Bring on the donkey work

November is a busy month, at least in the USA. Some people send out for, pay someone to, decide to stop bothering with . . . the same things other people lovingly prepare, take pride in, look forward to. What bits of adult life would you ditch / have you ditched? What "chores" feel like treats?

by Dietrich

Like anybody, I’m all for ditching chores I don’t like to do. Who wouldn’t want to have more time for the fun stuff? It’s better to be munching a carrot than doing the donkey work, but let’s face it, fair is fair, and one needs to pull their weight. I’ve also learned that pushing these routine tasks aside for later can leave me with a niggling feeling — maybe it’s guilt — and undone chores have a way of piling up, meaning there’ll be even more to do later on.

One cure is delegation. This can be a good thing. I’m reminded of Tom Sawyer convincing Ben and his other pals that whitewashing a fence is a great pleasure. But, such hoodwinking may weigh on an adult conscience, and such gullible grown-up pals may be in short supply. Hiring somebody to do these tasks would be a better way to go. If one has kids, perhaps a negotiation for a bump in allowance could get the work done. If the nest is empty, perhaps an entrepreneurial youth in the neighborhood would like to earn a few bucks for cutting the lawn, raking the leaves, washing the car, shoveling snow, or whatever chores need doing. 

For the chores I don’t like to do but can’t ditch or hire out, discipline is required. I tell myself not to be such a baby and just get it out of the way. I often put on some music to lessen the tedium, or perk things up by listening to an audiobook. 

Then there are those tasks that I actually like to do. I started cooking and baking years back and I found I actually enjoy it and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Not to the point that anybody’s likely to offer me my own cooking show, but then again nobody’s gagged and fallen off a chair either. I also enjoy gardening and I find that quite relaxing as well. I’m also reasonably handy around the house, fixing things and making certain improvements and that can leave me with a feeling of accomplishment.

Writing is the first thing I do every day while the world around me still sleeps. I cherish the hours where I can get into whatever story I’m working on. So, as long as I have that, then I have no complaints, and I can say with a smile on my face — bring on the chores.

Let me Cook!

 

Terry here, with our autumn topic. November is a busy month, at least in the USA. Some people send out for, pay someone to, decide to stop bothering with...Thanksgiving dinner! While others lovingly prepare, take pride in, look forward to doing it. What bits of adult life would you ditch / have you ditched? What “chores” feel like treats? 

 I love this question. Let’s start with “treats.” I know several people who hate to cook, and for them it’s a chore. Me? By now, everyone probably knows that I love to cook. Even when I was single and lived alone, or when my husband was away, I’d always cook something nice for myself. I love the way things smell when I’m cooking, love to make sure there’s a variety of tastes and colors on the plate. Love to experiment with different recipes. For me, cooking is a way to unwind after a day of writing and writing-related nightmares. Would you rather work on book promotion or cook a nice meal? Yeah. And here is a shot from Thanksgiving during Covid...

I recently invited a friend for dinner and he told me he had serious dietary issues. There were many, many things he could not eat for health reasons. My response? I rubbed my hands gleefully and cried, “Lemme at it!” There are so many choices to make when I cook, that sometimes it feels overwhelming. Here's what I cooked. Looks good, right?

What am I going to cook tonight? Indian? Greek (since I just got back from Greece, this has been a new addition). Tex-Mex? Vegetarian? Italian? Just plain California (think salads and avocados)? So when someone narrows that array of choices, it’s something of a relief. Unless someone is just plain picky, and I have little patience for that. I had too much of that when my son was young and refused to eat anything that wasn’t white—potatoes, rice, or pasta (with nothing on it!). Thank goodness, he changed, so that isn’t an issue. 

 I love to entertain, and sadly, since we moved to SoCal, I don’t entertain much. Even when we lived in Italy, we had lots of people to help us celebrate holiday meals. Here, not so much. I don’t think there’s much sense cooking a turkey for a handful of people, so we may end up having a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Or maybe something exotic like pheasant or goose. Or chile rellenos. 

I wouldn’t call them treats, but I don’t even mind most housecleaning chores, even cleaning the cat box, which I scoop out every single day. But there are two I won’t do. When my husband and I were discussing getting married I told him there are two things I don’t do: vacuum and take out the trash. Well, eventually, I’ll do both. I’ll vacuum when the cat hair starts clinging to my pants legs. I’ll take out the trash when it either smells bad or is overflowing. So, he said he’d do both—and he does. 

He also does the dishes. He even gets huffy if I try to chip in, unless we’ve had a dinner party and it’s late—then, he reluctantly allows me into “his” domain. 

 I loathe doing laundry, but I do it anyway for a stupid reason: I don’t trust anybody else to do it right! Think pink socks, shrunken expensive T-shirts, wrinkled pants left in the dryer too long. I used to not mind it as much when we had side-by-side washer/dryers, but the washer is on bottom and therefore hard to reach, and the dryer is on top…and also hard to reach. Yes, I know I'm complaining, but that's the point of chores you can't stand!

 I love a beautiful garden and admire friends who are gardeners. Even when I had a big garden,

I simply didn’t have the urge to do the gardening myself. Oh, once I’d get into it, I enjoyed it, but I procrastinated something fierce. 

 And last I’ll mention bill paying. I didn’t mind it. When we first got married, I handled the bills. And then, I discovered that my husband painstakingly went over every bill I paid to make sure I had done it “right.” Bingo. Gone. I thought it was ridiculous for both of us to spend time on it, and I haven’t done it since. 

 As for bits of adult life I would “ditch,” could we please go back to the time when plump women were all the rage? I would gladly ditch dieting!

Finding Our Groove

November is a busy month, at least in the USA. Some people send out for, pay someone to, decide to stop bothering with . . . the same things other people lovingly prepare, take pride in, look forward to. What bits of adult life would you ditch / have you ditched? What “chores” feel like treats?

Brenda starting off the week.

Being an adult means doing a lot of repetitive chores - cleaning, shopping, cooking, paying bills, and on and on. All of these tasks are real time-eaters, and as every writer or creative person knows, time is precious. Perhaps paradoxically, even daydreaming requires time and focus.

We've raised two daughters, and while they lived at home, I did all the grocery shopping and cooked most of the meals. Laundry, cleaning and the bulk of those endless, repetitive errands fell to me, although we had a housecleaner once every two weeks after I returned to work full-time until I retired from the government. I wrote when I could throughout this period. My husband Ted worked in a physically demanding job, and he also renovated our house almost continually. For example, he gutted and rebuilt the bathroom. Another time, he built a back deck. He replaced the roof on our house twice since we've lived here. We each had our strengths and we did what we needed to do to keep our lives running smoothly. It wasn't perfect, maybe not even equal at times, but somehow we managed.

Ted working on our roof

These last several years, writing from home has become my full-time job. Ted recently retired, although not really. He works for the company sporadically and often can be found helping somebody out when they need work done on their house. However, he's also taken on a portion of the mundane household chores, including laundry, cleaning and cooking. He also doesn't care if I suggest we eat out or order in, and he doesn't get upset by much. I'd put him in the feminist category - supportive, willing to pivot, not married to traditional roles.

Which brings me to this week's question. I've shed the guilt from letting housework slide. Sure, I keep the dishes clean, vacuum and dust, but none of these chores is my priority. If I want to spend the day reading and writing, this is what I do. I used to bake quite a bit but now only once in a while. I make meals from scratch less often, but enjoy it when I do. I still spend a lot of time working in the garden in the summer months, but only because I enjoy it. One chore/pastime that I spend a lot less time on is shopping. I rarely go into the stores and only when necessary. 

As for which chores feel like treats, I quite enjoy spending a morning or afternoon vacuuming and washing the floors (with environmentally friendly cleaner), believe it or not. I like the exercise and the end result. Those times I do get around to baking or making a lovely meal, especially when we have company over, are also happy-inducing. My outlook now is that time shouldn't be squandered on chores if there's a more fun alternative, because nobody will care if the baseboards are clean or the windows washed when our time comes to leave this earth.

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“The arc of the moral universe,” and Other Stories Ripped from the Headlines, by Josh Stallings

 

Q: As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever write stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your work?

A: I feel I sometimes write “ripped from the headlines that are about to happen”. I wrote a short story Life Time Appointment, not long after that beer swilling rapist Brett Kavanaugh was installed on the Supreme Court, but before they overturned women's rights to bodily autonomy. It was a dark futuristic tale that came true way too fast. I wrote about sex trafficking and US domestic kidnapping and trafficking young people, forcing them into the sex trade years before 60 Minutes would touch the subject. A subject we have yet to shine a bright enough light on, and stop. Many states still look at teenage prostitutes as criminals instead of what they are, sexually abused children. The johns who pay to have sex with them are pedophiles. 

I don’t write books based on headlines, I think that should be left to South Park, no really I do. They built a way to have news on the air in a week after it hit. And they make it shamelessly funny. Podcasts can move at the speed of news. For the rest of us we need to look farther down the road. From when I have a book idea to when a reader opens it will be a year or more at best. For that reason books need to have a longer shelf life than a cartoon or true crime podcast.

Sometimes you get lucky. Don Winslow’s The Cartel was published in June 2015. In July 2015 Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, broke out of a maximum security prison. For two weeks every news or newser-taiment show grabbed Winslow up as the expert to talk about Mexican Cartels. Rightfully so, he is an expert on Cartels. The book took years to research and write so he had no way of knowing this exposure was coming or that it would launch The Cartel sales into the stratosphere. It is an amazing book and it got lucky.

The second part of the question is, “How much do you rely on current events to fuel your work?” I try to avoid writing about current events. I write from a world view that is informed by my personal history. Conversations with friends and acquaintances. Once into a novel I interview people connected with the world I write about. I follow current events from multiple sources. Lately I find myself looking to history to understand the world we are living through. 

Follow me down this rabbit hole… I’m writing this on election day. No results are in, but everyone agrees it’s a razor close race. How the fuck is that possible?

I searched out this quote to help me feel a tiny bit safer-

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In a deeper dive I discovered that King, scholar that he was, cleverly rephrased a much older quote-

“Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” - 1853, Theodore Parker a Unitarian minister and abolitionist.

I pray to the divine universal power of nature that they are both correct.

Back to writing. I hold a romantic, non cynical world view in my heart, because if I didn’t I couldn’t go on living let alone writing. Cynicism and nihilism are afforded to those who haven’t walked through life altering pain and heartbreak. People lucky enough to never discover a time when a little hope in a better tomorrow is all that keeps the noose from around your neck. 

I have been lucky enough to love deeply. I have lost extraordinary people and animals too soon and right on time. Neither are easy. But if pain is the price of truly loving, it is a price I will continue to pay gratefully.

I write from my life and dress it in world facts. The core cannot be torn from any headline except the ones in my brain, heart, and soul.

While my first draft gently weeps, by Catriona

As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

Ha-HA-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. If that's how we're spelling hollow and yet deranged laughter. I'm writing this on Wednesday night and my kneejerk answer is to say that this week's big news doesn't fit anywhere into my fictional universe. But let's see. 

(I'm illustrating the rest of the blog, not with book pics for once, but with a few recent snaps from around Washington DC, where I'm currently billeted. I'm not in a promo state of mind.)

I write a series of preposterous detective stories, in the style of the British Golden Age. They started in 1922 and the latest is set in spring 1939. You know 1939: when a western nation had let a petty tyrant lead them into darkness and were just about to unleash unprecedented misery on the world? Thing is, in my fictional universe, he's not much cared for and ultimately won't prosper.

I also write a less preposterous series of historical sleuth novels, set in 1948, when said petty tyrant had chowed down on his cyanide pill and the world was trying to recover. In Britain, where my detective lives, a large part of that recovery was the formation and launch of the welfare state, including a national health service. My heroine works for the NHS and the first book, written in 2020, ended up being a love letter to it as well as being dedicated to it. The book was pitched and commissioned in 2019, but the headlines ripped into it thematically, I suppose you'd say.

I write stand alones too. The stories that draw me are about secrets, betrayal, shame, trauma, survival, and . . . here's the rub . . . justice. In my standalone psychological thrillers things make sense in the end and evil doesn't triumph. In my standalone thrillers, women find their feet, their voice and their power. They are unstoppable. They face tough odds but they prevail. I'll just leave that there with no further comment.

And I write comedies. In fact I'm writing the first draft of a comedy right now. I wrote 2.5K words today. It took me six hours and - understand that I'm a pantser - all of a sudden, in my story, there was an abandoned Mustang full of blood and bits of scalp. So, yes, some of the first draft of Scot's Eggs has a mood, if not a plot, ripped from today's unconscionable headlines. I'll have to get rid of it in the edit, but for now it stays. It answers the moment perfectly.

Cx

Be Here Now by Eric Beetner

 As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

I don’t typically write anything that is “of the moment” or places it in a specific here and now. I’ve written period pieces set in the 1930s, the 50s and the 60s. For those books the time was a factor in the story for sure. And you have to get the details accurate to make the world believable in everything from pop culture to news of the day. But to start dropping in references to things happening now I feel dates a book pretty quickly.

One reason is the slow pace of publishing. By the time I write something, submit it, sell it, go through an editing process, etc. it will have been 18 months on the short end. Much longer can be typical. So already those topical references would be dated.

Songs, movies, slang terms, fashion trends all work like cement shoes to weigh a story down in one particular time and space. If I populate a book with people doing the ice bucket challenge or dancing to Gangam Style, I’ve unwittingly written a period piece. But when a period is only a few years ago, it just seems dated.

For me, one thing that couldn’t be denied was Covid. In my latest book, The Last Few Miles Of Road, I made mention of it once. When the main character, Carter, is thinking about friends of his who have died, I listed Covid among the reasons people he knew had passed on. That was it, though. It didn’t play a part in the story. I merely acknowledged that it was a part of the world and moved on.

If you write political thrillers, to contend with the ever-changing political landscape must be difficult to navigate. But to ignore social changes also risks stagnating a book into tired tropes. Are the bad guys really the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago? Authors need to move with the times.

Stories that come from news reports or some kind of current event are often best used if they could have happened at any point in history. It’s one reason why crime novels in general work so well over time. The motivations for criminal acts never change. Lust, greed, jealousy all remain untouched in the human psyche no matter what the decade, or century for that matter.

So if you manage to capture the zeitgeist and time it perfectly, you might get a hit book out of it. But the chances of writing something topical that will last is slim. You’d have to wait for it to get old enough to become a period piece. 

But I suppose if a book was set in my own youth it would be considered period now. So maybe that’s not so far off after all. Or maybe I just want to think that.

Write with Special Sauce

 

Do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

 

We’ve all heard the familiar chestnuts: ‘Reality is stranger than Fiction’ and ‘Every story has already been told,’ or a permutation on the latter, ‘Every book has been rewritten.’

 

I think the reason why readers see the same stories over and over again, and why agents and publishers are reluctant to take on inventive stories or creative uses of language is twofold: one, formula provides comfort and familiarity; and two, reason one is reliable, predictable, and profitable. The truly inventive works of literature challenge readers and critics.

 

Writers are left with two choices, either recast the ancient tropes or create a twist that I’ll call the Special Sauce.

 

The original movie Star Wars is a collection of tropes of classical (and world) literature. The royal baby is raised in the wild, unaware of his origin. Siblings are separated at birth. There is a Master (Yoda) and a Helper (Han Solo). There is a divine power (the Force), etc. etc. It’s Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth, the Hero’s Journey 101.

 

The Secret Sauce is it all occurs in a galaxy far, far away.

 

There are books and movies that have gone rogue, become unexpected blockbusters and bestsellers, the ones every agent or publisher said didn’t stand an ice cube’s chance in hell. These are the underdogs or underground classics we have all come to love. The film Rocky is an example. Frank Herbert’s Dune was universally (pun intended) rejected before it became the best-selling science fiction novel of all time.

As for the question of Repetition vs Originality, I can’t help but think of the machine in Orwell’s 1984. It recombines prefabricated stanzas to create “new” stories to entertain the prolets in order to keep them distracted.

My Shane Cleary series, set in Seventies Boston, uses real locations to create ‘atmosphere’ and suggest the mores of the decade. DIRTY OLD TOWN kicked off the series. I drew inspiration from real events in SYMPHONY ROAD, such as the arson-for-profit ring that included corrupt city officials, law enforcement, and insurance adjusters. The Special Sauce is that a mafioso seeks justice. In HUSH HUSH, I revisited the murder of Andrew Puopolo in the Combat Zone in 1976, a case that changed jury selection in America and almost brought Boston to the edge of chaos because of judicial racism—as if the court-ordered desegregation of schools and public housing hadn’t brought Bostonians to blows. The Special Sauce I added to the story was that a father of the accused sought justice, and I provided an alternate fictional motivation for the crime. LIAR’S DICE, which received the Shamus Award for Best PI this year, brings forward elements of a war over narcotics within the Sicilian and Calabrian mafias, in the US and Canada during the 70s. I also hinted about clandestine activities and atrocities in Vietnam (Shane is a Vietnam veteran). The Special Sauce is the FBI’s questionable tactics in trying to dismantle organized crime. In ‘real life,’ the agency would later cite ‘rogue elements.’ In The BIG LIE, I dove deeper into those ‘rogue elements,’ mixing fact and fiction.

Level Best Books is reissuing my Company Files, and I’ll be adding a fourth title by the summer of 2025. The inaugural book, THE GOOD MAN, is set in Vienna, as Operation Paperclip is underway. The nascent CIA is recruiting former Nazis to counter Soviet progress in the arms race. This was real history that most people (cough, agents) didn’t want to hear when I shopped the pitch. One agent called it ‘morally offensive’ and challenged the veracity of the premise. I sent her the declassified file on Paperclip. In THE NAMING GAME, I revisit the Hollywood studio system and its use of blacklisted writers during the Red Scare. There’s no real Special Sauce here. I had fun with the era, and the material wrote itself. In THE DEVIL’s MUSIC, I extended the consequences of McCarthy’s Red Scare. I remind readers of the special relationship between Senator McCarthy and the Kennedy family (he was godfather to Robert Kennedy’s children). If there’s any Special Sauce here, it’s revisiting the relationship of convenience between organized crime and the CIA. In the fourth novel, out this summer, I explore Operation Ajax. You can Google if you haven’t heard of it. It’s History in plain sight.

I have written another series that I am debating whether to bring to the fore, but I don’t know if there is any interest in it. In the Roma series, I present corporations and governments as no different from organized crime (Special Sauce). I explore history that seems unknown to most Americans: the US’s decades-long destabilization of the Italian government, in what became known as the Strategy of Tension and Years of Lead.

All said and done, writers combine and recombine stories. If there is a thing we call Originality, it is our use of language, and what chapter in the familiar forest we’ve chosen to mine for material.

There is no accounting for LUCK, in being in the right place at the right time, and knowing the right people.

Until then, I follow Yoda’s advice: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

My Truth

Q: As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever write stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your work?

From Susan

 

Taking a whole story or a major plot from something that made the news doesn’t work for me. For one thing, the real story already exists. And if it’s crime fiction, there are real people who might feel I was ripping the scars off their devastating wounds for my own benefit. I know there are TV shows that do it all the time. I would never watch them. But how many good writers actually do that? For one thing, that would insult our own creativity. 

 

What does fuel my writing is the small tidbits from the real world – a nasty overheard comment, the sight of a police car with lights flashing and sirens screaming on the highway, the image of a vulnerable old woman putting one foot in front of her at a time navigating a slippery sidewalk. The smell of oil leaking from a car can trigger a mental image. The smell of lilacs. The taste of garlic. Anything at the perfect moment that connects with something inside me, a memory, a hope, a frisson of happiness, a disappointment, fear….So, my external world and my inner world. After all, when memories surface because of some external poke, they are current again, aren’t they? 

 

My WIP is in a setting I haven’t written about, has characters not much like the ones I’ve written about in my seven books, but I realize that the plot and the characters and even the setting aren’t that far removed from the bits and bobs and have accumulated in my head and in my senses for years. The plot has a bit to do with art fraud, in the news often, and a  bit to do with billionaires who are in the news and in our faces every day, alas. There are women like the “Housewives of…” and imposters. 

 

Right now it’s a stew and I’m not sure where it’s headed. Funny, just last month there was a profile of a very rich man who is no longer as rich as he once was, and at least one of the tidbits I am stirring into my mix echoes his situation. The dialogue I create might be a riff on his complaint to the interviewer. Might, but might be juicier.

 

Is truth stranger than fiction? Maybe, but fiction gives writers the chance to bend truth without becoming liars. We smooth it out, rough it up, and get to write our own damn endings.

 

 

 

  

When Diwali and Halloween coincide - by Harini Nagendra

 It's Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

It's Diwali week in India - festival of lights, which we call Deepawali in the south of India, where I am. We stopped bursting crackers several decades back, when my nephew was in primary school, and got us to sign an anti-pollution petition after reading about child labour in some of the manufacturing factories. But we do light lamps with oil and cotton wicks and set them out in the garden, and enjoy how pretty they look. 

Halloween was not a thing in India in the 1970s, or even the 2000s - but somewhere around 2010 and thereafter it started growing in popularity. It's common in many larger cities to keep out candy for the festival now, though still very patchy. But Halloween plus Diwali is definitely a strange combination. In my mom's apartment complex, the resident Whatsapp group had a hilarious discussion going on about dressing the kids up in Indian finery for the Diwali pooja, or prayers, and offering them traditional Indian sweets - and then taking a half hour break, doing a quick costume change, and then welcoming little vampires, werewolves and witches with packaged candy. Two worlds coinciding, or rather colliding, in the most bizarre of ways!  

But the topic of today's post is horror, not Halloween. Do I read horror? No. I get scared too easily, and I know anything I read along those lines would haunt me for life. I am prone to recurring nightmares as it is, and don't want to add any more to my list, thanks very much. 

Have I written any? No, and why - see above.

The closest I came to appreciating horror was in high school, when a number of my good friends got hooked onto werewolf stories, and the Friday the 13th series of movies, as well as Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Shining (remember those?). I'll date myself even further by saying that my best friend at the time went into an absolute panic because she was alone at home watching a horror movie, and the tape on her VCR machine snagged, replaying one of the worst scenes over and over while she cowered behind the sofa, screaming for help - until her older sister walked in, and teased her mercilessly, no doubt finding the whole scene hilarious. Until then, I had planned on going to her home to watch a horror film with her. But when I heard this I decided against it.

I've never been tempted to read horror after that, but I did watch an iconic horror film about 20 years back, when I lived opposite a cemetery in Bloomington IN. I was part of the Bloomington Storyteller's Guild, and we told spooky stories in a gorgeously atmospheric outdoor park - very mildly spooky, as there were young children running around, and hot chocolate doing the round accompanied by cookies. My friend Nathan insisted that the best way to wrap up the evening was to watch the Blairwitch Project, followed by a midnight walk in the cemetery. Which, according to him, was a rite of passage in the midwest that I had missed while growing up in India, and needed to be immediately remedied.

So we did. And.... nothing happened. I liked the film, which thankfully suggested more than it actually showed, but we didn't have a sticky tape, the walk was fine, and - all good. (Or I would have killed Nathan. I warned him not to make it too scary).

So that's my opinion on horror, folks. I prefer not to deal with it because I can't deal with the scary stuff!