Lost Comrade by Josh Stallings

 Q: What’s your position on ending a sentence with a preposition, grammar others might be afraid of? What non-grammatical writing styles do you firmly support?

A: To prove myself a serious writer I started to google “preposition” but I stopped myself, I guess I’d rather be seen as under educated than be a liar. When I was coming up several writers and a few reviewers asked me how I learned to break grammatical rules so cleanly. It made me embarrassed so I’d go flippant, “breaking grammatical rules is easier than breaking actual laws, no one ever did time for dangling a participle.” I don’t know what it means, but it sounds like I might. Truth is not knowing the rules, but having read a ton of good writing, I know what reads good, and what don’t. Notice I slipped into a rural tone, it disarms people when you sound folksy.

I have two rules, or more like guidelines. If it reads or feels clunky I fix it. And I listen to my editors. If they firmly believe a period would be better than a ellipsis, and I can’t see any harm, then I follow their advice. Making a piece better is way more important than me being right.  

Me and Pearce reading at Noir Bar Seattle

Several weeks a go we lost a giant in Pearce Hansen. I need to speak from the heart who he was to me. If you haven't read Street Raised, The Storm Giants, or Stagger Bay read them now. He wrote about pain and violence, fucking things up and trying to set them right. He wrote with brutal honesty. His words gutted me. His death has left a literary hole we will not fill. 

In an interview in Crime Fiction Lover Pearce was asked what drew him to write about gritty, gutter-level crime?

“I didn’t choose crime – crime chose me. I wound up pretty feral as a kid, and opted to associate with other feral people – this inevitably led to drugs, crime and violence, all within the milieu of East Bay and Oakland, which any Google search will show is one of the most dangerously crime-ridden urban metroplexes in the country.”

https://crimefictionlover.com/2012/02/interview-pearce-hansen/

When I was putting out the Moses trilogy I connected with Pearce via email. He was a kindred spirit. Our early years had left youthful damage we each could understand in the other. Besides a cult following Pearce never got the “big break out book” we were told we should be writing. He also never compromised his vision. When I was told I was a street writer (a writer who does not have a college degree) it hurt. Then I heard Pearce Hansen was identified that way too, and I became proud of the moniker. 

I hope Pearce finds peace in what ever comes next in this deal. If there’s an East Bay version of Valhalla where he can rip it up all day long and type about it all night? That seems like it’d be a good place for him.

While typing I’m listening to Jason Isbell’s Only Children these lines stabbed me in the heart.

Walking around at night 

Fighting my appetite 

Every kid in cut-offs could be you 

Remember when we used to meet 

At the bottom of Mobile Street? 

And do what the broken people do.

Broken people can spot each other across a crowded street. We write our truth, put it in a bottle, a book, or a song and toss it into the Russian River. And that my dear readers is why it is so damn important that we tell our truth. You never know who will discover your truth just when they need it.

******

What I’m reading now:  “The Ministry of Time” By Kaliane Bradley

The very pineapple of politeness, by Catriona

What’s your position on ending a sentence with a preposition, grammar others might be afraid of? What non-grammatical writing styles do you firmly support?

These people would never!
And so I don't when I write them

Picture the scene: an overtired child hears her mummy (US "mommy"  - this isn't a scene from a horror film) coming upstairs. The child is hoping Mummy has brought the storybook she wants and not that other one the child can't stand. (Granny has terrible taste in books.) Mummy comes into the bedroom. Disaster! It's the boring granny book - no monsters, no magic, no miracles - so the child whines the following, perfectly fine English sentence:

        Mummy, what did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?

If the child had tried to ask the same brattish but otherwise reasonable question, while following the invented rules of old-timey, self-appointed prescriptive grammarians who knew nothing - nothing - about how language works, she'd have said:

        Mummy why did you bring up that book out of which I didn't want to be read a story?

And, clearly, this would then be a horror film, because that isn't a child; that's either a badly programmed robot or the restless spirit of Lindley Murray who has pulled on a kid suit.

Ah, Lindley Murray. That fragile, controlling, miserable, would-be boss-man who could have looked at the wild and joyous flowering of English and revelled in it, but who couldn't cope and tried, instead, to impose baseless rules and shut the fun down. (He wasn't the only one but he's the one whose name I can remember as I sit typing this in the car dealership, away from my reference books on the history of English.)

I think he's also responsible for the nonsense about splitting infinitives, isn't he? And the "argument" supporting both these rules is the same. 

He started with a bit of honest linguistic observation - noting that Latin infinitive verbs were single words (e.g. legere "to read") and Latin used noun endings to mark case (e.g. liber, libri, libro "the book, of the book, to the book"). Okay. 

He added a completely unrelated bit of honest linguistic observation - that English infinitves are made up to two words, the first of which is "to" and English can mark case with two words, the first of which is a preposition, like "of" and "to". (See above). Okay.

Then he turned over two pages at once and did a very strange thing - he proclaimed that English couldn't have its usual party with word order and twiddly bits if it meant splitting the two words of an infinitive or separating a preposition from its noun. Ummmmm.

And finally, he slid a springbok under a petrie dish and called it Wednesday. That is, he "explained" that English couldn't do it because Latin couldn't do it. I mean . . . Mandarin does it with tone, Lindley old chum. But that doesn't mean English doesn't mean anything if you whisper.

Now, just like the bagless vacuum cleaner (that puffs all the dust back out when you empty it) and the sofa-bed (torture as both a sofa and a bed) this daft idea took off like a rocket. Lindley's ravings became the rules of codified standard English, the shibboleths by means of which speakers and writers of English the world over could be sorted into educated elites and the likes of me.

For teachers, this is thorny. While the power - to grant a university place, to offer a job, to go for community service instead of jail time - resides with people who care about that stuff, it's a good idea to have the snottiest, prissiest English up your sleeve and know when to wheel it out.

For writers, it's much more straightforward and much much more fun. We can write characters who either have or haven't had these arbitrary rules drummed into them, who either care about them or don't. Most fun of all are characters who care and strive and fail. We view them, like Mrs Malaprop trying to say "pinnacle" (see blog title), in all their pride and vulnerability, and can either ache for them or cackle as the story requires.

It was probably Stephen King who said that formal standard English is a useful tool to have in the writer's toolbox, but it's only one of many. I'm glad I've got it, but I'm glad I'm the boss of it and it's not the boss of me.

Cx

SVO and Tinsel

 

SVO and Tinsel

What’s your position on ending a sentence with a preposition, grammar others might be afraid of? What non-grammatical writing styles do you firmly support?

We’re talking about one of the “Rules” today and, like Groucho Marx as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff in Horse Feathers, ‘Whatever it is, I’m against it.’

 

In my mind, Rules imply obedience, and conformity, and ‘I’m against it.’

 

When I think of rules applied to language, I think of grammar. When I think of rules applied to storytelling, I think of other writers. I analyze the writers I admire for what they did, how they did it, and maybe why they got away with it.

 

The funny thing about RULES is they tell you what not to do. Nobody tells you How to do X, Y, or Z, which is why I think self-help books are a uniquely American phenomenon. We obey all kinds of rules, but forget why they exist. In a word, most people don’t know how to think. I daresay writers do, or they try. Hence, my use of a Yoda meme.

Writers can talk shop and can make the act of writing sound amazing, like Prospero conjuring a spell, or monotonous as hell. It is and it isn’t. Writing is fun. Language is meant to communicate. Look, you really only need a few hundred words in any language to find food, the bathroom, medical help, and other basic necessities. It’s a functional existence, and understanding grammar is as haphazard as a child’s grasp; it’s the life of an immigrant explorer. Nobody cares if you got IT right or not, if you get your point across. It’s a different matter if you’re the face that meets the customer. There is the other extreme, of knowing all the words, but not knowing when to use the right one, or how to string them together.

 

You may call that elusive magic Talent, but I call it decades of reading other writers, observing Life around you, plus your own quirky relationship with language. The latter is what readers and writers call Voice, and the academics call Style. Grammar is learned in the past; it’s in the rear-view mirror. All these Rules is like learning how to drive: think about it all at once, and you’d never move yourself out of P for Park, or Paralysis.

 

The fundamentals of the English sentence filter down to Subject-Verb-Object, around which the author can hang a lot of tinsel. Adjectives, clauses, etc. Then there is the music that the grammar rules forget. English prose has rhythms, but iambic pentameter is the most natural one to the ear. If you don’t know it, then use this quote from Pete Hamill: ‘Lyonnaise potatoes and some pork chops, Lyonnaise potatoes and some pork chops.’

 

We cite DO and DON’Ts when we talk about writing when we aren’t writing. Unless they’re egregious and defeat comprehension, we forget grammar because we read for Effect. Nobody is hung in effigy because they ended a sentence with a preposition. We discuss how a sentence made us feel, or how it acted or didn’t in service of the story. For example, the grammarian might fidget at the lack of commas and grammatically incorrect sentences within “Tiger Bites” from Lucia Berlin, but to insert all the proper punctuation might decimate her vivid portrait of El Paso, Texas.

 

The rules of grammar act as guideposts because, like life, what shouldn’t work, often does. Dickens and Faulkner were masters of run-on sentences. Compare most sentences from Henry James with Hemingway, and you see a profound difference in style. Where James was baroque, Hemingway was spare. Go and compare sentences from Breslin with Ellroy and you’ll see they both use a staccato style. It’s all SVO and tinsel. Style and themes are a matter of personal preference or aesthetics. How it was said might thrill you, or leave you dismayed, offended, but you admire the insult and the delivery. Writers who break the rules make our reading interesting.

 

About ending a sentence with a preposition…Conversation is almost never grammatically correct. There are Um, and Ah in daily speech. Filler words fill the void until the next neuron fires. People talk in fragments. A person at a party who never uses contractions is grammatically correct, but comes across as stiff and pretentious. Writers who write great dialog exhibit Flow. The reader’s eyes work down the page, never losing the thread of what is said or the subtext (not said), and who is speaking. Prepositions communicate relationships, location and time. In dialogue, there is context for prepositions. In the simplest terms, to drop a preposition sounds more natural to the ear.

 

‘Where are you going to?’ sounds weird compared to ‘Where are you going?’

 

It’s also matter of register. Storytelling is intimate, between a writer and a reader. Proper grammar is for formal communication. We can use ain’t in a story but not in an email to the boss. Follow all the rules, and your work is competent, serviceable, but it probably isn’t memorable.

 

Readers enjoy writers who communicate well. They remember writers who tell a universal story in a superlative way, think within the lines or devastate them with the unexpected. Readers remember writers who alter their emotional experiences of a story.

Minding or Bending Rules

 Q: What’s your position on ending a sentence with a preposition,  grammar others might be afraid of? What non-grammatical writing styles do you firmly support?

 

-       from Susan

 

As a former writer of academically-oriented texts (not a scholar), I worked in the language that represented literate administrations, their presidents, and higher ed institutions in general. The language had to have a certain tone, cadence, and rhythm. Frequently, I was tasked with making the case for something that might not be universally popular. Often, I was charged with polishing the apple, or trying to gentle whatever audience the written communication was aimed at into supporting a president’s or a board’s decision. In marketing communications, my job was to show potential student, parent or donor audiences the benefits to them of getting involved with a school. 

 

In all of that, there was no room for dangling participles, prepositions sliding off the ends of sentences, exclamation points, slang, sentence fragments or – in most cases – overly informal language. 

 

I was also charged with telling the truth, even if the ways I communicated it might be sugar-coated.

 

It was like summer vacation when I kissed that career goodbye and turned to the freedom of writing fiction. I now had the freedom to play with language, to make things up, to veer into such pleasures as dialogue where the characters can talk any way I want them to. (Notice the last word in this sentence?) The only problem I have is I actually like good grammar, am not prone to exclamation points except in emails and text messages, and can’t give up the Oxford comma. My own books don’t break many use of language rules because that would be artificial and awkward for me. Maybe I’m still conscious of all the academic leaders for whom I wrote. (Notice that I chose not to let that “for” dribble off the end of the sentence?)

 

I firmly support talented writers doing whatever they please. If their writing is good, I’m all in and will relish the styles they invent as long as I can understand the story. James Joyce’s Ulysses is my perfect example of a writer going off the grammar rails deliciously and creating a masterpiece. The Commitments, however, lost me completely, so I guess there’s a limit. 

 

Good writing is so much more than good grammar, and meh writing can’t hide behind it!

Too Impatient to Listen - by Harini Nagendra

If you listen to audio versions of books, do you also read them? Why or why not? Or do you never listen and, if not, why not?

Harini here – responding to this week's question, but filling this in a day late, as we’ve had a major power and internet outage here in Bangalore. Climate change, everyone - it's been raining, and our infrastructure is not equipped to deal with this level of stress. I just read a fascinating - and scary - piece in The Atlantic about how heat is going to stress cities because of its effects on steel - for instance, on especially hot days, we can't run trains at full speed - because speed creates friction, and friction creates heat - and there's already too much heat in the system. So, train speeds will slow down in summer - and what's that going to do to railway timetables? 

But I digress. Back to the topic at hand. Do I listen to audio books? No, because I'm too impatient. With a paper book, or a Kindle, I can flip backwards and forwards, and also - I read fast. I can't listen to an audio book and complete it in an hour or two, whereas I can easily complete a good mystery in that time.  

The only time I did listen to audio books was way back in 1998, when my husband and I did a long road trip from San Diego to Montana. For part of the route, we took a detour onto US Route 50, also called the Loneliest Road in America - and we covered the distance of 1200 miles in a little over a day. Driving past flat farm landscapes in Idaho, with no visual relief to distract us from the road, we needed something to keep us awake - fortunately, we'd borrowed an audio tape of Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, from the local library. We came to an especially fascinating section where Mandela described his engagement with Gandhi's philosophy of a non-violent struggle for freedom, and the reasoning behind why he eventually rejected such an approach. Suri and I paused the tape - something you can't do as easily while reading a print book - and got deep into discussion about the Indian debates on non-violence in 1920s and 1930s. 

Some of what we spoke about that day stayed in my mind, and eventually, years later, made it into my latest book in The Bangalore Detectives Club series, A Nest of Vipers - where my protagonist Kaveri Murthy gets caught up in some of these debates, while investigating threats to the Prince of Wales' visit to Bangalore in 1922. 

There's much to thank that audio book experience for. 

But that's the only time I can remember listening to an audio tape from start to finish. Except my own, of course - I am extraordinarily fortunate to have had Soneela Nankani, one of AudioFile's Golden Voice narrators, narrate all the 3 books in my series - she does such a fabulous job. 

But otherwise - I'm too impatient (a general failing, not just with books). I read books non-linearly, a habit I've picked up from having to read dozens of research papers in a day and summarize them for an article. I skim fast, I go backwards and forwards.

If it's a mystery, fantasy or thriller - my favorite genres - I often get too tense to wait for the end, and have to skip ahead. I get to the last couple of chapters, reassure myself that my favorite characters have made it through safely, and then go back to the beginning. Other times, I read till the middle of the book, and then realize I missed a critical plot point, and go back to look for it. 

Or, I just like a turn of phrase used in dialogue or to describe scene and setting - The Lord of the Rings being one of my favourite examples - and I open the book again, and again, to reread the best sections. I can't do that in an audio book.

But then, I'm fortunate to have mostly avoided long commutes to work and home. I've either worked from home, or lived at the most half an hour away from my place of work - and I do listen to podcasts all the time, when I'm on the road, or exercising. Occasionally, I've even picked up a short story to listen to. If I had a longer commute, or we did another long car trip, I can imagine we'd turn to an audio book again. 

But I'd definitely have to work on becoming more patient.  

  

Tell Me a Story from James W. Ziskin

 If you listen to audio versions of books, do you also read them? Why or why not? Or do you never listen and, if not, why not?

I love audiobooks. I listen to them every chance I get. There’s something of a group activity feel to it. Maybe audiobooks remind me of my mother reading to me when I was a child. Or maybe I’m just a slow, lazy reader. Whatever the reason, I like to be read to in the car or at home after a long day of work.

Often, when writer friends ask me to read their books for a possible blurb, I make use of MS Word’s Read Aloud function to listen. Or sometimes I use Speechify, an app that offers dozens of voices to read your content. Neither platform is perfect, but they both provide natural-sounding narrators. Sure, they mispronounce some words and occasionally mess up the stress or rhythm, but they’ve come a long way from the old days of robotic, monotone voices.

Word and Speechify are also great editing tools. I’ve often sung the praises of listening to your work while revising. It’s the best editing tool since spellcheck. You’ll catch hundreds of errors, I promise. In fact, I’ve been talking about the advantages of listening to your work in Word for a few years now. So much so that our own Gabriel Valjan has coined a verb to describe this practice: "to Ziskin," as in, “Oh, you’re editing your latest book? Have you Ziskin-ed it yet?”

Machine voices are good and getting better all the time, but I don’t believe they’ll ever reach a level that human performers can produce. Still, there’s a place for text-to-speech software. When no audiobook is available, I’m happy to use them. 

Since we’re discussing audiobooks this week, I thought it might be fun and instructive to share some samples. Here’s a clip (from Word) from my latest book, The Prank, currently out on submission. You’ll notice the narrator is pretty good, but she’s too perky, given the tone and subject matter of the story. 

I actually prefer the voices that come with a program called Speechify. Here’s the same clip (from Speechify). I like this one better. I find it’s more natural, even if the narrator occasionally missteps. Take a listen.

Here’s a clip from my short story, “The Twenty-Five-Year Engagement” (In League with Sherlock Holmes, King and Klinger, Pegasus 2020). I think you’ll agree that the masterful

performance of voice artist Stefan Rudnicki is far superior to anything software can produce. He’s a brilliant actor with a beautiful voice. He gave me yet another reason to feel proud of this story, which was a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards in 2021.

Here’s a clip from my 2020 novel, Bombay Monsoon, narrated by Keith Jedlicka. Clearly, human actors like Keith and Stefan make better audiobooks than any software can.

But, as stated above, not all books get the full human audiobook treatment, so here’s a Speechify clip of another short story of mine, “Prisoner of Love.”

Please share your thoughts on audiobooks and text-to-speech below. I’d love to hear a good, spirited debate.

Listen up good

If you listen to audio versions of books, do you also read them? Why or why not? Or do you never listen and, if not, why not?

by Dietrich

I enjoy kicking back and reading a book, it’s a quiet reward at the end of a day. Then there are times when I’d rather hear an audiobook, like while I’m engaged in doing some simple task that could use some spicing up. Perhaps reading a book engages my imagination more, allowing me to paint the scenes in my mind rather than having someone else describe what’s going on. Either way, my retention seems to be about the same whether I read or listen. 

Sometimes I’m curious to hear a story that I previously read. One thing’s for sure, talented narrators can add much to the stories when they nail the delivery, pacing and the voices of the characters. Anthony Burgess’s 1963 novel, A Clockwork Orange, is a perfect example. It’s a longtime favorite, and I revisited it by listening to the audiobook years after first reading the novel. It’s narrated by Tom Hollander who did such an amazing job with the dystopian language and the overall tone. I ended up loving the audiobook even more than reading the book. 

The late Frank Muller was another narrator with a golden voice. The recipient of the Audie Award for Best Male Narrator two years in a row, earning a Golden Voice recognition from AudioFile, Muller narrated eleven Elmore Leonard novels which I had previously read. He also narrated several favorites by Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy too. George Quidall, who’s narrated over 800 novels, also read several by Elmore Leonard: Touch, Cuba Libre, Out of Sight, and Split Images and he did an amazing job. My favorite narrator of an Elmore Leonard novel was Robert Forster who read Mr. Paradise. He also played Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, based on Elmore’s Rum Punch.

Long after reading All Quiet on the Western Front, I checked out the audiobook, also read by Frank Muller, and I found it every bit as enjoyable as turning the pages. 

Another special novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, first published in 1970 by the incomparable George V Higgins was also turned into an audiobook, read by another true talent in Mark Hammer who was also the voice on several Elmore Leonard audiobooks, as well as some of James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux novels. Will Patten’s also done an amazing job lending his voice to some of the Robicheaux series.

Other narrators who did justice to books that I’ve read: Claire Danes reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; Sissy Spacek reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Samuel L. Jackson narrating Chester Himes’ A Rage in Harlem. And I also highly recommend Kathryn Stockett’s The Help read by Jenna Lamia,,Bahni Turpin,,Octavia Spencer,and Cassandra Campbell.

When my publisher asked me to weigh in on the voices for some of my own audiobooks, I had the chance to listen to the audition tapes for Cradle of the Deep, Under an Outlaw Moon and then Nobody from Somewhere. The narrators who were picked — Keith MacKechnie, Patrick Garrow and Ron Lea — all did great jobs and each of them nailed the flavor of the stories and the characters' voices. You can check out all three audiobooks on the ECW Press website, or you can find them on Spotify.

Coming September 24, 2024

 

Hello? Hello? Can You Hear Me?

 

Terry here with our question of the week: If you listen to audio versions of books, do you also read them? Why or why not? Or do you never listen and, if not, why not?

 I can’t say I’ve never listened to audiobooks. I have. At least three that I remember. Two of them were books by Bill Bryson that I’d already read, and one was Blind Faith, by Leslie Budewitz (writing as Alicia Beckman) that I read last year when I had to make an 11-hour round-trip drive.

I thoroughly enjoyed all three. 

 Why haven’t I read more? Simple. When I hear something that interests me on an audio presentation, I start thinking about that “thing” and the next thing I know the narrator has moved on…and I haven’t. And then I have to putter around trying to find where I left off. That’s easier these days, but there’s another reason I don’t listen to audiobooks: I don’t do much long driving. 

I imagine people who commute an hour or more each day enjoy listening to audio books. But my drives are sporadic. I might do a two-hour drive one day and then not drive more than 15 minute-spurts for days in a row. And when I’m home, I like to read print books. I also don’t listen to podcasts (gasp) except on rare occasions. I think I’m just not an oral learner. I need to see words on a page to really take in what I’m being presented with. 

 This doesn’t mean I don’t intend to have my books on audio at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. I constantly get prods from readers who want the books on audio. But my personal indifference to listening may explain why I have dragged my feet in getting them onto audio. So many people seem to “read” by audio these days, that I think I have to get them out there so people can get to know Samuel. 

 There may come a time when my eyes won’t allow me to read as much as I’d like, and when that time comes, I’ll be eager to sample audiobooks—if my ears let me! Ha. Reminds me of that all joke. “If we had some eggs, we could have some ham and eggs if we had some ham.” 

 All of which brings me to the issue of audiobook narrators. I attended a panel recently on which there were some well-known narrators. One, in particular, has won numerous awards. I’d love to have him narrate my books, but I found that narrators, like any other service, come in many different cost ranges—and he was way out of my budget. My dream is to find someone who wants to hit the “big time” and who makes it big by narrating the Samuel Craddock books. Think Sam Elliot’s voice.

On October 1, six short weeks from now, my next Samuel Craddock book, The Troubling Death of Maddy Benson (the eleventh in the series--can you believe it?) comes out from Severn House. Please consider pre-ordering it. 

Getting Into Audiobooks

If you listen to audio versions of books, do you also read them? Why or why not? Or do you never listen and, if not, why not?

Brenda

True confession. I have never listened to an audiobook all the way through. Not even my own.

Nearly all of my books have been made into audiobooks by a couple of publishers and I have links to all of them ... somewhere. I also had a hand in producing two audiobooks from my latest series - Blind Date and When Last Seen. For these two books, I listened to every chapter at least twice as my narrator, the fabulous Heather Williams (evening radio host at CHEZ 106) recorded and shared. Still, I never listened to the final books in their entirety. (Available everywhere)

I guess I don't listen to audiobooks because of the time commitment. The listening takes focus for stretches of time, and I'm not that disciplined. I normally spend a good part of my day writing and on other tasks but never sit too long. My modus operandi is to write, take a break, read a chapter of whatever novel I have on the go, write some more, do housework, read, have coffee with my husband, write... you get the idea. I tried listening to podcasts while working out in the mornings and this went okay, but I never got hooked on any series and still enjoy listening to music while toiling through the exercises. 

Another reason that I don't listen to audiobooks is that I love reading a physical book. Turning pages, rereading passages, enjoying the imagery and vocabulary ... it's a completely different experience to listening to a book read aloud. However, there will likely come a time when I start to include audiobooks in my day. I know that many people enjoy the listening experience, and it's a medium I'm willing to delve into when life settles down. 

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

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One Perfect Moment In A Writers Life, by Josh Stallings

Q: What single moment of being a published writer has been the most memorable?

A: Not a single moment, but kaleidoscopic moments spent with fellow writers, reviewers, agents and readers. Moments I’d never have had if not for being published.

At a signing for my memoir a woman stepped up speaking softly through tears, “You told my story. Facts are different, but the feelings… The feelings, they’re mine.” 

Crossing the Mississippi river on a ferry, rain drizzling down listening to my wife Erika deep in conversation about the pain of lost children with the ever brilliant agent Amy Benson-Moore. I didn’t know at that point that she would become my agent, I just knew I dug her honest cool post punk vibe. Dug the way she really listened to Erika. At a gumbo party in Algiers I saw a wealthy patron of writers dismiss Erika as a “writer’s-wife” thus not important enough to chat with. The wealthy patron failed two litmus tests in that moment. The first was not seeing all people as equally valuable. The second was dismissing the brilliance of the smartest person I know.   

The first LA Noir Bar, hosted by Eric Beetner and Stephen Blackmoore, was also my first public reading. Standing in a noisy west side bar reading Beautiful Naked & Dead to a group of writers and readers I felt like I had found my place in the world. Or at least my next safe harbor on my life’s journey. That night I met and became friends with the fabulous Holly West. 

Noir Bars have been great places to hone the craft of public reading, and to meet other wonderful writers. In one sleazy bar with a scratchy fuzzing sound system that I had to read over, I met Scott Montgomery. He was head of Mystery People at Austin’s Book People book store. He’s forgotten more about crime fiction than most of us know. He also has personal tales about almost every great crime writer. Somehow he heard my words over the drunken hoots and hollers. He took the book I offered, read it and has been a friend and supporter ever since. 

In the pre-Muskkk TWITTER it was a solid place to meet folks. My first book was out and it had been wonderfully embraced by bloggers and indi reviewers. A revered crime writer/english professor came after me for misspellings and punctuation mistakes in my tweets. I was fucking gutted. It seemed to prove that dyslexics didn’t belong typing without a team of editors, and maybe not even then. It tossed me back in grammar school, back to being the “dummy.” Until three amazing reviewers, McDroll, Sabrina E. Ogden, and Elizabeth A. White rushed to my defense. They all loved my work and were unafraid to shove my books on all they met. I was proud that my book had engendered such deep feelings in women who were strangers at the time.

My life has been haunted by lack of self esteem. As I type these words I fear they won’t be enough. I learned not to say things like that publicly from Holly West. Three books into my career she pointed out that I needed to stop talking myself down, it came off as false modesty. She was right. The feelings were real but they could be received wrong. Every creative I know is riddled with self doubt. It comes with the job. But at a certain point you have to stop publicly talking about it. Privately sure we bitch and moan. Publicly it sounds like Ryan Gosling asking, “Does this shirt makes me look ugly?”

I used to think enough winning moments would heal my talent dysmorphia.

I used to think if I amassed enough money I would feel safe. 

I used to think serenity came from beyond the borders of myself.

I am friends with and share mutual admiration with some of the finest writers working today. Though not wealthy I have more than a hippy kid could have dreamt possible. I have long days of joy, peace, and serenity and I know they come from inner work. 

Asking what single moment of being a published writer has been the most memorable is like asking what was the most memorable moment in a life I’ve shared with Erika, Dylan, and Jared. They have been brilliant, funny, silly, painfully heart breaking, and perfectly cracked. In the words of Erika, “They’ve been a lot of things.”

Last week I was on the ferry from Vineyard Haven to Woods Hole. Jared and I had spent an amazing week with my brother and his family on Martha’s Vineyard. We laughed so hard our sides hurt. We ate swordfish pulled from the sea, then tossed on a grill by my brother and son. It was so damn good it’d make your taste buds cry with joy. We napped and watched Olympic basketball. Programmed2Thrash, a techno hardcore band my son writes for and sings in dropped its first album. We talked music and books. We hiked trails in the woods and by the sea. It was slow time that went by too quickly.

On the ferry, Jared sits beside me watching light travel across the water illuminating the sails of a boat, a simple smile peeks across his face. I don’t ask but I suspect this is one of those perfect moments we will both remember. 

*****

Find Programmed2Thrash at https://programmed2thrash.bandcamp.com/album/programmed2t-h-r-a-s-h

                                               *****
I am reading: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley