with chores, right down to being stationed at one end of a cross-cut timber saw. Like some who are blind, young Doc learned to listen. He calls it “sound radar,” a skill so highly developed that he can easily memorize music, or diagnose a car engine flaw simply by hearing it run.

Kent Gustavson’s biography is filled with such minutiae about hill country life, about the music and musicians of Appalachia, about Doc’s short sojourn at the Raleigh School for the Blind, and about the Watsons and related families.

Gustavson is a music professor at Stony Brook University in New York, and his knowledge, passion, and expertise offers readers a thorough insight into the magic that Watson makes. He chronicles Watson’s career from local dances and juke joints to appearances on small town radio stations. It was prior to a broadcast performance in a furniture store, in fact, that Doc earned his nickname. The host didn’t think “Arthel” came across well on the airwaves, and a young woman in the audience yelled out, “Call him Doc.” And so it was.

Watson married, had two children, lived off the land, a state pension, and his meager earnings from playing music at dances and picnics across the hills and hollers, in churches, and juke joints, but it wasn’t folk music then. It was “ ... America’s other traditional folk music ... rockabilly ... music that transformed Doc Watson from a street musician ... to a professional musician who could support his family on his own pride.”

Much of this biography covers those years before Watson met Rinzler. Rinzler had come to Appalachia to record the legendary Clarence Ashley, also known as Tom Ashley, a session for which Watson has been hired to play the electric guitar. Rinzler doesn’t want a modern instrument ruining music not meant to be amplified, but when he heard Doc sing “Tom Doula” and accompany himself with a banjo, Rinzler realizes he has found an American original.

Gustavson quotes a Who’s Who of folk musicians, and tidbits about music legends are scattered throughout the book. Pete Seeger is everything Doc Watson is not—a political and social liberal and scion of a prosperous family—but he can only imitate Watson’s blood-rooted authenticity. Woody Guthrie, dying from Huntington’s disease, is spirited from a hospital by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to be at one of Doc’s early New York City appearances.

Gustavson’s research is admirable. While an index would have been helpful, the author does include extensive notes at the end of each of the twenty chapters. Curiously, a reading of the author’s acknowledgements suggests Watson was not interviewed for this biography, but I would not doubt that Gustavson’s work presents an authentic picture.

The final chapters of the book are deeply affecting. They chronicle Watson’s years of international renown as his legend reaches outside the folk genre; the grind of day-after-day touring on the road; the integration of his son, Merle, into his performances; and the collapse of Doc’s world when Merle, also an extraordinary guitarist, died at age thirty-six in 1985. Doc Watson cherished Merle as musical soulmate and best friend. Merle also had orchestrated and guided much of Doc’s tour life for fifteen years, and the older man felt his loss deeply, so much so that some of the people interviewed note his son’s death left him a “harder” man. But the legend continued to tour and record for several years, and to take part in an annual acoustic music festival in honor of his son. Watson resides in North Carolina today, although friends sometimes characterize him as reclusive.

Musicologists will appreciate the chapters on Doc’s singing style, and his guitar work, both flat-picking and finger-picking. Music fans will delight in the book as a whole, a splendid recounting of Doc Watson as man whose “ ... approach to folk music on a guitar was like Horowitz’s approach to the piano ... Music awash on our shores

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson
368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson
368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson
368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

Barefoot in Baghdad

2010-09-02T14:46:00.001-05:00

Nonfiction
If only

BAREFOOT IN BAGHDAD:
A Story of Identity—My Own and What it Means to Be a Woman in Chaos
By Manal M. Omar
237 pp. Sourcebooks $14.99

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

She speaks American English, but she also wears a headscarf, is fluent in Arabic and can quote the Koran. It’s right after the 2003 American invasion, and she says she’s in Iraq on a humanitarian mission. Neither side trusts her.

But she’s not a spy, a journalist, nor an agent of the CIA. Manal Omar is a Palestinian-American, who comes to Baghdad after the U. S. invasion as regional coordinator of Women for Women International, an organization struggling for women’s rights. Her memoirs from this period, 2003 to 2005, shed considerable light on our nation’s problems in Iraq.

Fearing she might be seen as a tool of the American occupation, Omar at first refuses to enter the Green Zone or attend meetings run by the military. Thus pro-war Iraqis are suspicious of her. Because her headscarf bespeaks religious conservatism, Baghdad women accuse Omar of being Iranian and insidiously bent on rolling back the freedoms they have won. They deny there are pockets of poverty in the city and irately reject any idea Iraqi women need help. She finds it difficult to add a woman to her staff, because educated women are loath to go into the poor areas, as she does.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have entered the country have little clue about what’s needed. Because Omar has the courage—and the contacts—to talk to all classes of Iraqi women, she is able to persuade representatives of other NGOs that the basic needs—food, shelter, health care, electricity—must be met before they can think about larger issues like women’s rights and teaching money-making skills to women.

Initially, Iraqis welcomed the allied armies and celebrated the end of Hussein’s rule. But as time goes on, slowness in meeting those needs alienates the people from the temporary government of the occupiers. The situation sours—aid money goes to crooked contractors who deliver shoddy work and pocket huge profits. Powerful clans resent loss of their power and property and turn to murder. Civil strife erupts.

Omar’s friend Fern Holland expressed this pessimism:

...the window of opportunities to create a new Iraq was rapidly closing...the people to pay the price were going to be the women of Iraq...These women are unbelievably strong. And I am afraid we are setting them up for failure. We are giving them nothing but bricks and fancy equipment.

In an epilogue, Omar says,

I have worked in other war-torn countries, but my time in Iraq haunts me more than any place I have been... It maddens me that so many of the mistakes that pushed Iraq into chaos were avoidable. From the outset of the U.S. invasion, those in power repeatedly betrayed the people of Iraq by standing on the sidelines as the society crumbled and making promises they could not keep.

Because she still adheres to her culture’s family values, “The decision to go to Iraq was not mine alone. It was a family affair. ” The author had worked for the UN, Oxfam, and then for World Bank, and her Arabic-American family couldn’t understand why she would leave an enviable job to go into a dangerous situation. Omar felt she had a perspective few others did—she was right—and after a long campaign received her father’s permission.

For my Palestinian family, the Iraq war hit a raw nerve. It was a reminder of what had happened to the Palestinians in 1948...another humiliation of the Arab world at the hands of the West. And as far as they could tell, I wanted to be part of it — and I was on the wrong side.

When she is introduced to her staff—all men, she is shocked to discover—she gets a chilly reception. It takes some time for her to find out what the problem is: having been told they would have a female American boss, they had entertained visions of the blond, blue-eyed Barbie starlet type they had seen on television. They were crushed to find they would be working for a scarf-wearing Arabic woman instead.

The author makes many of her points anecdotally, recounting the stories of individual women she helped—or was unable to help. Patriarchal customs hampered her time and again, and U. S. military rules often imposed other obstacles.

She makes good friends in Iraq and finds a husband—but they are forced to flee by extremists. One of her staff is murdered. Some of the others flee to the U. S. But Muna, the woman Omar recruited to her staff, courageously remained in Iraq carrying forward the work of Women for Women, pushing the program to help the most vulnerable.

Despite the retrogression in Iraqi life in the past six years, Omar remains optimistic that the strength and resilience of the Iraqi people will win out and make the country the great nation it could be. If only.

The self-publishing experiment, part 2

2010-09-02T13:11:00.005-05:00

The self-publishing experiment with CreateSpace worked out nicely, with the second chapbook going through without a hitch. Here is the front cover of the second one. The artwork is by the terrific El Paso artist Maritza Jáuregui-Neely. My co-editor and I asked her to capture the flavor of El Paso, and she certainly did:

About a Mountain

2010-09-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Nonfiction
A Noble Miss

By John D’Agata
236 pp. W.W. Norton $23.95

Reviewed by Tim Elhajj

In 2002, John D’Agata helped his mother move to Las Vegas and found himself following the ongoing controversy to relocate and store radioactive waste material from all over the country nearby. He then volunteered for a local community suicide prevention help line, and that same summer sixteen-year-old Levi Presley jumped from the roof of a hotel to his death. In About A Mountain, John D’Agata takes these disparate threads of his experience and weaves them into a meditation on bureaucracy and corrupt politics, the self-destructive impulses of individuals and nations, and the limits of language over time.

For over twenty years Yucca Mountain has been at the heart of a plan to dispose of waste from every nuclear power plant or weapon development site across the United States. The government plans to store this material inside the mountain until it no longer poses a threat to human life. But as D’Agata unpacks the decisions that led to this course of action, it becomes clear that the threat to humanity isn’t what’s driving the policy.

There are politics at play at almost every level of the process, from the assessment of risk—does the threat of transporting nuclear waste outweigh the threat of storing it in multiple locations?—to adopting Yucca Mountain as the central storage facility. Will anyone be surprised to learn that Congress selected this mountain, which may not be the most suitable location for a variety of geological reasons, because its state and federal representatives were among the weakest and least able to protect their constituents from harm?

Fortunately D’Agata has his sights set higher. He isn’t primarily concerned with rabble-rousing against corrupt politicians, but wants us to consider instead the act of self-destruction itself. We consider it literally as he traces Levi Presley’s last hours. We consider it figuratively as we reflect on how long the toxicity of the radioactive waste we’re creating will last, compared to the length of the longest-known civilizations and cultures, or the efficacy of language itself.

D’Agata gets high marks for the scope and breadth of this work. He reaches for and imagines descriptions of everything from Edvard Munch contemplating the world as he paints The Scream to the few hours prior to Presley’s leap from the tower at the Stratosphere. I really wanted to enjoy this book, and for the most part I did, but somehow, something about its execution left me cold.

D’Agata has a penchant for lists. He includes lists of contradictory facts, lists of the exact types of devastation that might occur in a traffic accident involving a truck with a payload of nuclear waste, lists that include everything that would be contaminated in such an accident from rusted bolts to light bulbs, lists of the accumulation of cosmic sums of interest that accrue over vast periods of time. One or two these lists seems fine, a good idea—this is, after all, a book about the existential grief of modern life. What better way to present this than by asking the reader to wade through this sort of data? But I am the type of reader who wants to drink in every word, and I feel cheated when I am tempted—no, invited is a better word—to scan so many lists by the author.

Worse, D’Agata has chosen to bring into the story his own experience, and his tale of moving his mother to Vegas is incredibly inconsequential and dull. Mom and son look for somewhere to live. Mom and son march in a small parade. He describes a visit to the proposed site at Yucca Mountain, which isn’t as trite. And his work on the suicide prevention hot line allows him to segue more easily into the material about poor Levi. But there is little self-revelation here. The material from his life is simply a way to frame the text, lacking any sort of urgency or depth. Why bother?

Compare D’Agata’s use of memoir here with something like Nick Flynn’s sublime memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb, where Flynn, a soon-to-be father, uses his book to examine his fears of fatherhood and intimacy and, as the Abu Ghraib scandal breaks in the news, his growing obsession with torture and pain. Under Flynn’s deft hand, the connections between his own personal fears, American fears of terrorist attack, and the fears of torturer and tortured alike seem plain enough, but each is made all the more urgent by the immediacy of the prison scandal or the infant growing in its mother’s womb. This is how to use personal experience to inform a political issue. D’Agata presents some intriguing ideas, but his text misses on some important marks. It’s a noble miss, but a miss all the same.

A self-publisher's progress

2010-08-18T16:08:00.012-05:00

Today I submitted a 64-page chapbook to CreateSpace on behalf of Mesilla Valley Writers (MVW), which is here in New Mexico. It's my first such endeavor, and writers considering self-publishing might want to see how it goes. I'll be publishing a second chapbook very soon, and if all goes smoothly, a novel in the fall.

In previous years, MVW has published using a local print shop. We'd print a set number for a set price, and would always have unsold copies languishing in someone's garage. We decided to experiment with an online company this year because we avoid the upfront printing costs and we can buy exactly the quantity we want.

My first inclination was to go with Lulu.com, but they have an 84-page minimum; neither this chapbook nor the next one will meet that criterion. CreateSpace doesn't have that requirement, and their association with Amazon gave me the confidence to try them.

My software includes Word 2007 and Corel Paint Shop Pro X. No doubt other software would do just as well. Formatting the layout and page size in Word was straightforward, just changing it to the 6" x 9" dimensions planned for the book. The page count has to be a multiple of four for any printed book, so I arranged my material and illustrations accordingly. Of course, a few blank pages at the end would be no problem, but you do need to plan for it.

With CreateSpace and probably other such outfits, you have to upload your book in two separate PDFs, one for the contents and one for the cover. Word 2007 allows you to create a PDF of a word processing file, which you can then look at in Adobe. (If you don't have it, download the free Adobe 9 reader. You'll need it.) This is a good time to inspect the entire file for any formatting errors. Then you can upload the PDF to CreateSpace on their website. It's quite straightforward--you get a template into which you upload the file.

After that, I turned to the cover, which was a little more intimidating for me. My front cover graphic had to be 300 dpi and sized at 6 x 9. This was a little tricky getting just right, but mainly because of my inexperience. But it wasn't too bad. The CreateSpace instructions said to export the graphic into PDF. The trouble was, I couldn't see a way to do that using Paint Shop Pro. Maybe I just missed something.

But no matter. A number of free PDF-creating tools exist on the Web. I used

http://www.freepdfconvert.com/, which worked beautifully. I just uploaded my graphic, and got a PDF in return. Very nice. Then it was a matter of uploading that into the cover template. You'll also need to create a back cover and the spine, which of course varies in thickness by page count. They

have a book tour video that shows the process. This is what took me the most time in the submission process, because it requires close attention to detail--and for me, a bit of trial and error. Here is the result:

That red border is not part of the cover; it's the trim area. Anything extending into the trim area will not be part of the cover. The yellow rectangle on the back cover is an area reserved for the ISBN, which CreateSpace puts in automatically.

And wouldn't you know it? After submitting, I realized I needed to make a small change in text. It turns out that all you have to do is resubmit the corrected file.

I'll post more about my experiences as time goes on. Hopefully, they may help someone.

First the good news...

2010-08-16T00:37:00.008-05:00

Lots of good things are going on with me lately, along with one rather nasty one. Today I finished the August issue of the Internet Review of Books. Lots of people have a hand in it, of course, but I actually put the web page up on the 15th of every month. Check it out! You'll like it.

More good news is that I'll be publishing chapbooks for the El Paso Writers' League and Mesilla Valley Writers this week. They're lots of work and fun, collaborating with friends to get the jobs completed. They'll both be published through Amazon's CreateSpace. More about them later this week.

And finally, When Pigs Fly has received a dandy new review on Amazon.

Coachmen Santara

2009-2010

R.I.P.

Now the bad—cringe along with me, please—our Coachmen RV has bitten the dust, declared both unusable and unfixable by Camping World. The issue, we're told, is frame fatigue, meaning we could lose the entire back end of the vehicle—it could break off and kill someone—if we continue to use it. When we bought the vehicle it had 4,000 miles on it, and we have added another 16,000, which hardly should be enough to wear it out. There is a lot more detail, but we're going to Camping World tomorrow to remove our belongings from it, and then we're calling our insurance company. It's very distressing, because we love RV travel.