The LadyKillers

A Moment That Had to Be Overcome

-from Susan

“Moments in history”? It sounds like an essay question on an SAT exam!

How about the stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe, one of the inspirations for the King’s Jar in my new mystery? The archaeological site in what is now Zimbabwe (the country was named for the site and not the reverse) consists of an extensive, connected series of walled enclosures and remains of other structures surrounding them. It was built on a high plateau somewhere between the 11^th and 14^th centuries, Modern researchers have revised upward the likely number of people who lived there as they have – reluctantly at times – acknowledged that the site is evidence of a thriving, large town, perhaps a city-state. When Westerners first saw it, with typical 19^th century hubris they hypothesized that it must have been non-Africans who built it since Africans were primitives. That arrogance continued well into the 20^th century, with the white government of Rhodesia, for political reasons, actually pressuring scientists to say it wasn’t built by black Africans.

I was looking for a treasure worthy of being stolen in my book, and wanted an African one. The controversy about the degree to which sub-Saharan Africans had been able to create relatively sophisticated indigenous cultures as China and the West had by the 12^th century led me to wonder what might prove the parallel development of societies. I started with the idea of an African artifact, but settled on the King’s Jar because it would show that the Africans not only had their own civilization but that they had high level (ruler to ruler) relations with China’s Late Song Dynasty. The imaginary jar in my story is clearly Late Song Dynasty made for royalty – the only ones allowed to possess the celadon-glazed pieces – and has a startling feature: an African white, one-horned rhino modeled on its lid. I gave my researcher a distinguished career for finding it and for convincingly interpreting its importance as proof of this African kingdom’s ongoing, mutually respectful relations with Chinese ocean-going traders.

Great Zimbabwe doesn’t appear in The King’s Jar. I’ve sketched a similar site farther north on the continent. Heck, I even created a new country, Kenobia, which has a nice ring to it, I think. But within all that fiction, I am making at least one point about a moment in history. Scientists today are much more broadly educated, but in 1871, when the German geologist Carl Mauch saw Great Zimbabwe, he was a prisoner of his age’s biases. As Graham Connah writes in African Civilizations, it would be a century before the unfortunate mythology of non-African creators of Great Zimbabwe would finally be exposed, and the real study of this site could begin.

Couldn't copy and paste it but here's a wonderful example from the Metropolitan Museum that is so close to my vision for The King's Jar: 

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60009947)

Moments in History By Michael A. Black

 

When I was in grammar school I viewed history as something you read about in books. By the time I got into high school and then college I came to the realization that history was happening all around me. It just wasn’t always readily apparent. Unfortunately, a lot of these events are marked by less happy occasions. Future generations will be asking their parents the questions, “Where were you on September 11, 2001?” or “Do you remember the Boston Marathon bombing?” While we may recall where we were, how accurate will the retelling of these incidents be?

It’s long been said that history is written by the victors. There’s also a lot of unfortunate distortion going on by the writers. Back in college during my Spanish class we had to read a book about the history of Spain. The book was written in Spanish and published by that country. It gave an exacting history from medieval times up to the present, but one student, who was married to a Spanish national, mentioned that it completely omitted the 1898 war with the United States. (“Remember the Maine!”) Sure, it was an eminently forgettable event in the history of Spain. They lost quite handily, but should it have been left out like it never happened? How would future generations react if the scribes left out our disastrous experience in Viet Nam?

Certainly, historical events might be slanted a certain way to make them more palatable or more dramatic. I remember sitting through the movie Lincoln last year and marveling at the political maneuvering our sixteenth president had to accomplish to get the 13th Amendment passed. But apparently not everyone was enthralled. One Congressman from the state of Connecticut publicly criticized the movie as inaccurate, saying the four representatives from his state voted “Yay,” not “Nay” when the vote was taken. The movie changed their votes to increase the tension and make the build up to the final vote more dramatic. This was a bit before my time, so I didn’t weigh in on the controversy, but it brings up an interesting point. How accurate is our depiction of history in books, TV, and movies, and is it acceptable to distort things a bit under the guise of artistic license?

How about downright distortion of history? The Untouchables is one of my favorite movies and was based on historical events in Chicago in the 1930s. I thought Kevin Kostner made a great Elliott Ness, but remember the climatic scene where he pursues Frank Nitti, deftly played by Billy Drago, to the roof of the courthouse and tosses the villain over the edge? It was very dramatic, but Nitti didn’t really die in that manner. In fact, Nitti was convicted of tax evasion alongside his boss, Al Capone, for income tax evasion in 1931. He served 18 months in prison and subsequently took over the leadership of the gang after his release. In 1943 he committed suicide alongside some railroad tracks in North Riverside, Illinois.

This set me thinking. The movie obviously took great liberties with the actual historical facts, but got around this by calling the production a “dramatic retelling of history.” I guess that’s a euphemism for a good old fashioned “fish tale.” Think of the implications. A few years from now someone who’s channel surfing might come across this old movie and watch it, thinking, that’s the way it really happened. Only, it didn’t. History was deliberately distorted in the name of entertainment. Or should that be in the name of docudrama?

On the flip side, as a cop I learned that two people can actually witness the same event and have two varying opinions of what occurred. Often prejudices and distorted perception are to blame, which is why each witness statement has to be carefully evaluated. Of course, as we move toward a more constantly monitored society, with surveillance cameras on every corner, history is being recorded in a lot of cases. The recent terrorist act in Boston is an example of this. Future historians will hardly be able to distort that incident, although I’m sure some people are probably already trying. After all, look at the conspiracy loonies who claim that it was a military plane that flew into the World Trade Center, and not the hijacked airliner, despite the videos.

There’s an old adage that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes fact. And history is definitely “rewritten” to suit the current times. Comedians had a lot of fun with the old Soviet Union photos that would periodically delete pictures of political figures who had fallen from grace? I wonder if any of the updated photos ever make it to the gulags or unmarked graves where those people might have been sent? Sounds a lot like George Orwell’s 1984 and Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth, doesn’t it? Since Orwell’s novel was written in 1948, the Soviet’s photographic alterations sort of turned out to be a case of life mirroring art.

Writers who like to stretch the historical end of things have plenty of company. But is it ethical? Fiction is one thing, history is another. How we depict it in fiction is like walking a fine line, but I hope that there will be enough objective recorders of the truth around to record the actual sequence of events without embellishment. Sometimes I wonder if this is really possible. Perhaps it’s best summed up by the ending line of another of my favorite movies, Sunset, which depicts fictional meeting between real life characters Wyatt Earp (James Garner) and Tom Mix (Bruce Willis):

And that’s the way it really happened . . . Give or take a lie or two.

NEWS and Moments in History...

NEWS FLASHES!!!

• Terry Shames has a review from Publishers Weekly for her upcoming debut, and it's a doozy! "Shames’s promising debut, the first in a series, introduces retired police chief Samuel Craddock of Jarrett Creek, Tex., a strong-minded, fairly able-bodied, and firmly decent man in his 60s... Readers will want to see more of the likable main character, who compassionately but relentlessly sifts the evidence. Convincing smalltown atmosphere and a vivid supporting cast are a plus."

PEERING INTO THE PAST

Days gone past, memory lane, the olden days... We're taking the historical perspective this coming week. Join us as we travel to the past, muse about the past, and otherwise engage in reverse timetravel.

The Past = Water under the bridge or...?

One Day at a Time...

When the word "persistence" arises, I must admit that this AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) saying is one of the first things that comes to mind. I'm not AA myself, but know some about the organization, and I'm willing to bet that most folks have heard of and/or followed a "one day at a time" philosophy at one point or another.

It's a great philosophy for encouraging persistence. You don't have to complete that "to do" list in one marathon session, you don't have to climb that entire mountain in one enormous leap, you don't have to sit down and write your way from beginning to end of a writing project in one fell swoop... You simply take your list one item at a time, climb that mountain one step at a time, write that project one word at a time.

You don't live life all at once: all of its joys and sorrows, the triumphs and defeats. It's moment by moment, day by day.

And now, here's a low-key YouTube video (with some relaxing music) about the power of persistence. Enjoy! 

Persistence in the World of Detectives

Persistence is an important trait for both fictional and real-life detectives. Can you imagine if Jessica Fletcher took on a case, only to decide after asking a few questions that she wouldn’t be able to solve it because it was too complicated? Or if Columbo never uttered his famous phrase, “Just one more thing,” and asked that all-important final question? People would turn off their TVs in disgust. It’s that dogged persistence that eventually leads to the identity of the criminal that makes the shows worth watching. Of course, on television, the entire process looks ridiculously easy. The detective strolls around interviewing people, asking questions that are more-often-than-not answered. Kojak ate lollipops while he worked. Magnum would take a relaxing swim in the ocean while mulling over the clues. At the end of the hour, the detective would have that “ah-ha” moment and wrap up the case. Everything was always so neat and tidy.

It’s a far cry from how real-life detectives work. Witnesses and relations aren’t nearly as forth-coming with information. Some don’t want to get involved for fear of retribution or a lack of faith in the police department. Others don’t want to rat out a cousin or close friend. Even if people are willing to talk, detectives must still figure out who’s lying or who’s unreliable. And that’s just one aspect of a case. When they’re not interviewing persons of interest, they must collect and study evidence, trying to figure out who a random fingerprint belongs to or whether a ticket stub is somehow related to the crime or simply useless trash. And everything they find, hear, or discover must be documented. Evidence must be double-checked. Procedures must be followed. More than one criminal case has been dismissed after evidence was somehow contaminated or information wasn’t documented.

And yet the detectives persevere, pouring over thousands of pages or watching hours of video surveillance, all to solve a single case. At times, I’m sure the detectives would like to throw up their hands and give up when they run out of leads, but they don’t. They keep trying. If they ultimately can’t pinpoint a killer, or at least collect enough evidence to arrest one, they stow everything away, sealed and ready, just in case another clue appears years later. With the  advancements in DNA, the police are closing more cold cases than ever, thanks to the fact that all the evidence is still there waiting in storage.

I can’t imagine how many criminals would be out there committing more crimes if not for the persistence of the police. While it’s fun to watch fictional detectives on TV, it’s the real cops that have my admiration.

Perseverance--and more!

Last August I got the call I had been waiting for—waiting, it seemed, for most of my life. My agent, Gail Fortune, who had been stubbornly sending out my manuscript for two years (!) called to say that she had received not one, but two offers to publish the first two books in my Samuel Craddock series.

Finally my perseverance had paid off. Everyone said so. Although I smiled in agreement what I secretly knew is that it took a lot more than perseverance.

In the late eighties and early nineties I wrote one book after another and snagged one fabulous agent after another, each of whom would at the end of a year send my torn and tattered manuscript back with, “close, but no cigar.”

After my son, Geoff, started school I decided to take time off from the rejection cycle to spend my time being a mom. I wrote school newsletters, articles and copy for annual reports. And I wrote some fiction, but I didn’t send anything out. When Geoff was a senior in high school, it was time to gear up again. I wrote a new book, and started looking for an agent. But in ten years, how the publishing world had changed! Before, I had easily found agents. This time, even an agent eluded me. Although I got several nibbles, there were no offers of representation.

Back to the drawing board. And eventually to publication. So what happened that eventually made the difference? It was that I started taking myself seriously and learning—about the craft of writing, about current fiction trends, how the publishing world was evolving, and how to find people who could help. Before, I had simply trusted to luck and instinct to find my way to publication. Now I realized it would take a lot more. I read books about writing, where I got gems of advice that I could use to make the next book even better.

You can learn a lot from books about writing and publishing. But nothing is better than talking to fellow-writers. I attended workshops and writers’ conferences, and joined a critique group. I talked to other writers who had written one book after another before they got published--and I listened to what they did to improve. I learned to do the tedious work of targeting my audience—sending my work to agents who were interested in the kind of book I write. It took a lot of time and effort, but this time when I found an agent, I knew she liked the kind of book I wrote. Instead of returning my manuscript after a year, she kept working to find it a publishing home.

With the current publishing climate, I had to make the decision whether I still wanted to go through a traditional publisher or strike out on my own. Was it perseverance, stubbornness, or fear that kept me going after a traditional publisher? Probably a little of each. I knew that whichever way I chose, I still had to perfect my craft, make my book as good as it could be and target my audience.

Bottom line: I learned to take myself seriously as a professional. I did the hard work of making my book the best it could be in terms of craft. I did the hard work of finding good beta readers, and finding the right agent for me. So in the end, it wasn’t just that I persevered, but that I kept learning.

And finally, I’m there….Oh not quite! Now I am finding there is one more learning curve—promotion and marketing. A whole new bag of tricks.

Persistence

Persistence. An interesting attribute. We call it admirable when it allows someone to accomplish a goal despite all opposition. We may also refer to it as bloody mindedness during those less than pleasant occasions when even the word stubborn is too mild. 

Persistence, or any other character trait, is a multi-dimensional quality. It is defined by circumstances, individual perception, and hindsight. In a war, persistence on the opposing side is not considered a good thing, whereas the trait on “our team” always is. 

This complexity, inherent in any attribute, makes character building fun, especially in mysteries. It is the perfect red herring. Does the wife’s anger at her husband mean she killed him, or is really righteous indignation because she discovered his horrible debts just before someone else murdered him? 

It also allows a character to “hide” their true nature in plain sight. In my medieval series, Brother is admired for his great virtue because he has remained utterly chaste with women. In fact, he is a 13^th century gay man who discovered that his celibacy vow was a relief. Because of his era, he does not understand why this should be, but what some call virtue is, for him, no struggle at all. 

Hindsight with historicals also illustrates the complexity of traits. Take humor. Jokes about race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic (etc), and homophobic. Yet there have been eras when these jokes were accepted and even expected. Not all that many years ago, I objected to a billboard on the freeway that suggested AIDs was a great way to get rid of “rotten fruit”. I was told I had no sense of humor… 

The bottom line here is that any character trait has a range of aspects from lethal to beneficial. Using the complexities makes our stories richer and our characters incredibly interesting.

Persistence and the Intermittent Sprocket

Oh, the plans I had for this post! Big fancy ideas about persistence of vision, ideas that wove together how a horse runs with the illusion of motion in movies and oh, gosh it was going to be wonderful.

(image may take a long time to load)
Muybridge's work includes this, a series of images that becomes a running horse

But then I made a mistake. I decided to verify the phrase "persistence of vision," because that's what writers do. On a bad day, we fact-check that the sun rises in the east and sky is blue. 

Turns out,  'persistence of vision' was debunked in 1912. Why modern day film theorists and historians insist on using it to talk about film is beyond my simple brain.

1912. I can't tell you the number of times I rolled the phrase "persistence of vision" around in my head, luxuriating in the long string of syllables and the sturdy sound of science ringing through each word. Gone, now, all gone. I can barely stand to read the words now. Ugh!

So, what did I do? I didn't call up my fellow LadyKillers and whine, or beg one of them to substitute for me because my big fancy idea blew up in my face, though I'm sure they'd have been willing. We've all been torpedoed by research, haven't we?

Nope, I let the shattered remains of my brilliant post go, and thought up another one. 

This one is a little sadder than the first. Even a persistent woman takes time to recover, after all. Please enjoy it!

I'll miss 35 millimeter film when it passes completely out of public movie theatres. Many public movie emporiums are already fully digital. Soon there won't be film projectors, plates or reels of film, or my favorite thing, imtermittent sprockets.

I love that phrase, "intermittent sprocket." Sounds a little like a German dancer, no? It is that little thing in the middle of a projector that pulls the film past the shutter, one frame at a time. The sprockets are faithful, executing their task 10 or 16 or 24 or more times a second. If I had that kind of reliability and speed, I'd be rich by now!

For, while I am persistent for a human being (ask my husband! My persistence exhausts his patience), I don't operate at 16 frames a second. Nowhere near.

But I do keep coming back to the things I love, trying to fix them, help them along, make them better. The funny thing about learning to write better--you have simultaneously be open to the evidence that you are perhaps making a few mistakes along the way without letting that evidence convince you that you aren't any good at all.

One good sentence can steel me for the next thousand mistakes I'll need to correct. 

As someone once said, it's not whether or not you fall down. It's how you get up that counts.

 

NEWS! and Persistence

NEWS FLASHES!!!

• Sharan Newman reports that she is spending Mother's Day flying from Kalamazoo, where she spent too much on books, to Santa Cruz for a joint talk Tuesday night with three other mystery writers who weave religion into their work. Laurie King has blogged all about it here: www.lauriekingblog.com.
• Book Launch for Susan Shea's THE KING'S JAR ('wickedly funny" - Kirkus) Saturday, May 18 at 1 o'clock at Book Passage in Marin County. Bubbly and chocolate to celebrate - everyone invited.

 

STICK-TO-ITIVENESS

Persistence is the theme for next week. Three takes on that quality from three who know:

"The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense."  ~ Thomas A. Edison

"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." ~ Winston Churchill

"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence." ~ Octavia Butler

The Interactive Way to Write Your Next Book: Crowdsourcing!

 

 

 Recently, I was at a meeting with my new publisher and several of the authors from Harper Davis. We discussed “Branding,” and my need to redo the way I brand myself as well as my blog, website, and name. I tend to use Pat Morin, and not the Patricia L. Morin signed on my books and short stories. When discussing the use of name, one of the marketing people suggested I crowdsource an opinion of which of the names I should use. I had never heard of it. Several of the authors had explained that authors are now using crowdsourcing to write their novels. With the help of their fans, their new stories are being created.

 Wow! First let me define crowdsourcing (and if some/all of you know, please forgive the repetition).

 Crowdsourcing is, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a

large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. The general concept is to combine the efforts of crowds of volunteers where each one could contribute a small portion, which adds into a relatively large or significant result. Crowdsourcing is different from an ordinary outsourcing since it is a task or problem that is outsourced to an undefined public rather than to a specific, named group. Although the word "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2006, it can apply to a wide range of activities. Crowdsourcing can apply to specific requests, such as crowdvoting, crowdfunding, a broad-based competition, and a general search for answers, solutions, or a missing person.

 There is even a new platform for writers all over the world launched by CrowdSource, LLC. The new portal, called Write.com, aims to recruit new writers to enrich Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing marketplace.

 Authors are able, through this new format, to change endings and rewrite books, as was discussed on LadyKillers Blog before. But now, we can include our fan base to help create the story from the start.

Out with the outline, out with the plotantsers, out with the 1,2,3. In with the new group interactive process: crowdsourcing!

What do you think? The wave of the future?