Moral whether you want it or not by Eric Beetner

 Do you often/sometimes weave a moral message into your writing, or do you think that's awful, and something that should never be attempted? Can you recommend good examples of books that do one or the other?

I absolutely weave a moral message in my books. I don’t think you can write crime fiction and not do it. The basis of the genre is morals – often the breaking of them, often different interpretations of them. I try not to be overt about it, but you can’t deny that if an author is depicting criminal or immoral behavior, then they invariably come to some sort of conclusion about it.

I try very hard to not ignore the consequences of violence in my books. That alone takes a moral stand. It would be very easy to write about violence and mayhem and not ever see the results. It’s like those 80s action movies where enemies by the dozens are dispatched by Chuck Norris or Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger and they just sort of fall off screen with a disembodied scream and we never see them again. I think that’s a bit irresponsible.

Not that writing about moral issues has to come down to a prim and proper definition of what is or is not moral. Especially not in crime fiction. Take Richard Stark’s Parker character. He’s the hero, the main character in a 24-novel series and someone readers undoubtedly root for, and yet, he’s a criminal. He does immoral things. But he does them within his own set of moral boundaries. He has rules and lines he won’t cross, and for this we can forgive his criminality in most cases. He’s justified in his own actions, so we can read along and not feel like we’re compromising our own morals by enjoying the ride.

I think anyone who writes about the police or other law enforcement is usually taking on a moral message. Most often it is as simple as “crime doesn’t pay”, but when we know the lead in the story is an upstanding person based on their career or whether they carry a badge, then morality comes along with that. It’s baked in just by virtue of the fact that your character is pursuing a job we all agree is morally good.

It’s hard for me to single out any book or series to recommend because I think all crime fiction has a moral message. Maybe the flip side of this is to look at something like Jim Thompson, who wrote about many amoral characters. Pop 1280 or The Killer Inside Me make no pretense that their main characters are anything but monsters devoid of any moral compass whatsoever. And it can be fun to wallow in the muck and the mire while you watch those terrible people get their due in the end.

It’s why so much of Noir fiction has what some consider a “bleak” ending. I disagree. If characters die in the end, even if most characters die, it’s usually after breaking that moral code from which there is no coming back. They are getting justice, but not through the courts, usually. 

So, moral lessons abound in crime fiction. I don’t know about you, but if I ever found a bag of cash I would never keep it. Not because of some moral backbone I have, but because I’ve read enough stories to know it is not going to end well. I learned my lesson in a book.

The Court Jester Holds Court, by Gabriel Valjan

 

The Court Jester Holds Court

 

Do you often/sometimes weave a moral message into your writing, or do you think that’s awful, and something that should never be attempted? Can you recommend good examples of books that do one or the other?

 

I’ve said in interviews that all my books focus on friendships. I prefer the word theme to message. I wish to convey that we need each other. I write about people who must trust each other. Society is something we agree to, a contract, and society, especially in America, has no such Social Contract. Cradle to grave, you are on your own.

 

In my crime fiction, readers are not spoon-fed and told what to think, or how to feel. I’m likely to frustrate readers who desire that Good triumphs over Evil, Right over Wrong, or the villain receives Justice, or the hero gets their love interest. Life doesn’t work that way. Bad people do good things, and good people do terrible things in my stories. I’m not a nihilist, though. I’m not a cynic, either. I don’t write so dark that you’d want a razorblade after the fact. Readers are invited to piece together meaning.

 

My other theme is forgotten history, and my strategy there is simple: I want you to think. I want readers to question received interpretations of historical events and their cultural prejudices. I try to provoke readers to think and form their own conclusions. That is my message.

 

In THE GOOD MAN, out this August, I present the early days of the CIA in 1948 Vienna. Readers do not receive a James Bond adventure with gadgets and a string of besotted women left breathless in his wake. It’s a story of friends assigned a difficult and unprecedented task. The US government has tasked them to interview and recruit former Nazis for any technological lead they can offer over the Soviets. All goes well until one a Nazi SS officer is murdered, and the intrigue begins. The only thing I expect readers to know is that the United States and Russia were allies during World War II. The mental gymnastics required to go from ally to enemy is not the story. If there is any ‘message,’ it’s the revelation of just how naïve we Americans were in postwar Europe. Mistakes happened, deals with the Devil made.

 

When I shopped the novel around to agents in 2010, I received the usual ‘thanks, no thanks,’ that was par for the course of the search, but one agent’s reaction surprised me. Her initial email offered compliments on the writing, but the upshot was that she didn’t think she could sell it. [Publishing is always about what will sell.] I thanked her for her time, and I went on my way. Minutes later, I received another email, where she took me to task, saying that the premise was implausible, and then doubled down and called the novel morally offensive. I thanked her again and I sent her the CIA’s declassified file on Operation Paperclip.

 

In THREADING THE NEEDLE, the third in another series I write (whose the rights have reverted to me), I bring readers to Italy and introduce them again to the CIA and the Strategy of Tension and Years of Lead, which was a systematic program of terrorism that tore through Italy from the late 60s to mid-80s. It may sound counterintuitive, but the aim was to stabilize the government on pro-NATO positions, in the country with the largest Communist party in the West. The rationale was the terrorist attacks would push people to demand more and more law & order, up to an authoritarian right-wing regime if necessary. The Strategy remains a taboo topic in Italy. Imagine a daily reminder of 9-11. Italian television would list the names of the kidnapped, missing, and murdered every single night for decades.

 

In the Shane Cleary series, friendships and alliances matter. The cops can’t be trusted in 70s Boston. Corruption is systemic. Politicians treat their constituency like a one-night stand because all they want is the vote. It’s a world where there is no pretense to the lie; ethnic tension and violence are the daily reality. I drew inspiration from real Boston history and places. It’s a landscape where few people function with a code of ethics.

 

Writers ought to be like court jesters, with immunity from the king and other nobles.

 

I don’t offer a fantasy of the world. Nothing is black or white; it is gray and ambiguous because that is realistic for life and human behavior. Relationships are often predicated on utility and not love. Irrespective of culture, gender, and sexuality, history has shown we are a violent species. People protect their own interests. Not everyone is accepted, and some will never be accepted. The world is a hard tough place.

 

I work hard to make your time with me worthwhile. To think for yourself is to be active, and not a victim.

 

Discover my characters and see what makes them tick. You may find something in my stories to relate to, but I won’t tell you what to think and feel.

Of Murder and Morals

 Q: Do you often/sometimes weave a moral message into your writing, or do you think that's awful, and something that should never be attempted? Can you recommend good examples of books that do one or the other?  

-from Susan 

 

“Moral” – (adjective) concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior

 

Well, implicitly, doesn’t that insinuate itself into a crime story? After all, we’re following actions that demonstrate right or wrong behavior and as writers we invite readers to make emotional choices as to who and what to applaud or reject. But I can think of a few current, highly successful writers who inject a character’s moral point of view as an active part of the plot. 

 

Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs is consciously, even self-consciously determining her actions based deliberately on her sense of right and wrong, justice and a demand for compassion. Set in the period between World War I and World War II and during the latter, the long series has lots to work with as people banged up against the right and wrong actions they could take. Like Inspector Foyle in the long-running TV series, Maisie directly confronts and comments on the outcomes of immoral actions everywhere she turns.

 

Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache and pretty much everyone around him acts out their strong sense of right and wrong in every book, musing openly, twisting in discomfort, facing temptation, realizing how their trust has been undermined by people who behave wrongly. He’s a policeman but many of the characters are private citizens, so it’s not all cops and robbers. It’s complicated.

 

I’m currently in love with James McBride’s writing. Deacon King Kong and The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, gorgeous novels, definitely have moral and immoral characters, but McBride never points out a moral message. His characters live and breathe, but don’t spend time talking about abstract notions; they simply act from some innate sense of what they need in order to be okay with themselves and others. 

 

Another wonderfully un-moralizing book is our own Josh Stalling’s Tricky. Josh doesn’t have to spell out why his characters do what they do, nor does he seem to want to push us to judgment. He simply tells us what is happening, what characters do, and we can see the ambiguities in behavior, the surprisingly nuanced ways people choose to act at times. 

 

Of course, my self gets into my stories and I have my own private sense of what’s right and not, but the only time I think I have worn my moral heart on my sleeve is in the reveal of who the elderly victim was in Murder and the Missing Dog. Otherwise, I try to leave moral perspectives to the readers, let them see the actions that define who someone is, care for the victims in some way that resonates with readers. I do deal with justice on some scale, and that’s why I end my books with a coda, a scene in which the fictional people who have had to deal with shock and death can come together, draw on their own strengths and be with people in their community as part of a healing process. I don’t think that’s a moral message, just one of comfort.What do you think?

A hobby for a hobby - by Harini Nagendra

This week's question is about Hobbies.

Hobbies - some people garden, others work on jigsaw puzzles, cartoon, or play music. What's your creative outlet when you're not writing? 

Writing is my hobby, and my creative outlet - so this is a bit of a meta-question. I've always written - or almost always, I think I started writing tiny stories when I was about six. Writing - essays, 'made-up' stories, limericks and the like - has been my go-to creative outlet from the start. I like to say that my fiction series, The Bangalore Detectives Club, is my life crisis - but in reality it's been my mid-life second birth, an alternate career that brings my life so much joy, and is a real de-stresser. When work life and home life goes crazy around me, I dive straight into 1920s Bangalore, a kindler, gentler time with clean air, good food, wide roads with no traffic, tree shade, bird song and the sparkle of sunlight reflecting off the blue waters of a lake - and I can feel the stress melt away.

So - what's my hobby when I'm not indulging my main hobby? The side-side-hobby?

When I thought about it, I realized just how neglectful I have been of all my other creative pursuits over the past few years - since writing has taken over nearly all of my spare time.

I grew up in a house of music. My mother, who is now 87, started learning Karnatic classical music when she was 5 - and she taught me how to play the veena, a stringed instrument that is a cousin of the harp, when I was about the same age. The veena looks a bit like the sitar, except you sit down cross legged, and place one end of the veena on your lap when you play. I was very attached to my mother when I was young, and as she tells it, fiercely jealous of this veena which was on her lap - I used to wriggle into her lap and push the instrument away. In sheer self defense she gave me her second veena and taught me how to play :-)

This is my mother's veena - and if you're curious about what's in front, this is the bombe kolu, traditional display of dolls at the time of the Dussehra festival, which lasts for ten days. On one of the last days, the veena is worshipped as an embodiment of Saraswati, Goddess of Music and Knowledge 

I have long ignored my veena, though - I rarely play these days, though I did promise my teacher that I would resume classes with her this month. (And now that I've sent off book 4 in The Bangalore Detectives Club series, Into the Leopard's Den, to my publisher, I really should make good on that promise).

I used to cook, and loved making traditional Indian food - and baking - but these days I do little of both. My husband has taken over much of the cooking, and my daughter does the baking, and they far surpass my skills! So I eat - and try and walk off some off the food, though it's always a temptation to eat more than I walk.

I do still retain sole proprietorship over some family recipes though - traditional sweets like Mysore Pak, a fudge-like barfi made with wheat, sugar and ghee, lots of ghee - and, since my mother can no longer make pickle, I am also the house's undisputed pickle maker.

Here's the raw material for avakkai - my mother-in-law's recipe for mango pickle - chilli powder, mustard powder, salt, sesame oil and mangoes

and the final product - many large bottles of avakkai, thokku, and other kinds of mango pickle, a year's supply for us, with extra for friends and family

Crochet is incredibly relaxing, better than meditation. I used to crochet, and I have a story about the skirt that my daughter and I call the "lock-down skirt" - but I'll save that for another day.

But what's replaced the time I used to spend on my hobbies - playing the veena, cooking, baking, crochet - has been taken over by writing. Do I miss my old hobbies? Of course. But time is finite. And I love my writing - so overall, no regrets - only gratitude for my mid-life foray into this wonderful side-career.

 

  

LOTS of Photos from James W. Ziskin

Hobbies - some people garden, others work on jigsaw puzzles, cartoon, or play music. What's your creative outlet when you're not writing? 

At first glance, this week’s topic seems light and easy. And yet…

It’s made me realize how boring I am. But rather than hobbies, let’s call them “outside interests.” That sounds more substantial.

I used to have more outside interests. In my twenties, I loved cinema, especially foreign and art films. Not anymore. I haven’t seen a new movie in a long time. Like my dad who, before he passed away two years ago, would brag/joke that the last film he’d seen in a movie theater was M*A*S*H in 1970. More than fifty years ago. Not sure why he gave up on movies, but I avoid them today because I don’t like sitting in seats sat in by other sitters. Even before the pandemic, I used to sanitize my airplane seats. Especially the armrests. The grime that comes off is…gross.

So I don’t go to the movies anymore. I also have more or less given up golf. I used to love getting out on the links for “a good walk spoiled.” But in recent years, I’ve managed to throw out my back right at the start of each summer, and that’s put a crimp in my plans. And my back. In fact, I did it again six weeks ago, and I’m just now able to lift myself out of bed without provoking a tectonic shift and howling pain in the lumbar regions of my spine. Maybe I’ll play later this summer.

Little Giants football c. 1971

What about other sports? In my youth, I played baseball, basketball, and football. The budding star in the red circle above is me. Two of my brothers are in the photo as well. Can you spot them? Post your guesses in the comments below.

I ran track and field in high school. I did the long jump and triple jump. Can’t do those things anymore, although I have become “jump”-y in my dotage and I “trip” over things all the time.

Triple jump 1978

I don’t play tennis. Come on. What’s the point? And I can’t get past the name “pickleball” to give that a try. Plus it’s just tennis only slower and louder, isn’t it?

I love to ski, but haven’t done much of it recently. Now I enjoy après-ski.

                                                Whistler Mountain BC 2017

Let’s see. What other outside interests don’t I have? 

Cooking? Il faut manger, of course, but it’s not a passion for me. I’m not a foodie.

Oh, shit

Music? I love classical music. 

Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell

Marilyn Monroe in The Seven-Year Itch: “This is what they call classical music, isn’t it? I can tell because there’s no vocal.” 

Yes, I love to listen to music, but I gave up playing the piano and the guitar many, many years ago. Still, I fantasize that I might pick up the piano again someday.

Charlie Chaplin

I don’t garden, knit, collect stamps, coins, or animation cels. (Dust, yes.) I don’t watch birds, don’t play cards, gamble, or swap meets. I’m dull.

So, no, I don’t have many outside interests. Between my writing and my teaching job, I lack the energy and the inclination to do much of anything extra. 

Except maybe drawing. I love to draw. I use it in my work as a French teacher and in my life. It’s an enjoyable pastime. A wonderful outside interest. And just so you won’t think I’m a total dud, here’s a modest gallery of some of my drawings (in no particular order), from maps to computer drawings to pencil to erasable markers on a white board. Some of these are unfinished and others I’ve posted here before, so please indulge me.

A map from BOMBAY MONSOON

   

Tintin whiteboard in my French class

Georges Brassens

Ray Milland

The reluctant footballer

Eugenio Montale

American Cow c. 1998

G. H. W. Bush

Giacomo Puccini

Carole Lombard

William Powell

Cocktails? 1997

French class whiteboard

Nat King Cole

La météo whiteboard French class

Mansard roof

TURN TO STONE map of Florence

Waiter about to be fired c. 2010

Show Cats 1967

Pier Paolo Pasolini

All-prison first team baller

Henry Fonda

Character sketch c. 2002

Pheasant c. 1992

Cary Grant

S

Kicking Back

Hobbies - some people garden, others work on jigsaw puzzles, cartoon, or play music. What's your creative outlet when you're not writing? 

by Dietrich

My pastimes lean to the creative, and I think of them as passions, while hobbies are more relaxed than intense, like gardening, cooking and going for long walks. I like to pick up my guitar and tend to play songs with roots in the blues. There have been several guitars since I was in my early teens, but I never had what it took to really make anything of it. But I still like to kick back, and I enjoy learning new licks, purely for my own personal enjoyment. No aspirations of being the next Tommy Emmanuel or Jorma Kaukonen.

I’ve always had a broad appreciation for music, and I enjoy listening to everything from Bill Evans to Hound Dog Taylor, Beethoven to Alice Cooper. And while I still listen to a lot of what lit me up when I was younger, I delight in finding performers and bands that I’ve never heard before. And it’s always great when some legacy rocker comes out with something that’s (almost) as good as what they did back in the day. And there have been some good ones recently by Dylan, Iggy, and the Stones. And Willie Nelson just turned 91 on the heels of his latest album release. Yup, he’s still living the high life, and I understand he’s going on tour too.

I’m rolling some of that “pastime” into a story that’s still at the early stages of the first draft. What I’ve got so far is a guitar player who’s out to find his big break as he gets involved with a shady record producer with ties to organized crime. And I’ve tossed in a political-anarchist girlfriend for good measure, and we’ll see how it goes.

There’ve been other passions over the years, some I would like to get back into sometime. I dabbled in art since I was a kid, and I was into oil painting for several years, followed by a stretch when photography became a creative expression. Much of which came in handy and served me well in a career as a commercial artist.

And reading has always been a pastime that I find both relaxing and inspiring. I’ve always got a book on the go, and usually there are several more waiting to be read. As with music, I love finding an author who’s new to me, as well as rereading some old favorites now and then. Some new ones I’m looking forward to: Nobody Walks by Mick Herron, a standalone, not part of the Slough House series; Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay; Clete and Harbor Lights, both by James Lee Burke, and the new one by Emily Schultz, Sleeping with Friends. 

Crooked: coming September 24th from ECW Press.

Spare Time?

 

Terry here, and this week we are talking about our hobbies – no, not the “hobby” of writing novels, but creative outlets other than writing. 

Some people garden, others work on jigsaw puzzles, cartoon, or play music. I do most of those things, except cartooning. Wouldn't even know where to begin. I also don't actually do "gardening," because I don’t have a garden. But I attempt to green my environment with lots of potted plants, which take their own bit of care. 

 I used to sing, and belonging to at least one chorus for years. I would also sing and play the guitar. I never felt the need to perform, but just enjoyed the singing. In recent years that has fallen away. Oddly, I don’t listen to music as much as I used to, either. I think it’s because I find air pods irritating and I don’t want to broadcast my music throughout the house, so it doesn’t get played at all. I’m thinking it’s time to revise that. 

 I do the daily New York Times crossword every day. And I like to do jigsaw puzzles. I even bought myself a fancy jigsaw puzzle board that has slide-out drawers for sorting colors. During Covid, I actually did a 3,000-piece puzzle that was given to me by Camille Minichino who said she and her husband just couldn’t tackle it. Except for the 15 pieces that my dogs chewed up when they fell on the floor, I finished the whole thing. 

 Then there’s reading. I guess you could call it a hobby, but it feels more like a lifeline. I read a lot of mysteries, but also read other types of books as well—mostly fiction, but some non-fiction. I read classics, mainstream, sci-fi, you name it. 

 But my best creative outlet is cooking. After a day of writing, even if I’m tired, cooking relaxes me. I love to cook, and there is hardly a night when my husband doesn’t remark that whatever we are having is superior to anything we could get in a restaurant. Which is an exaggeration, but I do enjoy cooking.

I like to try new recipes and revise old ones. I can enjoy making a simple meal as much as an elaborate one, because I know that the nuances of taste can be teased out with only the smallest bit of the right herbs. 

 But I also enjoy coming across a challenging recipe and taking the time to make it. I have a recipe for a 9-layer cake with different flavors of crisp meringue and layers of different flavors of custard. It takes a lot of time, but the end result is magnificent. I served it at a dinner party and one of the guests asked for the recipe. I told her I’d be glad to pass it along but that I knew she wouldn’t make it. She insisted that she loved to cook and that of course she would make it. Two days later she called me and said she had just read the recipe. Then she said, “Are you crazy? Who would make this?” The funny thing is that once you got the rhythm of it, it was fairly easy to do.

 Because I love to cook, I enjoy going to the farmer’s market, and sometimes I overbuy because the sight of all those beautiful vegetables sparks such creative ideas. The colors of purple eggplants, red or gold tomatoes, green or yellow zucchinis, snowy white fennel bulbs is irresistible. The scent of basil and cilantro. The exotic look of the variety of mushrooms. Freshly-made pasta. I rarely have a time when I don’t feel like cooking. 

And my last “hobby” is exercise. Again, it feels more like a lifeline than a hobby. I bike (okay trike), hike, and do on-line exercise classes 2-3 times a week. Believe it or not, I look forward to all of it. 

 I look forward to reading what my fellow “Minds” do as hobbies.

Creative Outlets

Hobbies - some people garden, others work on jigsaw puzzles, cartoon, or play music. What's your creative outlet when you're not writing?   

Brenda starting off the week.

My hobbies depend on the season.

In the late spring and summer, I spend a lot of time in my garden. Buying, planting, watering, weeding, dividing, putting to bed .... there's always something to be done. Then it's time to sit with a book and a cup of coffee or glass of wine and enjoy the hummingbird in the honeysuckle and the bees in the Russian sage. I also like biking or walking around my neighbourhood looking at gardens.

In the fall and winter, I turn my creativity to curling -- no, not my hair -- but the sport on ice with rocks. You might not think a game is creative, but I assure you that coming up with the strategy and figuring out how to throw the stone can take a great deal of imagination. My husband and my daughters curl too - my daughters competitively, and we spent a lot of our winters following them to bonspiels and competitions from the time they were seven and eight. My oldest daughter Lisa's career took us to the Olympics in South Korea. She went a second time to the Olympics in China during the pandemic when spectators and family were not allowed, so we watched on television. In any case, curling has occupied a lot of my time as a parent, spectator and participant.

Cooking has also been a creative outlet, one that I enjoy ... sometimes. As those in the family tasked with coming up with meals every night know, cooking can also be a drudge. Still, it's fun to try a new recipe and satisfying when it turns out. At the moment, my herb garden is overflowing, so I'm incorporating these into my meal creations as often as I can.

Writing and the business of writing take up much of my time. I also usually have a book or two on the go that I'm reading for pleasure, another time-swallower. When adding in family and friend time, exercise, looking after a house, shopping and all the day-to-day tasks, I'd say my life is busy enough! Boredom is a word I seldom use :-)

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

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