Writing Class Confidential Part III

In classes where the teacher is an aggressively self-styled expert (and even some where she is not), the class members will savage each other in an attempt to gain her favor. It’s an unpleasant scene, to say the least. In others, the teacher becomes a kind of self-help guru, convincing people who can’t write that they can so they will come back and pay for more praise when the next class rolls around. The teacher becomes the object of hero worship. It’s grimy and greasy and uncomfortable to watch these dynamics. And yet, a good teacher can make you aware of what you are doing that works, so that you can keep trying to produce more of it, while she does the same for you with that which doesn’t. This advice can be invaluable, especially when you find you and she are on the same page about what good writing should be.

And still….the thing is, no matter what you write, someone is going to not like it. It’s that subjective. But it is not completely subjective either, and some writing really does suck. You have to learn when yours does, and when it doesn’t. Other people can help you learn to do that. Or not.

Finally, you need to be aware of as much of the art and craft of writing as you can. But you also need to do something original. When Hemingway did all of that minimalist stuff, it was new. At least somewhat new. He took what there was, and incorporated it into his work, but he transformed it enough so that it was unmistakably his. That is the trick, and it is a great one. If this intertextuality stuff is true, if everything a writer writes is part of a grand conversation he or she is having with other writers, you need to actually take part in the conversation (produce something that recognizes external standards enough so that it is comprehensible), but also say something a little unlike anything anyone else has said before.

That is what all this stuff about voice is. To be undeniably yourself, to create a persona that coheres, that grabs the reader’s attention and holds it until the end of the piece. That is not about being trendy, or politically correct, or even about being likeable. You can start learning it in writing class, but it is not something you are going to memorize, incorporate as a list of rules, unless the rule was something like this: Be interesting. You learn voice at the place where the rules leave off and the art begins. You learn it by reading and thinking about writing, by taking writing classes, but most of all by writing.

Language is less a garden than it is a jungle. It grows wild and fast, and no matter how hard you try to regulate its growth, its change, it nevertheless grows and changes. The meanings of words change, so that in the Middle Ages silly was a synonym for blessed, and now it means insipid and foolish—basically any movie with Jim Carrey in it. And grammar and syntax changes too—Shakespeare used double negatives all the time without being misunderstood, or excoriated by William Safire or Edwin Newman. Postpositive modifiers were once considered OK in English, and word order was less important because there were more inflections (endings on verbs and nouns and modifiers and pronouns that indicated their role in the sentence). And yet if you read Strunk and White’s ELEMENTS OF STYLE, or Fowler’s MODERN ENGLISH USAGE, you get the impression that there is in existence somewhere some perfect, Platonic form of language, some language so transparent it rivals the nature it describes in beauty and complexity, and that we traduce this marvelous instrument every time we open our barbaric mouths.

I think this is the impulse behind the part of style books that do things like try to freeze usage—to rail against irregardless, to hope that we can defeat the incorrect usage of hopefully, and not be nauseated by the improper deployment of nausea, etc. We want language to always mean what we want it to mean. But it never does. Language is just a convention—something we decide means what it means, and people change their minds, things evolve. This is good, in a way, as language needs to be flexible in order keep up with a rapidly changing world, but it is bad because no matter how hard we try to be understood, language is slippery. Trying to calcify it, to make it some monolith, is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

And yet I am not completely averse to trying to slow it down, especially on the page. The written word loses the immediacy of a living context, or an interlocutor, of the actual lived situations it tries to replicate, and so you have to come to some agreement on what things mean. It is not that usages of the words themselves are good or bad, but we make it so. As long as there is agreement, I am copacetic. And writing is often a vehicle we use to try and transport and convey difficult information, so Fowler has his place. And he can be fun. I love to go and look up things like the difference between continuous and continual, funereal, funerary, and funeral.

What irks me is capriciousness, rules for the sake of rules, and the insistence that you are not trying to decide on a convention for use, but are transmitting some natural law that came to you from up on high, directly to you from the Gods of Language. The difference between who and whom, to be hoped and hopefully, even continuously and continually (if you know the context)—all of these are strictly academic, and only have use as ammunition for pedants.

This is not to say that rules are not helpful in some ways, and the knowledge of them can guide us when our instinct fails us. A very tangled sentence can be explicated sometimes with the good old Elementary School technique of diagramming. And when a sentence of yours gets long and winding, wending its way towards God knows where, it can help to go back to things like rules of agreement to make sure you have made it clear who is doing what to whom, and what modifies what.

A lot of this is instinctive—a five year old has mastered rules for creating past tense, the difference between mass and count nouns, and they often can remember which verbs are strong ones (use an internal vowel change to signal past tense). This is pretty good. But with more complex writing, use the old Fowler’s, and the Strunk and White. You can make yourself clear to your reader, and your reader, especially if they are using the same references, can figure you out more easily than if you just kind of let it all hang out.

Which gets at a more basic question. What is writing for? What is language for? Many would say it is for the accurate transmission of ideas. But then what are academic and scientific and political and legal speech and writing for? They are often more about obscuring the truth, or the lack of knowledge of the speaker, than they are about anything else. But I am assuming that writers are concerned with making themselves understood. And I think Strunk and White give us some great advice along those lines. Prefer the abstract over the concrete, use parallel constructions, omit needless words, etc—all of these are great advice, although not an excuse for being simplistic—you can’t make something less complex than it really is, but at the same time you don’t have to describe it in any more complex a way than its nature allows. Of course, to do so you must understand that nature. What Strunk and White are doing mostly is asking us to take care with our listeners, especially since when they read our stuff, we won’t be there to answer their questions.

This is what style manuals can do—encourage us to be clear, to think more carefully. These are issues on a micro scale, and it certainly is important to address things on that level. But what about things like voice, and the use of metaphor, plotting, narrative tension, etc? Aristotle, in his POETICS, said great use of metaphor was the province of the genius. I agree. Aristotle went on to talk about dramatic unity, but he did so with the understanding that he was only trying to give structure , to provide some helpful tips, and that in great work genius would have to carry the rest of the load. And yet, even the genius can be helped by a little conscious analysis of the process in which he is engaged. And for us non-geniuses, it is maybe even more important to be aware of “rules” which will keep us from making stylistic mistakes a genius would avoid by instinct.

And still, I think the best idea, beyond all those silly writing exercises you will find in some writing how-to manuals, is to just read and write. And read what you have written. Pay careful attention to what works, and try to reproduce it. It is both a conscious and unconscious process, but I think each kind of process can influence the other. Try to let your muse inspire you, but also apply some rigorous editing after the muse has done what she can. It’s a question of both art and craft.

© 2015 Mike Welch

Illustration by Donna MacDonald
donnamacdonald.ca

Back to School and the Lure of the Blank Page

I’ve always thought September was a better time for new beginnings, than January. January is so cold and bleak and forbidding, whereas September is warm and mellow and inviting. That enticing, fall scent is a wake-up call. Like the smell of coffee and bacon in the morning. It makes you want to get up and get going.

Then there is the school thing. All those memories of new beginnings. New classrooms, new subjects, new teachers, new notebooks… Ah, that is the real crux of the matter. That new notebook. You know the one I mean, with the black and white marble cover and the white rectangle waiting for you to write your name in. And inside are all those beautiful, blank pages with blue lines, waiting to be filled with new words. Words that have never been used before, at least not in exactly that order.

I can never let an autumn pass without buying one of those notebooks. What is the lure of the blank page? The white wall crying out for grafitti, the bare tree trunk, begging to be initialed, the bathroom wall demanding…well…back to the notebook. After I buy it, I let it sit around for a few days, enjoying its pristine perfection. Because, I know, the minute I set pen to those pages, they will no longer be pure. They will be tarnished, blemished, marred with words unworthy of their perfection. Words that will need to be changed, fixed, improved, and refined, over and over again. And even then, the result will never be as perfect as that clean, pure, empty white page. But we have to keep trying, September after September, don’t we?

Robin Hathaway

I have always been a child of the sea

I have always been a child of the sea. I am most at home when I am near or on a vast expanse of water, the sea, ocean, bay, river, wherever...

On my desk is a Breton Fisherman's Prayer... "Dear God, be good to me. The sea is so wide, and my boat is so small."

We are au fond alone on our seas, whatever our station in this life. No matter how many close souls we have in our life. The sea brings us cargo daily, health, illness, life, death, joy, pain, ecstasy, bereftness, little hurts, huge jolts, the little moments of happiness, the equally cold darts of horror, hurt or loneliness.

We never know what the sea will choose for us on any given day.

The sea is also the floor and grounding of of our boat.

That boat that does not belong to any other person, no matter how close the relationship.

Once a person dear to me sent me a sympathy card with a message I want to share with you today. This is a message you will each interprete in your own special, private life, and I hope it brings you some joy for that moment when life weighs heavy on your heart.

Quote...

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her , until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, " There, she's gone!"

Gone where? Gone from my sight – that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when some one at my side says, "There, she's gone", there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout...

"There she comes!"...


May you see your own boat as it drifts gently into your own life and feel assured in your own hopes and visions.

T. J. Straw

One PO’d Santa… But it Passed

Like I’ve said before, I’ve been impersonating Santa Claus for so long that I don’t bat an eye when a little kid on the subway tugs on his momma’s arm, pointing at me excitedly, imploring: “Look, Mommy! It’s Santa!” I take it in stride with a big grin, trusting, I suppose, that it’s my due. All the little kid sees is the full (but tidy) white beard, twinkly eyes, ruddy face suggesting northern climes and the ample form, of course. I’m in civvies so the kid doesn’t see me in full uniform (yet): the soft red velvet pantaloons and jacket with jingle bells pinned on, black vinyl booties to pull over shoes, thick black belt to cinch at the waist, floppy red (what else?) hat with white pompom atop. (The whole rig cost me a C-note a hundred years ago.) When I came on the scene last week at Albany’s University Club during the Neighborhood’s Annual Christmas Party, I got a sinking feeling.

It had nothing to do with the children—about twenty in all, most under the age of eight, excited grinning faces that attached themselves to me like metal filings to a magnet. No not those beauties! But the setting, the absence of adults, the exile of us all to a shabby back room while several hundred middle-class adults ate and drank while shooting the shit with each other and the local politicians in the Grand Front Ballroom. I did this gig for the first time last year after Rose suggested me to the Neighborhood Association, as she did again. As I took in the scene—two mothers and one father with cameras and one paid Nanny—it dawned on me that me and the Nanny were The Help. Pissed me off!

But I put it aside to take care of business. Elsa, age 6, claims my left knee and never leaves while boys and girls take turns on the right or simply plaster their little bodies against me between the occupied knees. I routinely ask them their names, then I make it a point to tell each one that I KNOW that he or she is a GOOD BOY, GOOD GIRL (I don’t want their little heads taxed by having to ponder such a weighty matter posed the traditional way: “And have you been… et cetera?). Then I ask the Elf at my side to dip in my green (laundry) bag for a present. The Elf is Rose who stocks the bag for all my appearances. The girls got Indian bangles, Mardi Gras beads, candy canes and chocolate ‘coins’ enclosed in silver gauze drawstring bags; the boys, sticky gel bugs and small squishy white mice along with candy canes and chocolate coins in no-nonsense cellophane bags. The bugs and mice were a big hit as they flew around the room, back and forth between the boys and girls.

I always remember their faces afterward, and sometimes bits of conversation. I routinely ask the children what they want for Christmas. Even if I can’t make out what’s being said in hesitant small voices, I tell them to tell their mommies who’ll tell me and I’ll bring it on Christmas Eve while they’re asleep in their beds. Elsa flummoxed me with an order for an “IP5.” Not sure I heard right, I turned inquiringly to my Elf. “That’s the I-Phone 5,” she said. (What more was there to say?)

 And I remember Charlotte, age 9, who stopped by with her dad on the way to her violin recital at her school. She confided that she’s been playing since age 4 but really wants to be a painter, and presented me with an original kaleidoscope wheel done in crayon on art paper, that she signed at my request. And Ulya, age 4, who takes charge of my right knee and stays. Her whispers about a doll is all I catch. And the Outlier, Rav, age 7, who warns me he’s Jewish, but I sucker him in to receive his Hanukkah Gift. And Baby Zinnia, content to remain, staring up at my face, burbling all the while.

After three-quarters of an hour, I make my grand exit from the room, waving goodbyes to the children while shouting aloft for Rudolph to ready the team. I duck out of sight into a storage room to change out of uniform. As we leave, unthanked and unnoticed, I see a young matron leading a child by the hand, another in her arms, hurrying towards the Back Room to dump them both, I think uncharitably.

I recall that the St. Catherine’s Home for Children was in dire straits this season, having to draft a female Santa Claus. (I am staunchly behind equal rights for women, but I can’t quite get my head around that.) Then, I think: What if I don’t show up next year and Elsa, Ulya, Charlotte, Zuza, Amelia, Bodin, Rav, Baby Zinnia and the others do, expecting…? The pique is gone, my head is clear. They’re all the thanks I require.

© 2013 Robert Knightly

Mystery Mavens: Quick Tips for Writers

Neophytes and seasoned writers alike occasionally troll for that trusty tome that will yield up esoteric secrets on How to Write - Edit - Sell the Perfect Crime Novel.

Most writers have favorite standbys: Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (the original beloved "little book" of 1919), Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron, Jack Bickham's 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, Writing the Thriller by T. Macdonald Skillman, You can Write a Mystery by Gillian Roberts, The Sell Your Novel Toolkit by Elizabeth Lyon, or Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

A wise man said once, "When you're looking for wisdom, go to every tent in the bazaar."

In 1993 Eleanor Hyde, Ruth Furie, Herma Werner, Jean Fiedler, Eva C. Schegulla and the Midlantic Sisters in Crime produced six pocket-sized gems called "Quick Tips for Writers", the SinC's version of a "parvum opus."

• 39 Steps to Self Editing
• How to Plot a Mystery
• Building Suspense
• Narrative Style
• Clues to Good Character
• Murder She Said - Dialogue Do's and Don'ts

Assistant editors and contributors included many well-known members of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America: Marilyn Henderson, Ronnie Klaskin, E.W. Count, Renee Gardner, Annette Meyers, Camilla Trinchieri, Mary Anne Kelly, Elaine Budd, Claire R. Jacobs, Carolyn Wheat, K. T. Anders, Marissa Piesman, Mickey Friedman, and Stephanie Matteson.

For your edification here are a few "rich deposits of gold" (a la Strunk and White) from this series:

Take out words that add nothing to the narrative. Example: "She sorted through papers, notebooks and folded drawings." Is it important that the drawings are folded? If not, take it out.

Don't fall so in love with your words that you can't part with them.

Avoid over-long chapters - shorter chapters help the plot to move quickly.

Accept the fact that the middle is often a hazy uncharted area that seems to be waiting for an inspired direction. When it comes - also called "mystical intervention" or, more prosaically, "as "the unconscious kicking in," the direction of the plot grows clear.

No matter how exciting your plot is, you need at least one additional subplot to provide texture, movement, and additional interest.

Sting endings to chapters are useful steps to keeping the suspense going. A sting ending is another way of saying that each chapter should end with a cliffhanger.

Open with a hook, the punch in the stomach that gets the reader's attention.

The reader also wants to discover truths about life and about how different segments of society function. Research your subject. Realism makes a book scarier.

Author intrusion and overwriting undermine suspense by slowing down the flow of the story. Keep your writing as tight as possible.

John Gardner likens fiction to a dream. It's your dream and you want the reader to enter it. You control the lighting as you reveal the landscape. That means choosing detail that reflects the characters and the states they are in. Your tools are the five senses.

Don't stop the narrative and toss in a shovel full of back story. Get out your eye dropper, instead, and insert bits the reader needs in small doses and in places where the information can slide in easily.

Give the protagonist human feelings and the villain virtues along with her vices.

Writing a villain often means tapping into your rage, your emotions.

The best way to learn how to write dialogue is to listen to conversations. Eavesdrop in restaurnats and elevators. Use the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Even if your character is an odious villain, she should be intriguing enough to make you want to ask her to lunch.

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

P.S. If you are interested in a copy of my set of these gems, email me at tstraw2@verizon.net

P.P.S. For a quick shot in the arm of writerly inspiration, review E.B. White's Introduction to The Elements of Style, Third Edition.

Full disclosure: Kate Gallison has put links to Amazon.com in this blog. If you buy any books through these links the Crime Writers will use their commission to get together and buy themselves a coffee.

Dare to Dream

DARE to DREAM with Jason Henry…

Building on a groundswell in the New York Chapter of MWA, as chronicled by our own beloved Annamaria Alfieri on the official MWA website, added to by comments of CWC members Sheila York, Thelma Straw and others, bonding with the brand new pristine white T-shirts worn to Deadly Ink this very week by members of Crime Writer's Chronicle, I present another member of the growing mystery community of conferences — Jason Henry, of Colorado Springs, the Director of the Pikes Peak Writers Conference for April 15-17, 2016!

DARE to DREAM is the appropriate title of this friendly gathering at the Colorado Springs Marriott.

In his welcome Jason writes… to each of us writers… "Dreams are the foundation of the world we live in… together, we'll Dare to Dream!"

You and I all started with our little dreams - some became huge and famous, some are still in the womb stages... all are wonderful… they are YOU and ME and all our writer friends and colleagues!

Welcome to Jason Henry!

Thelma Straw

P.S. I admit I have a fond memory re Colorado Springs, as I was privileged to direct their YWCA Camp one summer a zillion years ago ! God's country, that land!

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For me, being a writer is a relatively new idea in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the crazy notion didn’t occur to me until, roughly, seven years ago, and I only began taking it seriously in the last five. I suppose there are many reasons why I was a late literary bloomer, but I don’t think those excuses are overly relevant.

I made it.

I’m here.

You see, having been born into small town, Ohio, my horizons as a youngster didn’t appear to be very broad. I was faced with a future as a farmer, a factory worker, or, if my beloved grandmother had her way, I would grow to become a preacher. (Sorry, Grandma. I am an epic fail with that one!) Despite my hometown, I, like all kids, still had fanciful dreams. You know, the usual; a lion tamer, a snake charmer, or Batman.

At the age of nine, I became an Army brat. I was whisked away from Ohio and moved from one location to the next as my step-father’s job dictated. With every move, my horizons broadened and my dreams grew. The world was a much bigger place than small town, Ohio would have me believe. As my view of the world expanded, so did the scope of my dreams.

Of all my youthful fantasies, the grandest was that of being a rock star. And I chased that dream. I grew to become a singer and a guitar player. I was the front man for a couple of bands and, believe it or not, got really close to finding success. Then, the ugly side of the industry bared its fangs and I walked away. In fact, I pretty much ran right back to small town, Ohio and settled into the life of a factory worker. I did well for myself, working my way up to management at a young age, but there was always a void. I was perpetually miserable as I tried to narrow my views and squeeze into a box that was far too small for who I had become. I didn’t fit into the mold of the American dream. A corner house with a white picket fence, a dog, a cat, a wife, and 2.5 kids was too conventional for me. The more I tried to be that person, the more unhappy I became.

Then I began writing. Not song lyrics this time, but stories. Suddenly, I had dreams again. I had aspirations and my love for life was renewed. I was bitten so hard by the writing bug that I was looking for every possible way to scratch the itch. While my creative soul set its heart on being a writer, the rest of me knew I had to return to a place I had fallen in love with. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

One day, I did just that. I dropped everything and decided to start anew in the shade of Pikes Peak. It didn’t take long to find out that my heart was a very efficient tour guide. I found myself joining a little writing group on Thursday nights. Through that group I discovered Pikes Peak Writers and made the best decision I’ve ever made; I got involved with the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. In April of 2016, I will attend my fourth conference. However, I won’t be there as just an attendee. I also have the incredible honor of being the Conference Director.

If you were to go back in time and visit that small town boy, he would tell you that he loved books, that he preferred to read over watching TV, and that (even at a young age) Edgar Allen Poe was his favorite author. However, he would not say that he dreamed of writing a novel, or directing a writer’s conference. Regardless, I am glad that my journey took me in this unexpected direction.

I wish I could answer why I was chosen as the Conference Director. I can say that Pikes Peak Writers Conference has a near twenty-five year tradition of being one of the best and friendliest writer’s conferences in the United States. That tradition was built by people who are passionate about writing, about preserving a place in this world for literature. They are a group dedicated to educating and encouraging writers of all backgrounds and abilities. At every conference, Pikes Peak Writers bringsin some of the best and most successful authors who have already found theirplaces on the bookshelves and introduces them to writers who are striving tojoin them. We do not discriminate, we do not judge. We offer something forevery palate. Each year Pikes Peak Writers looks for new ideas, new energy, andways to keep their conference fresh, current and engaging. Perhaps that’s why Iwas chosen this year. A new face who shares the passion that Pikes Peak Writershas displayed for so long.

I can’t predict my future as a writer. I would like to believe that there is a place on the bookshelves for a cover displaying my name. I want to think that, in the near future, I can completely erase the doubts of a small town boy with narrow horizons and live my dream. I want to find my place in this world as an author, as someone who believes in the beauty of words, of stories, of the imagination. I want to take a copy of my novel and personally deliver it to that small town library back home, thereby proving to everyone that, as long as you dare to dream it, it can happen. No matter your predispositions. That is my overall goal, the legacy I wish to leave in my absence. I want to inspire people to step out of their presumed, preassigned destinies and have the courage to follow their hearts.

As director for the 2016 Pikes Peak Writers Conference, I want to uphold the tradition of encouraging others to pursue their dreams, to let go of their inhibitions and put words onto paper. That is why Pikes Peak Writers feels like home for me. They are family. They don’t just get behind me, they walk with me and continuously tell me that I can. They provide the workshops that teach necessary skills, but that isn’t all. I learn about the life of a writer, about the ever-changing world of publishing, aboutthe inclusion and necessity of a social media presence, and so much more. But,the most important thing I have learned from my involvement with Pikes Peak Writers is that I am not alone. There are so many other amazing writers who are on this journey with me. No matter what stage of the adventure they are on, they turn around and look for me, grab my hand, and pull me forward. They lead me toward the realization of my dreams.

As Director,I would love for everyone to join me in April of 2016. However, no matter what you decide, I hope that you will understand the beauty and importance of what you are doing as a writer. It’s more than the money. It’s more than the notoriety. It’s even more than an ISPN number and a place on a bookstore shelf. Writing is about evolving. We have the ability to prove to children everywhere, including small town Ohio, that the world is much bigger than what they see when they open their eyes. As long as they open their minds, look to that horizon line and run toward the edge of the world, there are no limits to where they can go.

As long as we Dare To Dream, there is indeed hope.

Jason P. Henry
Conference Director
2016 Pikes Peak Writers Conference

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When he's not working with the dedicated and passionate people of Pikes Peak Writers, Jason P. Henry is lost in a world of serial killers, psychopaths, and other unsavory folks. Ask him what he is thinking, but only at your own risk. More often than not he is plotting a murder, considering the next victim, or twisting seemingly innocent things into dark and demented ideas. A Suspense, Thriller and Horror writer with a dark, twisted sense of humor, Jason strives to make people squirm, cringe, and laugh. He loves to offer a smile, but is quick to leave you wondering what lies behind it. Jason P. Henry is best summed up by the great philosopher Eminem “I'm friends with the monsters beside of my bed, get along with the voices inside of my head.” Learn more about Jason at www.jasonphenry.com.

Reunion II: Old Men Packing Heat

That night – three or four biannual-reunions ago – Louie, our ex-partner, showed his face after being let out of the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, having served nine years for Drug Conspiracy. I was talking to my other partner, John ‘Super Cop’, when I spotted Louie. I was delighted; I hadn’t seen him for awhile for obvious reasons. “Hey, there’s Louie!” I said. “I won’t talk to the fuck,” John responded, in that old familiar tone – cold and dead as a tombstone – the one he’d used on the ‘perps’ in the street in the good old days.

I look across the cavernous hall, past the line of aluminum chafing pans full of the usual steaming Ziti Parmigian, Chicken Fransesse, fish-in-a-white-sauce, limp iceberg lettuce salad with flagons of creamy Italian, next to mounds of fresh Italian loaves – lined end to end on the long Bingo folding tables like silver birds in single file about to take flight. I see Louie is surrounded by old cops pumping his hand, touching, laying hands on him in that way men, genuinely moved by emotion, will do, while ever alert to the dangers of losing control.

The glad-handing cops know of the drugs and Louie’s bit in federal jail, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is our shared past on the streets where it counted. Louie had your back; testified to the truth of any cover-your-ass story events required you to tell in Court or to the Bosses; and never, ever ratted you out to the IAB Secret Police (except in John Super Cop’s case, of course, but we’re a forgiving lot). Race never mattered. It was You, the Cops, black or white, against Them, the Criminals, always black or Hispanic, on the streets and in the houses of Bushwick, where some of us died by ambush.

On July 13, 1977, the lights went out, plunging all of New York City into darkness. The worst of the subsequent riots, looting, arson occurred that night and the following day. Bushwick and adjacent Bedford-Stuyvesant bore its brunt. Many of the stores, on both sides of Broadway, the main commercial artery that divided the 83rd and 81st Precincts, were looted, then set afire, over a two-mile-long swath. I was there as was John and Louie and the rest of us. For the first 12 hours, we were ordered by Police Headquarters to make no arrests for fear the station houses would be overwhelmed by the numbers. Every cop in the City had been ordered to report to his Command. Many neglected to put on the uniform; instead, commandeering buses to ride to the scene, armed with nightsticks and baseball bats. We had orders to stop the looters, the arsonists. And we did. We struck them down on the spot, laid them out at the scene of their crimes.

All that night, the flickering flames put me in mind of that scene in ‘Gone With the Wind’, the Burning of Atlanta. Only cops, firemen and looters were abroad on the streets. By dawn, we were allowed to make arrests. The riot had lasted a night and a day. By its end, the 133 prisoners who wouldn’t fit in the 83 Precinct’s cellblock were penned in a gated courtyard outside the station house. Later, the Borough Chief in charge of Brooklyn North boasted that no cop had fired his weapon during the riot. Willie ‘S’ of the Eight-Three demurred, “Where the fuck was he, Hawaii?” Perhaps. the Chief was misled by the presence on Brooklyn Streets for days after of men with bandaged heads suggestive of an invasion of turbaned Sikhs. The final tally for the Blackout Riots throughout the City: 1,037 fires, 1616 looted stores, 3,776 arrests, the worst riot in the City’s history.

In 2003, the journalist, Jonathan Mahler, came to our Reunion to research his non-fiction book, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), A Profile of the Year 1977. He included our stories of that Night and a Day. I forget if Louie was there to tell his, or John. I like to think that next Reunion – if Louie shows up again and John, who never misses – they will forget the bad old past, sit down to break Italian bread together and remember the Good Times.

Robert Knightly

Part one of this story

Reunions: You Can’t Go Back Again (Because ‘There’ Is Gone)

You hear about people going to Reunions: high school, college, family, war vets, et cetera. Well, not me. For example, my high school, St. Augustine’s Diocesan on Sterling Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was already out of business when the passenger jet made an unscheduled crash landing on its doorstep in the late 1960’s, erasing all prospect of reunions. No matter, I wouldn’t have been attending anyhow. As for St. John’s University College, whose ‘campus’ was in a seven-story former bank building on Schermerhorn St. in Downtown Brooklyn --- it’s condos now and even if the doorman would let me in for old times’sake, I’d pass.

I spent all of 1956 and half of 1957 at St. Augustine’s as a transfer student, having come from a low-rent seminary that was supposed to prepare you to become a member of the Franciscan Order of Teaching Brothers. St. Anthony’s ‘Juniorate’ (odd name for a high school, right?), no doubt why we boys simply referred to it as ‘Smithtown’, located as it was in the Town of Smithtown on Long Island, among the potato fields of Suffolk County. My short story: I got kicked out after two years, told I was mistaken in thinking I had a ‘vocation’ (I won’t bore you with my sins). So how’d I get there in the first place? Well, you’re graduating from eighth grade in St. Anthony of Padua grammar school (same ‘St. Anthony’, no coincidence); you’re twelve years old and, since the age of five-and-one-half, been shuttled from the school to the looming red brick Church next door when the steeple bells summoned us to prayer. There, all us boys, in our dark-blue worsted trousers, white shirt and clip-on black tie, have been kneeling for all eternity on the hard wood kneelers in the pews in the Lower (basement) Church, interminably humming the five Decades of the Rosary amidst the fourteen Stations of the Cross, as the priest parades up and down the marble-floored aisles spewing swirls of sweet smoke from his incense-burner. No surprise then: After the Good Franciscan Brother reveals to our class that some among us may be ‘called’, on Easter Sunday, at Mass in the Upper Church, drunk on incense fumes, I actually see God point a long index finger at me through the fog, and over the swell of the organ while the choir pounds out the Hallelujah Chorus, I hear Him say to me, clear as a bell: “You! You! Pack your bags!” Upon graduation in February, 1954, I boarded the LIRR, Ronkonkoma Branch, with my ticket punched for Smithtown.

One recent Sunday, in the grip of an irresistible impulse to see Smithtown once more, I get on the LIE and head for the North Shore of Long Island. To get to the school, you must drive through the hamlet of Kings Park, once home to the Kings Park Psychiatric Center, which I see from my car on Route 25A, is still there, sprawling on top of a hill but empty, decommissioned. And I remember then being aboard the ancient yellow school bus, the name ‘St. Anthony’s’ painted in black on its sides--captive boys being taken to the movies in Kings Park on a Sunday afternoon more than half-a-century ago – the hospital full of life, the inmates hooting and hollering to us from their barred windows as we speed past. It’s a high point of the trip, riding past the Looney Bin: a happy feeling, I remember, as if them up there and us in our bus were connected.

No more acres of potato fields as far as the eye could see along Rte. 25A now – replaced by row upon row of suburban tracts, Divisions and Sub-Divisions.

I drive onto the grounds of St. Anthony’s. It is not a functioning school, it’s obvious.

There are some broken windows in the elongated two-story structure, and the white paint is peeling. I think of Iroquois Longhouses, I suppose because of the stretch of the building. I get out of the car and what strikes me is how small-scale everything appears: the buildings, the playing fields behind the main house, the grass badly in need of cutting. The chicken coops are gone as well as the fenced-in execution ground where I beheaded and plucked my first chicken for the Sunday dinner, on orders from the Brother in charge of the Refectory. Everything smaller than I remember it. For it’s vivid, larger-than-life in my memory. Jerome Megna, the pool shark; Joe Rogus, the polio-stricken basketball star; Bill Cullen, the gay librarian from Brooklyn and my best friend; the school’s principal Brother Henry, vain about his PhD in history; Brother Patrick “The Claw’, who taught Latin, had a crippled left hand and the DTs from drink; Brother Linus, the math teacher, who’d feel you up if you weren’t fast on your feet. I swear I remember them all, the faces and their names.

I even remember the movie we saw that Sunday in Kings Park in 1954. The Bridges At Toko-Ri; William Holden, Grace Kelly and Mickey Rooney starring. I wrote the movie review for the school paper, The St. Anthony Star.

Funny how it all stays with you. The important stuff.

Robert Knightly

Reading to Diana

When my phone rang some weeks ago and I heard my friend, Diana, say, “I was just thinking of all those books and articles about apartheid you read to me,” I knew Nelson Mandela had died. I read the books to her because she is blind and it seemed to take forever for some titles to make it onto Library for the Blind cassettes.

But it was Diana who made apartheid something more than a problem that happened “over there” or the foreign policy concern that the Reagan administration met with “constructive engagement.” I read Donald Woods’ Biko and Asking for Trouble because she suggested them. I read Joseph Lelyveld’s Move Your Shadow and Breyten Breytenbach’s The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist to her because I could get my hands on them quickly. We also worked our way through articles about other movement figures like Joe Slovo and Ruth First. It made the horror more personal somehow and I remember our shared sadness when Donald Woods died.

For a number of years Diana and I lived next door to each other at Coles House and we clicked in the way that only readers can when we discovered a mutual love of all sorts of books. We started our shared reading with Gary Kinder’s Victim: The Other Side of Murder which, as its title suggests, looks at long term effects of a crime on victims and their families. The book was horrifying but very well written and I discovered how wonderful reading to someone could be. Rather than just recommending a book to a friend, I could read it to her and we could enjoy it at the same time. It was fabulous.

We had a weekly Sunday reading ritual that centered on the Sunday New York Times. We would skip the formal Coles House breakfast and Diana would bring back the paper, 4 large coffees and 4 donuts. Fueled on caffeine and sugar we began our reading in high spirits no matter how bad the news. We lingered over the Book Review, the Magazine and any especially unusual obituaries.

At Christmas time, the reading of the New York Times included a close perusal of the The Neediest Cases, an appeal to Times’ readers to give money to a number of social service agencies that supported vulnerable populations within the city. Today the profiles of families appear on a daily basis and there is a photograph of the family and the accompanying story suggests that no matter how deeply needy these people might be, there is hope that their lot will improve.

This is an honorable approach, but years ago, the neediest cases were presented in somewhat starker fashion. There was a whole section of the paper devoted to the needy. Illustrations were black and white pen and ink drawings and the stories that accompanied them were Dickensian in both detail and misery. I don’t remember if the writing was good or tinged with purple but the stories were amazingly compelling. Diana and I were riveted to every word.

Diana and I each left Coles House and, for a time, lived on separate floors of the same apartment building. So we continued The Times readings and I would read her things as they struck my fancy. It was at another Christmas that I read A Prayer for Owen Meany. As you will recall, it has a compelling opening line:

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

I will confess that I usually avoid novels with religious themes but I loved that line and shared it immediately with Diana. Though I do little acting when I read, this book did compel me to come up with an Owen Meany voice, which I can still produce though years have passed. I didn’t read the whole novel to Diana but I read her large sections and we enjoyed his comments about Christmas carols (“‘Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying. VERY Christmasy’”), his defense of Liberace (“‘Well, he was very good to George’”) and his portrayal of the Ghost of Christmas Future—a performance so chilling that one of his classmates wets her pants. It’s not a book that either of us can read every year—the ending is very sad. But we remember that reading as a kind of milestone of our friendship and always talk about it at Christmas time.

Diana and live about 15 minutes from each other now. I still read to her occasionally but certainly not as much as I once did. Modern technology gives her many different ways to find the books she wants. But the intimacy of reading aloud has given our friendship a sort of literary history that no technology can replace.

© 2013 Stephanie Patterson

Reflections on the Crime Story

I met Mike Welch in Marion Roach Smith’s Memoir class at the Troy Arts Center. He’s well on his way to finishing his, which, I bet, will give James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan a run for the money; Mike is that good. I thought it might be refreshing to hear a ‘literary’ writer’s take on what makes good crime fiction tick.

Mike Welch lives and writes in Albany, NY. He regrets that the adjective "aspiring" must modify the word writer, for him, at this time. He grew up on Long Island, and attended SUNY schools at both Binghamton and Albany. He received a Masters in English Literature from Albany in 1997. It proved so useful that he now works for the State of NY, in a well-paying but basically soul-destroying job. Writing, he says, keeps him sane.

Robert Knightly

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Consider this bit of idiocy from that French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau:

Men in a state of nature do not know good and evil, but their independence, along with "the peacefulness of their passions, and their ignorance of vice", keep them from doing ill (A Discourse..., 71-73).

What a crock. Anyone who went to the Catholic School I did knows that human nature is a wildly psychedelic mural of the seven sins, both deadly and cardinal. The kids at St Francis de Sales were a collection of sociopathic misfits destined for lives as hitmen or, even worse, financial advisers, and the nuns, well the nuns were even worse. Anyone with a history of intimate contact with nuns (well, not intimate in that one sense you are thinking of, but you know what I mean) has the scars, both physical and psychological, to prove this. And when was man ever not social? I mean, even Spock had to mate every seven years, and those pyramids and Stonehenge did not get built by some solitary guy with peaceful passions and an ignorance of vice. Sure, when the ball game is on you don't really feel like talking, and unless you are a chick, you don't need company to go to the bathroom, but surely we must have always had to band together to fend off lions and tigers and bears, and that other pack animal, the wolf. Sure, now these creatures are no real threat, unless undercooked, but there are Papparazzi. Yes, we band together around the fire and peer into the darkness hoping not to see a pair of eyes staring back at us. It's like the running of the Bulls in Pamplona—you do it with a bunch of other dopes in the hopes that someone else will be the sorry bastard that gets gored.

OK, so what does this have to do with crime fiction?

Well, crime fiction, like all literature, is partly an exploration of human nature. Freud was a guy who knew about human nature. It's at odds with civilization, to be sure. We are a bunch of murderous, proud, lusful, coveting, takers of the Lord's name in vain, and he knew it. And you know it too. And most of all, crime fiction writers know it.

That's right. Crime fiction writers. We're fascinated with the guy who goes beyond the pale, who goes off the reservation, and yet we want to be protected from him, too. We experience this conflict vicariously through crime fiction. It is these two opposed desires—let's say the golden rule and the rule of fang and claw—that form the basis for the suspense in crime fiction. Will Raskalnikov get away with it. Will Macbeth? Will Tony Soprano get whacked?

And this tension exists within the characters themselves. Walter White, in Breaking Bad, tells himself he is doing it all for his family, and yet, in the last episode, he tells his wife, finally, "OK, I did it for myself. It made me feel alive." Al Pacino, in the Godfather III, says "I try to get out, but they pull me back in." Is that true, Al, or is it your own corrupt nature, or just human nature, that does this? And we form different societies that call for our allegiance, and these groups conflict with each other. The Yakuza, the Medellin Cartel, the Mob, the IRA, the Hell's Angels, all these groups call at once for strict adherence to their codes as well as flagrant transgression of the code of the larger society within which each one exists.

And what of the family? There is some Tobias Wolf story where a kid gets lost in the workings of a drawbridge. The drawbridge keeper (is there a name for a guy who raises and lowers the drawbridge, a weird name like collier, who performs a job I can never remember) can keep the drawbridge down and let the oncoming boat crash, killing all aboard, and go search for the kid, who will surely be crushed by the gears, the mill of justice grinding exceedingly fine indeed, if he does not. If you're like me, and like most people, no matter what kind of citizen you are, you're a better sibling or parent. And you let the boat crash.

So, all the cops are criminals, and all the sinners saints. And the trend in crime fiction, I think as a layperson, one who has never written a crime novel and who has read too few of them, is towards the transgressive hero. The anti-hero. No, anti-hero is too mild. Perhaps the super anti-hero. Hannibal Lecter is a cannibal, for god's sake, and eating people is the most anti-social thing you can do, worse than farting in a crowded elevator, or taking twelve items on the 10 item check out line at the supermarket. And yet he is charming, and urbane, and hates those who have bad manners, manners, which, in some sense, are the ultimate kind of consideration for others. And yes, Michael Chiklis, on The Shield, truly starts to resemble those he is supposed to be pursuing (be careful when hunting monsters, lest you become one).

And the ultimate punishment for these guys, I think, is their isolation. Even if they do not get caught. You can't rest peacefully in the bosom of society if you have violated it. No, you suffer from isolation and guilt and the fear that the other guy may be as without principle as you. At the end of the series, Tony Soprano has already killed his cousin and nephew, and has considered chopping up his best friend and throwing him over the side of a fishing boat. Walter White has let the girlfriend of his spiritual son drown in her own vomit as he stood by.

And yet both men love their families and have moments of great compassion. Both are ruthless and yet capable of kindness and generosity. EM Forster talked of flat and round characters—with the round ones being more fully developed, and capable of contradiction. Both these are certainly so. As is Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon, but he sees the line and does not cross it. Surely some of his detecting methods are extra-legal, and yet, when faced with choosing between a beautiful woman and avenging the partner he never liked in the first place, he chooses the partner: "When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it." Spade, I would argue, is an old style hard-boiled detective, one who doesn't go over the line (like Michael Chiklis does in The Shield).

And so, this is what I would ask of crime fiction—give me characters that stand on the bleak and windswept borderland between society and lawlessness, right at the pale we all wish sometimes to go beyond, and make him conflicted enough about what to do to hesitate before he decides which side he or she wants to be on.

© 2013 Mike Welch

Inside Santa Claus

This is my thirty-seventh year of dressing up and going on stage as Santa Claus and I still get performance anxiety. You’d think I’d be beyond such a thing by now? No way: those expectant little faces that turn to me and fix me with their unselfconscious stares give me pause until I bounce through the doorway and shout in my deep Santa baritone: “Children, children, where are the children???”

Of course, I am in my red velvet, white fur-trimmed jacket, pantaloons, and droopy cap with a jingle bell on the end, my own salt-and-pepper beard (more salt now) having been allowed to grow long, carrying a green laundry bag stuffed with small items: a paper fan in a gauze bag for girls, a kaleidoscope for boys, and sex-neutral games that included tens of thousands in fake money (a big hit). The too big cap used to slip down over my eyes ruining many a mom’s picture of her child on my knee, until my wife cured the problem with a safety pin. Mine is no chintzy, off the rack Santa suit; I paid a C-note for it at an exclusive Santa Claus emporium in the West 20s on the edge of Manhattan’s Garment District in 1989, the year I went to work for The Legal Aid Society of NYC. I was expecting to encounter a more demanding audience among the lawyers and their children than the cops I’d just left. Not to worry: same kids. The store where I bought the suit threw in a nice pair of black plastic simulated-boots that covered the tops of my shoes to complete my accessories.

Perhaps, my Great Impersonation is coming to an end. In past years, besides Legal Aid, I’d go on at my wife’s family’s Christmas Party in Springfield, Mass. She’s a Smith, one of twelve, all living and propagating. There’d be several generations at the party, 60 to 70 easily, at least 15 to 20 children of an impressionable age: meaning I could con them into believing I was the real thing. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so; children need their imaginations fed by the likes of me, not video games. What could be wrong with a gang of small children, after my departure from the home, running from windows facing east to windows facing west, looking for reindeer, one of them yelling: “I see them! I see them!”?

When I enter a room full of children, I don’t walk like an ordinary man. I bound; I scuttle; I walk bowlegged like Quasimodo, all the while calling the children to me, my outstretched fingers making come-hither motions, HO! HO! HO! HO! all the way. After all, I am not just anybody.

That’s how I burst upon the scene of my Neighborhood Association’s Christmas Party last Thursday evening at the University Club in Downtown Albany. I head to the chair in the corner of the room and they make a beeline for me. The best is when a 4-year-old runs, arms outstretched and leaps into my arms. Iula goes on one knee and her sister Lily goes on the other and I gather to me as many as I can. Mothers’ cameras get busy, but at this moment the children are my captive audience, awaiting The Word. I say it : “You are a GOOD boy/girl” This they need to hear off the bat: reassurance to their anxious little selves. Next, Lily, Iula, Razi, Kimberly, Julie, Jennifer, Scott, Tom, John, Zvi (and all the others whose names I can’t remember but whose faces are unforgettable) tell me their names. Then I ask and they answer in close-up whispering what present they want Santa to bring on Christmas Eve. Often, I can’t make out what their little voices are saying but no matter. I advise all that they must tell their mommies what they just told me: that’s the Chain of Command.

Sometimes children don’t want to get off my knee, like 4-year-old Iula who asked me to sing, and without pause, began herself to sing ‘Jingle Bells’. Her sister, Lily, age 6, on my other knee, joined in as I did. Next, a chorus or two of ‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’, then the mother took pity and reclaimed the Singing Sisters. I notice one small boy circling us, keeping his distance. I address him directly: “You! Yes, You! C’mere!” His name is Zvi. After I mispronounce it multiple times, he tells me it’s Hebrew and the last time I said it was close enough. He’s six. I give him the pinball game containing the wad of fake money (for betting, I presume) and tell him it’s a Hanukkah present from the Hanukkah Santa Claus. He seems satisfied. As I make my exit, I notice Zvi playing with the others on the hardwood floor, wads of play money scattered about their knees.

Robert Knightly

And Another One Rides the Bus

Join me once again for a ride home from work…

Angela got on the bus as she did on most Thursday nights. She was usually pretty lively and fueled by whatever she’d had to drink that night. Sometimes she would sit across the aisle from me. Eventually she would lean toward me.

“I’ve just had a cocktail.” She would say the last word with such crispness that she seemed to snap it in two.

I would smile and she would confide. I remember little about her except that she worked at a hair salon.

This particular night she said nothing when she got on the bus and did not make eye contact. I greeted her and she nodded her head. Our bus driver, Bradley, a very voluble guy, didn’t notice anything as he was in the midst of a story about his life.

If something newsworthy happened—I remember a discussion about Columbine—he would offer opinions about that. However, Bradley’s favorite topics were himself and his apartment. He talked about decor, china patterns, carpets and drapes.

I am counterdomestic. Show me a swatch of material or a wallpaper sample and my eyes glaze over. The word armoire makes me sleepy. Etagere? I snore.

Bradley, enraptured by the vision of domestic comfort he was painting, failed to notice that his audience was silent. Even I, who have turned “Ummm” into a sound rich in meaning and nuance, felt unable to rise to the occasion.

I glanced at Angela. She looked enraged. As we were getting to her stop, Angela got shakily to her feet.

“BRADLEY!” she yelled. You talk about your rugs and your drapes and your china pattern and your Waterford crystal. You know somethin’? Nobody gives a [insert the expletive of your choice]”

Say amen, somebody!

I looked at Bradley. His eyes were wide and his face was as red as if he’d been slapped. Angela was already down the bus stairs and walking down the street.

Bradley’s features were crumpled up. He was shaking a little and his eyes were wet.

I am a firm believer that people piloting vehicles on the White Horse Pike should be in a state of focused serenity.

“Oh, Bradley. She was drunk,” I said. “When you see her next week she won’t remember it.”

He looked slightly calmer.

“She certainly didn’t mean it.” I lied in my warmest and most sincere voice.

He brightened, sniffed, and returned to being capable of driving safely.

The next Thursday Angela practically bounced onto the bus. We greeted each other. She had had a cocktail (or two).

Bradley said nothing. Angela and I chatted for a few minutes. Then Angela leaned toward Bradley.

“What’s the matter, Bradley? Cat got your tongue? What happened about those drapes you were gonna buy?”

© 2013 Stephanie Patterson

Reunion III: All’s Well That Ends

My third biannual reunion with the cops with whom I’d patrolled the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn, in the 1970’s was held in the VFW hall (as always) in Valley Stream, Long Island late last September. I’ve always thought it odd that Brooklyn cops had to travel to Nassau County to get together; then I remembered again it’s because most of them still live out there as they did back then, but now have no reason to go into Brooklyn, or anywhere in the City, for that matter. Truth is, the younger ones had no liking for the City in those crime-filled days and fled back to East Cupcake as soon as they’d finish their tour. But not so my partners, the hell-raisers of the 83 Precinct Conditions Car.

We weren’t young. All of us had more than eight years on The Job, having survived the layoff of 5,000 cops as the City teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in February, 1975. (Last On, First Off, the Rule). Consequently, we had no illusions about being indispensable or highly-valued by our masters. Truth is, we just loved the work. Of course, it was dangerous; some of us died from gunfire, from ambush. But being in our thirties, none of us yet forty, we knew in our hearts we were immortal, not about to die that day or any day.

No one, no Internal Affairs spies, were looking over our shoulders as we worked the streets. When a Precinct was dangerously high-crime, an “A” house--as the Eight-Three was in the mid-1970s—IAD (“shoeflies” we called them) tended to keep their distance. Dante had it right: When you served in hell, life was simpler.

Of course, all this happened almost forty years ago. Yet, their faces, the men I served with, are right there before me though some names will escape me. When I see them at the reunions, it all comes back, our history. As I work the room this night, I tread my way among several hundred guests till I sit down with Lou Hunter, who confides he has neuropathy in his hands and feet, that’s why he’s on a cane (as I am). No need to commiserate, instead we laugh about kicking looters’ asses on Broadway during the Blackout Riots, July 13, 1977. Dominic Bjelobrick (“B.J.”), our perennial PBA Delegate at the Eight-Three in the 1960s , 1970s and 1980s, admits to being 80-years-old. We assure him we can see it in his old wrinkled mug, although he stands as straight, solid as a brick shithouse still. Scandinavian genes.

I corral Mike (can’t recall last name) by the aluminum chafing pans lined up on folding Bingo tables at the back of the Hall. The food is always the same—several kinds of pasta in a sauce thick as red paint, sausage & peppers deliciously swimming in its greasy pool, fish-in-a-white sauce, mounds of fresh Italian loaves, but I’m not here for the menu. Mike was a Lieutenant in Public Morals after the Eight-Three, so I figured he might know somebody in Missing Persons who’d be willing to talk to the mystery author, Allison Gaylin, for her new novel. (She’d asked me and I said I knew somebody.)

“Bobby, I retired 23 years ago,” Mike said, “I know nobody who’s still there!” I inquired of other detectives I’d worked with. Same response. I could have asked the only woman I was introduced to, Cookie Kunkle, former Chief of the Narcotics Bureau, but by then I was too depressed, contemplating that I no longer had contacts on The Job. (Sorry, Allison.)

At long last, I came upon two of my partners from the Eight-Three Conditions Car, the kickingest-ass team that ever patrolled the mean streets of Borough Brooklyn North. As fate would have it, John Medina and Louie were at the same table with others from the Old Days, but not talking to one another. You should know this: that John and Louie were on the outs since Louie had lied about John to the FBI on the occasion of Louie’s being arrested as a member of a big-time drug-dealing gang in Bushwick and environs. Louie was retired from The Job at the time while John was a Detective Second Grade in the Eight-Three Squad. Louie was facing serious time in Federal prison that could only be reduced by his “cooperation” with the U.S Attorney, meaning: Rat out some higher-up, a criminal of significant stature. Louie swore to the Feds that John was dealing drugs. (A drug-gang-affiliated NYPD Detective qualified.) And so began a year-long investigation by the FBI and the Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau—a source of endless harassment and embarrassment to Det. John Medina. John had a chest-full of medals for bravery, a ‘Supercop’ in everyone’s estimation, far and away the best street cop I’d ever seen. I like to think that’s why Louie, in a moment of desperation, pointed a finger at John: Because he knew it would never be believed, never stick, in the end. It didn’t, and Louie went to a Federal pen for seven years.

So tonight we all are sitting at this round table with cake and coffee in front of us. Then some wag says, “Remember Troutman Street!” Everybody laughs and points at me.

John points at Louie and says: “You fired shots!” Louie says, “If I didn’t, that mob would have had your asses that night!” The truth. We were making an arrest for drug sales in a tenement hallway on Trautman St. when the guy, a Puerto Rican, resisted and I had to pound him into bloody submission with my heavy-duty 5-cell metal flashlight. As we left the hallway with my prisoner, we were confronted by an irate mob of his countrymen who were intent on his liberation. John, me and my handcuffed prisoner in tow made for the safe haven of a bodega directly across the street, while Louie, protecting our backs, emptied his service revolver in the air to scatter the crowd in front.
Once inside, John called a “10-13” (Officer Needs Assistance) on his portable radio, and within minutes the cavalry arrived to rescue us and restore order. We all had a good laugh, basking in the warm glow of our shared, ancient camaraderie.

The best part for me was to see them reconciled, Louie forgiven. TV, civilians don’t understand. Not all “rats” are equal. For a cop, the ultimate terror is jail; cops don’t jail well. The choice is often: “cooperate” or suicide. In the end, Louie did his time and was pardoned in the eyes of his comrades.

© 2014 Robert Knightly

Mike Welch Proceeds to Poland

Finally made it to Katowice, not Krakow. Don’t ask me how to pronounce the name of this place we are in. It has about as many people as Newark, 300,000. It’s an old mining town, trying to resurrect itself by turning to service. They host the European Handball Championships soon. Here in the hotel are the National Hockey teams of Poland, Norway, South Korea and someone else. They are having a tournament. Finally, I can get some laundry done. Had a good old traffic jam at a toll booth on the way here. Progress. I think we are here because it is near Warsaw, where we are going to a Chopin concert. I am ashamed to know so little history. I think I could point out Poland on a blank map, but I know I could not point out Warsaw of Krakow, much less Katowice. The hotel is very nice, and you can get a lot for your good old American dollar, translated into the local currency, which is the zloty.

People are uniformly white and pale here, and I don’t think I have seen any fat people. Maybe it is because the portions at the meals are so small. I wonder how many zloty they will charge me for the coke I took from the mini-bar. We go to a salt mine today, and a brewery. Took a walk through the city last night—it was freezing. Found a mall very much like American malls. And a McDonalds. And a Foot Locker. This is what they have decided to adopt from us? The TV has English channels BBC News and CNN. The internet connection sucks. Goes in and out.

Looking forward to the brewery tour. Don’t know what there is to see at a salt mine. Salt? The treadmill is weird, as the speed is measured in kilometers per hour. The chicken wings are only nominally so. This is port city, on the Baltic, I think. Or the Black or the Caspian. Who can remember? People in Poland seem more friendly than in Rome. They had unisex bathrooms in Rome. Met a mother and daughter from Vancouver in the Munich Airport. The boy of the family was in the world hip hop championships. I didn’t know people from Canada knew what hip hop was. She said she was dismayed to see how America lets religion infect politics. I pointed out the George Bush took his marching orders directly from God, who was in the habit of calling him on the red phone. I wonder what the Pope thinks about that. The people in Rome were just wild about him. I told him, when he held a personal audience for me, to allow women to be priests, so my mother would stop carping about it.

Day 9

Walked all around Katowice on a big tour. Our tour guide, Matteus, was saintly in his patience. My friend David kept asking him dumb questions, over and over. Believe me, there is such a thing as a dumb question. Or an irrelevant one. Or weird. Or all three. David is the same guy who objected to a clerk at the Vatican touching his post cards and getting thumbprints on them. That guy Don seems to have echolalia. He repeats everything the guide says, and then asks him if he has gotten in right. I’ve got only one English channel on the TV, BBC News, and boy is it depressing. Katowice is in Upper Silesia. Silesians, at least some, see themselves as separate from Poland, ethnically, culturally and even linguistically, and have a history of being taken advantage of, bullied, by the authorities, kind of like Poland itself has been bullied by Germany on the West and Russia on the East.

Matteus (no matter how many times he tells David how to say it, David butchers it) explained the difference between the Russians and the Prussians by saying the former drank vodka and didn’t like to work and the latter drank beer and did like to. We went to the old village where the coal miners lived. It looked bleak and Dickensian, sooty dark brick, filthy, depressing. Matteus says there is a mixture there of the poor and young artists trying to make their marks there, those with lives ahead of them, and those who feel like they never had one to begin with, maybe like Greenwich Village.

Two little kids, a toddler and his three or four year old sister, came to a window to stare at us. Anne, she of the Israeli husband, went to take a picture. I told her the mother of the filthy kids might not want to be the subject of a National Geographic documentary. The kids looked terrified and yet wild to make contact with something more than the grinding monotony of their poverty, or maybe their TV was just broken.

Street art, Katowice

© 2015 Mike Welch

Jennie Bentley/Bente Gallagher

Bente Gallagher is the author of A Cutthroat Business, first in the Savannah Martin mysteries, from PublishingWorks, as well as the bestselling Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime, written as Jennie Bentley. A former Realtor® and home renovator, she lives in Nashville, TN, with a husband and two boys, a hyper-active dog, a killer parakeet, two African dwarf frogs and a couple of goldfish. A native of Norway, she’s spent the past twenty years in the US, and still hasn’t managed to kick her native accent.

A Book by Any Other Name 

First off, thanks to Kate for inviting me to submit a guest blog here on the Crime Writers' Chronicle. It’s quite an honor, being asked to help kick off the first few months of a new writers' blog. Almost like I’ve ‘arrived,’ huh?

So it’s a new year, and with it, I have a new book. It’s being released today, as a matter of fact. It’s the fourth in the Do-It-Yourself home renovation series from Berkley Prime Crime, about Avery Baker, former New York textile designer, and her boyfriend Derek Ellis, a handyman, who renovate houses in a small town called Waterfield on the coast of Maine. This latest installment is called Mortar and Murder, and Derek and Avery have taken on the renovation of a 1783 center chimney Colonial on Rowanberry Island, about thirty minutes away from Waterfield by boat.
I wanted to call the book Island Getaway. That seemed to me to be the perfect blend of cute and clever, yet it had a somewhat ominous ring to it, and it totally captured the essence of the book.

An island getaway, of course, is a retreat, or vacation, or relaxing time spent on an island away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. In Derek and Avery’s case, they are spending a few months commuting to the small island of Rowanberry to renovate the white elephant they’ve purchased; for a song, since no one else is crazy enough to take it on.

Things go from bad to worse when they come across the body of a young woman floating in the water between Rowanberry Island and the mainland. She isn’t dressed for April in Maine, with just a short sleeved T-shirt over her jeans, and neither socks nor shoes on her feet. It’s no surprise to discover that she died of hypothermia, possibly as a result of falling from a boat.

Avery is determined not to get involved in the case. It was a sad accident, nothing more or less; it’s none of her concern at all, or so she tells herself... until a slip of paper is dug out of the victim’s pocket, bearing Cyrillic writing. And not just any writing, but the name and address of Derek and Avery’s realtor, Irina Rozhdestvensky. When the dead girl turns out to be unidentifiable, when nobody knows who she is and no one has reported her missing, the ICE get involved, and soon Irina comes under suspicion for illegal immigration, murder, and human trafficking. Next thing she knows, Avery finds herself knee-deep in intrigue after all.

All of which brings us to the real island getaway: when a dense fog descends on the coast of Maine, halting all ferry traffic, Avery is stuck on Rowanberry Island with a murderer, and with no way off the island and back to the mainland until the fog lifts.

See why I thought Island Getaway was the perfect title?

But no, the powers that be didn't think Island Getaway was renovate-y enough, and we ended up with Mortar and Murder instead. That was my second suggestion, so I can't really complain that they're not using my titles, but I would have preferred to have kept Island Getaway.

The same thing happened with DIY-5, which is coming in October. Derek and Avery are participating in a television show, the basis of which is flipping—quickly renovating—a house in a week before putting it back on the market. The name of the book, as well as the name of the TV show in the book, was Flipping Out! I was very proud of it, as I thought it was the perfect title, especially considering that the villain of the book was acting a little crazy, as well.

But guess what? There’s a real TV show called Flipping Out, and I can’t use the title for the book. And now I’m the one flipping out, because I've lost my perfect title!  

Titles are such important things. They can say so much about a story before you even pick the book up. And the best ones make you realize, once you’ve read a little, that what you thought the title meant, isn’t necessarily what it meant. Or not only what it meant, anyway.

Take Faking It, by Jennifer Crusie. It’s about art forgery, but it’s also about... well, you get it. And Welcome to Temptation—Temptation is a town, but the title is also about... I’m sure you get that, too. Terry Pratchett’s Making Money is about—well—making money. As in, printing it. And making it. And making it work. And who could resist a book called Interesting Times?

I think a great title, like so many other things, is more than the sum of its parts. It conjures up more than just the words themselves, and it needs to work on several levels. The more levels it works on, the better it is.

So what are some of your favorite titles? And why?

--Bente Gallagher/Jennie Bentley