A cop, a Brit, a deb, a B-school grad, a guy with good hair, and a wisecracking lawyer wrestle with the naked truth about literature and life.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
A little Bit of Everything
I usually prepare my weekly post over the weekend then not worry about it the last few days before it goes up. I like to do that with any deadline. I can cram if I have to but I was taught “work first, play later.” I try to stick to it. This week was different. I went to the Marlins game Sunday, thinking I had an easy week ahead. I’m working on a novel proposal and kept on schedule to hand in the opening chapters to my agent the end of this week.
I put off the blog knowing I had an easy day today and then life jumped in. I ended up working until late Wednesday night. It happens and I kinda like the change. The night has a different beat to it than the day. It was a simple surveillance and arrest of an armed drug trafficker. He was stopped and taken into custody without incident. All was right except I had no blog written.
So here are some general remarks:
First, I was quite impressed by the shirtless photos of Paul from his younger days. It looked like Mr. Levine had time to work out as well as practice law and write novels. The mystery of Rene may now be solved.
Here is a photo of me from the sixties. It was the only shirtless one I could find.
I’d also like to give a hearty shout of congratulations to two nice guys who have their debut novels come out this week. In no order : Brett Battles who hits the streets with The Cleaner.
And Jason Pinter offers The Mark.
I’m looking forward to both.
How's that for a little different post from me? No whinning about my weight, the problems of writing or the dangers of living in beautiful Florida. I have one blog coming up I'm excited about posting but it is not ready. It's a photo heavy essay on people who annoy me. Not just the usuals like co-workers or neighbors but people I have no reason to dislike. Famous people who should be beaten but aren't.
Sometimes I get really walloped by depression--the nasty deep bone-crushing kind that makes the idea of brushing my own hair seem more daunting than a run for the South Pole with Shackleton.
The worst thing about it is that tiny things become huge--to-do lists, voicemail messages, sad personal stories heard on NPR in the car. Everything builds up into a great big pile of unmet obligations and deadline guilt until I wonder whether the answer might not be a giant IV of Geritol, like maybe that would snap me out of the desire to huddle on the sofa under a pile of blankets while berating myself with "I should go for a walk, I should take up swimmming laps, I should learn to conjugate irregular Portuguese verbs while simulataneously performing advanced tai chi and folding all this laundry, oh my GOD I never finished writing those last three wedding-present thank-you letters in 1988...."
I can go for weeks like that, and I always seem to forget what really helps stop it, every time: telling someone. Just saying out loud to a friend or two, "You know, I really feel like crap. I'm tired and beat and I don't think I'm too good at being a grownup. I am having trouble folding the laundry and brushing my hair, not necessarily at the same time, vey is mir."
And even though that can seem like the most awful selfish thing in the world to do, at the time, just saying it out loud helps cut things down to size. And if you're really lucky, your friend or two will say something like, "oh please, my mail gets dropped in my garage and I haven't looked at the pile since January," or "you actually know where your hairbrush is? You're way ahead of me. I think mine ran away with the circus around Thanksgiving..."
Last week I said to Patty in an email that I was feeling this way, and she told me something wonderful... that when she gets overwhelmed she thinks of Mary Harman saying:
“Everything's going to be all right, and afterward we're all going to go to the House of Pancakes.”
That's one of the finest spiritual truths I think I've ever run across. So if you're feeling bummed out and overwhelmed and your mail is piling up in the garage, here's a little something to meditate on, in the hope it will ease your burden:
And in the meantime, I want to know what you're going to say to James Lipton when you get invited to be a guest on Inside the Actor's Studio...
...so here are the ten questions Lipton's borrowed from French talk-show host Bernard Pivot:
1. What is your favorite word? 2. What is your least favorite word? 3. What turns you on [creatively, spiritually or emotionally]? 4. What turns you off? 5. What is your favorite curse word? 6. What sound or noise do you love? 7. What sound or noise do you hate? 8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? 9. What profession would you not like to do? 10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
As for me, I got interviewed by the ever-fabulous Sandra Parshall (author of the Best-First-Novel-Agatha-Award-winning The Heat of the Moon) over at Poe's Deadly Daughters today....
Political pundits have been caught off-guard by Dave Barry's surge in the public opinion polls in Chattsworth, CA. In case you didn't know, that burg is the home of America's porn industry, where thousands of adult videos are shot.
Dave's star status came to light at Erotica L.A., sort of the Super Bowl of porn. On Sunday, after a luncheon meeting of the Mystery Writers of America, we headed over to the Erotica Show. (Didn't everyone?) Our little party included the lovely Renee and our friend Ted Habte-Gabr, who also serves as Dave's national campaign chairman.
Perhaps Dave's popularity should not come as a shock. He has an honest message for the voters: "It's Time We Demanded Less." He has a clearly stated platform and always answers questions directly.
Q: Dave, a lot of people are concerned about "No Child Left Behind." Where do you stand? Ryan, La Grande, OR
A: I agree that no child should be left behind, except in the case of certain airplane flights.
Still, we were surprised, upon walking into the L.A. Convention Center, to see Dave's presence virtually everywhere.MANY YOUNG WOMEN SAID THEY WOULD FOREGO ATTEMPTING TO MODEL THEIR LIVES AFTER PARIS HILTON TO SUPPORT DAVE. "WE'LL VOTE FOR DAVE, AS SOON AS WE LEARN TO READ!"
TED HABTE-GABR GETS A WHIFF OF THE MOLTEN CHOCOLATE PENISES BEING MADE BY THIS TALENTED ARTISAN.
NO, IT'S NOT RUDY GIULIANI IN DRAG. JUST ANOTHER DAVE BARRY SUPPORTER, CHEST-OUT PROUD.
Clearly, the person who deserves the most credit for drumming up support for Dave is the lovely Renee. When she can't get cooperation from potential voters, well, she just takes things into her own hands. Here she is discussing the risk of inflation with Porn Star Jack Lawrence whose business card actually reads: "Don't let my big penis scare you. I'm actually a really nice guy." [While that may sound original, I think it was Bill Clinton's unofficial campaign slogan. Take note, Dave.] Nice Guy Jack says he's one of the stars of "Desperate House Whores," "Hairy Girls," and "We Be Lez." But you probably knew that.
Jack spent the entire afternoon inviting female patrons to fondle a life-size silicone model of his penis dangling from his pants. Did Renee take him up on the invitation? Only the guy who cropped the picture knows for sure. **********************************************************
IT'S SUMMER, AND THE ROSES ARE BLOOMING Our intellectually challenged dog Nikki helps out in the garden by fertilizing. ****************************************************************** WHY ARE THESE MEN LAUGHING? COMRADES IN ARMS (Left to Right) Bill Bryan, your naked scribbler Paul, John Schulian, and Ed Zuckerman, pictured here at Sunday's luncheon of the Mystery Writers of America, SoCal Chapter. We schmoozed with folks about the perils and rewards of working as writer/producers in network television.
Bill Bryan, whose first novel is the critically acclaimed Hollywood satire, "Keep It Real," is a comedy veteran, having written for "Coach," among many other shows. John Schulian, a famed sportswriter, has written for "Miami Vice," "Wiseguy," and "JAG" and co-created "Xena: Warrior Princess." Ed Zuckerman, a non-fiction author, won two Edgar awards for his "Law & Order" scripts. After a several year hiatus creating or running other shows, Ed is back on the original "Law & Order," now in its 117th year on television. Together, these guys have a ton of war stories and solid advice for entry level writers in the business. My own advice is much simpler: "Marry a blood relative of Les Moonves."
Many thanks to chapter poohbahs Les Klinger ("The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes") and our own Patty Smiley for putting the event together.
The world is going to hell in a handbasket, so more and more I wonder how that might change if our leaders were women not men. Alas, I need wonder no longer.
"If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it." —Bette Davis
***
"In search of my mother's garden I found my own." —Alice Walker ***
"For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide—laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course—it was striving against the stream." —Mary Wollstonecraft ***
"I've been called many things, but never an intellectual." —Tallulah Bankhead ***
"It is not true that life is one damn thing after another...it's the same damn thing over and over again." —Edna St. Vincent Millay ***
"The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything...or nothing. —Lady Astor ***
"The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends." —Shirley MacLaine ***
"I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever." —Isak Dinesen ***
"I wrote the story myself. It's all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it." —Mae West ***
"Always be smarter than the people who hire you." —Lena Horne ***
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." —Lily Tomlin ***
"Elegance is refusal." —Coco Chanel ***
"I'll not listen to reason...Reason always means what someone else has to say." —Elizabeth Gaskell ***
"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." —Margaret Mitchell ***
*** ANNOUNCEMENT ***
We NakedAuthors now have our very own OFFICIAL BOOKMARK and it is FABOOOOOO! The front is similar to our banner above except our mugs are in color. On the back is "A cop, a Brit, a deb, a B-school grad, and a wise-cracking lawyer wrestle with the NAKED TRUTH about literature and life." If you can't wait until you see one of us to get one for your very own, simply send a self-addressed stamped envelope to moi at:
Patricia Smiley Bookmark P.O. Box 642504 Los Angeles CA 90064-7172
You won't be sorry...
Happy Monday!
To forward this post, please click on the envelope icon below.
Funny old thing, when Friday comes around, and you think it’s still Thursday – heck, where did that day go? Did anyone see that day, I lost it somewhere this week? This is what happens when the rhythm of your days is changed, things get out of line. I’ve come to really relish days having a rhythm since I began spending so much time on book tours and other events, and also flying to the UK several times a year, because my parents are getting older and I worry about them (sorry, Mum, but you are getting older, and I worry, OK? And you know who I inherited the worrying habit from, so don’t nag me, please).
There’s something solid about rhythm to the day, like a grandfather clock with it’s slow, heavy tick-tocking in the corner. Here I go, from dawn to dusk, I’m the clock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Having that rhythm, that knowledge that this is the time you do this, or that, gives the day a beat, so that if the rhythm goes off a bit – the unexpected guests just as you are about to start writing – you know where to come back to. Sort of.
I have two basic rhythms to my life, aside from the frantic hiatus when I’m on and off ‘planes: The hot weather rhythm, and the rest of the year. Here’s how it goes. In those months when California is baking itself silly, like cake left in an unattended oven, after I’ve walked the dog and checked my email, I begin my day with my riding, otherwise it will get so bloody hot I won’t be able to think straight. That’ll take me up to around noon, when I have some lunch. By that stage I could eat the proverbial horse. Sometimes I am so hungry I cannot stop to even wash my hands first, and eat my sandwich with dusty fingers, grit under my nails. I don’t mind this at all, in fact, it reminds me of my childhood (this is where my mum is thinking, “Oh, great, now what’s she going to say?”).
When I was a child my mother worked on the local farms. It was a rural area, and if you had children, the only job you could really do was farmwork. So, like many country kids, that’s where I started work, and at a very early age, earning my first wage at six years old. Admittedly, for much of the time, the kids would go off to play in the woods, while the women worked. There was Gladys, and Willie - the Dutch girl who’d married a British solder and was now was as Kentish as the rest of us. Then there was Flo, and Mrs. Bridgeland, who’s first name I can’t remember, and a whole clutch of women who were strong from working on the land, and all of them with an earthy sense of humor to match.
In the school holidays we’d take our bikes and off we’d go to the farm. It always makes me laugh, to tell you the truth, when I see mountain bikers (and I am one), puffing away up hills with their super-multiple gear bikes with aluminum frames, or titanium, or whatever. Each of the women who went to work with my mother had a bike that was essentially a gearless old boneshaker, usually laden with at least one child, plus a big basket with food, flasks of tea and water for the day – and you never saw them stop on a hill, or slow down on the other side, because most of those bikes didn’t have brakes anyway. And when it came to sitting down to eat, you might be able to wash your hands in the stream first, but more likely, you just wolfed back that sandwich with your dusty hands and that was that. So, I guess that’s why I like working outdoors – takes me back to the country, and that rhythm.
On the hot days, after I’ve showered, washed away the sand and sweat of the ranch, I set about my writing, and that’s me, locked away for hours until a snoovering (that cross between a sniff and a Hoover that dogs are really good at) outside my office door reminds me that it’s time to take Sally for a walk. Sometimes she’s in the office with me, but whatever the case, she makes it known when it’s time to stop this work business and get out. And there I am, outdoors again, coming back an hour later, to work until dinner, then watch a movie or read in the evenings. In the cooler months, I change things around – writing first thing in the morning, ride in the afternoon, then more writing and reading. That’s my daily round, with a tweak here, a nip and tuck there to account for the emails, the trips to the post-office, the car to the shop, the dog to the vet, the vet to the horse, and all those things that make up an ordinary life, my ordinary life.
But in the past month, as you know, the riding has been taken out of the equation, and I have found myself missing more than just the horse, more than just the art and the sport of it. Because I cannot even groom Sara, though I visit her daily, I miss the light ache in my body that follows work outdoors (I’ve had plenty of pain, but it’s different). I miss the way my food tastes when I am ravenously hungry because I’ve used a lot of physical energy in the fresh air. And I guess I miss that really close connection to the natural world, to my rhythm, even though I live in a quite rural area, by some standards.
Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother when I was a child. Despite loving where I lived, loving that freedom I knew my cousins in London didn’t have, I had the travel bug. I wanted to go to every country in the world, However, one thing struck me at a particularly early age, and that was that the old people who lived in our small community – and all of our neighbors were old – seemed to be really wise, but not one had ever traveled. I doubt that any of them had even been to London, with the most ambitious expedition being a summer day out by the sea, twenty-odd miles away, and hour and a half on the bus. And we talked, my Mum and me, about the business of rhythm in life, that all these people saw the sun rise in the morning, and go down at night. They knew spring would follow winter, that summer would come, eventually, and that in autumn, the leaves would turn and we would marvel at their colors. They knew that there was a time to be born, a time to live, to love and a time to die, and that one would follow the other when it was supposed to. They had, most of them, seen tragedy, they had lived through wars, and took it all in their stride. Something to be said for that.
So that’s what I’ve been thinking about this morning.
Funny what you end up writing about, when you mislay a day because you’ve lost your rhythm. I was going to write about something completely different this week, a post based on the terrific show on BBC America, “The Trial of Tony Blair.” Set in 2010, the story covers events leading up to Tony Blair’s trial at an International War Crimes Tribunal, charged with the crimes associated with the invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent carnage. It was interesting, really interesting, alternatively comedic and raw, with the actor Robert Lindsay turning in a terrific performance as Blair. I guess, though, seeing as I didn’t write about that after all, it only needs to be said, as my Sally knows only too well, that every dog has its day. Something to do with rhythm.
I like to read. Novels, magazines, non-fiction, anything with words that even remotely interests me. I have subscriptions to Newsweek, The Palm Beach Post, four different computer magazines, Men’s Health, Florida Monthly, Runner’s World and Popular Science.
Aside from some of my favorite novels like Patty’s forth coming Short Change, Paul’s Deep Blue Alibi, Cornelia’s Field of Darkness and Jackie’s Messenger of Truth (Sorry have to plug my blogmates whenever possible), I like to read about writing.
It’s funny but I never read much about writing when I was learning through trial and error, but since my first published novel, I have made up for that lack of reading with a vengeance. I read everything related to the craft of writing and even a few books on the publishing industry. I enjoy seeing other people’s ideas and techniques. If a writer is not trying to improve the quality of each book there really isn’t any hope of continued employment, let alone growing a reader base. Here are a few of the books that I got something from or just liked reading:
One of my favorites is The Lie That Tells the Truth by John Dufresne. It’s not a technical manual as much as a perspective on the writer’s journey. Dufresne is a professor at Florida International University’s revered creative writing program. This book is a little different but it moved me to write an e-mail to the author as soon as I finished it.
One that sounds like a shallow view of writing but offers some good advice for those starting out is Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel. Direct and to the point, this book can focus the new writer on some key issues.
Robert McKee’s aptly titled Story is not, strictly speaking a book on writing novels. McKee is considered more of a screenwriting guru but the advice on characterization applies to any writing. I know McKee is not the most popular guy and some writers are not fans of this book but I felt it helped me flesh out my characters. This is one book I read before being published and occasional review it for a refresher course.
My former agent, Peter Rubie, a good guy and good writer, has written several books on writing and publishing. One of them, How to Tell a Story: The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tales, is a fine essay on writing non-fiction books.
The finest of all these types of books is clearly On Writing by Stephen King. Part autobiography part master class in writing, Mr. King has created an accessible, intelligent book that no writer should ignore. Not only did I learn something of craft, I learned about one of my favorite author’s life, about the publishing industry and the hazards of drug use. He is honest, open and direct, something we should all strive to be.
Window seats and toile de jouy curtains, respectively. No doubt a double-X chromosome thing.
3.
Heirloom tomatoes, and the way the plants smell when you're walking barefoot through warm humid garden dirt on a hot July afternoon to go pick some for dinner.
4.
This photograph of a magnolia blossom by Imogen Cunningham, because she makes it look like a temple.
This photo of Imogen herself, with model Twinka, taken by Judy Dater in 1981. Imogen is the one on the left.
5. & 6.
Patsy Cline, and
Hank Williams SENIOR.
Because some days you just need twangy yodeling.
7.
Robinson Jeffers' poetry--not least, these days:
Shine, Perishing Republic
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic. But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught--they say--God, when he walked on earth.
1924
8.
William Manchester's magnificent biography of Winston Churchill, which for me stands as one of the acmes of non-fiction writing, both for its flights of oratory:
England's new leader, were he to prevail, would have to stand for everything England's decent, civilized Establishment had rejected.... Like Adolf Hitler he would have to be a leader of intuitive genius, a born demagogue in the original sense of the word, a believer in the supremacy of his race and his national destiny, an artist who knew how to gather the blazing light of history into his prism and then distort it to his ends, an embodiment of inflexible resolution who could impose his will and his imagination on his people -- a great tragedian who understood the appeal of martyrdom and could tell his followers the worst, hurling it to them like great hunks of bleeding meat, persuading them that the year of Dunkirk would be one in which it was "equally good to live or to die" -- who could if necessary be just as cruel, just as cunning, and just as ruthless as Hitler but who could win victories without enslaving populations, or preaching supernaturalism, or foisting off myths of his infallibility, or destroying, or even warping, the libertarian institutions he had sworn to preserve. Such a man, if he existed, would be England's last chance.
In London there was such a man.
And for his ability to capture Churchill's wit:
He called Atlee "a sheep in sheep's clothing," and "a modest man with much to be modest about," and he drove a sharp needle into Labour policy one day when he met him in the House's men's room. Attlee, arriving first, had stepped up to the urinal trough when Churchill strode in on the same mission, glanced at him, and stood at the trough as far away from him as possible. Attlee said, "Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?" Churchill said: "That's right. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it."
9.
Josephine's bed at Malmaison, because sometimes humanity requires a profound and absolute respite from all things IKEA, even though I think dusting is a massive pain in the butt and plus you'd probably have to have those sheets drycleaned every damn week or whatever. (See #1).
10.
Holland and Holland shotguns.
I mean, how could you not love such an object?
11.
"Cher Guevara," and whoever invented her.
12.
Hanging out on the beach in Bali with an Aussie named Tony Ruwald who my sister Freya met while surfing there, in 1988.
13.
The view from Nepenthe, in Big Sur, home of the "Ambrosia Burger."
Although I miss the old days, when they still had canvas director's chairs scattered around the terrace, instead of plastic.
A reader took me to task yesterday. Don, from Virginia Beach, VA, writes:
I just finished "Trial & Error," and, like all your books I've read, enjoyed it. I wonder, though, why you thought it appropriate to insult a portion of your customers by calling people that buy Rush Limbaugh's book a derogatory name? It seemed so out of place since nowhere else do you take a shot at anyone else's political beliefs. Do you hate Rush so much that you're willing to insult a portion of your customers just for the satisfaction of taking a shot at him?
Here's what Don is complaining about. Just before going into the courthouse to begin voir dire, shady lawyer Steve Solomon peeks into car windows in the Jurors' Parking Lot. He tells the reader why:
People leave clues about themselves everywhere, including their car seats.
A wad of traffic tickets. Defense juror.
"Guns and Ammo" magazine. Prosecution juror.
A book by Rush Limbaugh. Simple-minded juror.
So, Don, it was a joke. Not a very good joke, it's true. And now, on reflection, I think it was a cheap shot. Condescending and unfair. It's fine to mock Rush Limbaugh for his simplistic, misleading, and often outrageously false statements. But his readers and listeners should be permitted to draw their own conclusions without being slammed, even in jest.
Next, Andrew, a lawyer in Dallas, writes about a scene in "Trial & Error," where Steve Solomon tears the murder indictment in half and tosses it at the prosecutor, proclaiming it's nothing but a worthless piece of paper.
I had a DWI trial in Fort Worth this past Monday. After the prosecution read the "information" (complaint in Texas for a misdemeanor), I grabbed it as I approached the jury box during opening, and I referred to it as simply a piece of paper and "flung" it back at the Prosecutor's table. Needless to say, I got a Not Guilty verdict in conservative-ass Fort Worth after 20 minutes of deliberation. You the man!!! Keep them books coming.
Way to go, Andrew. Texas lawyers are ballsy, I'll say that. You could have been held in contempt...as Steve Solomon frequently is.
Finally, Richard in Detroit writes, after reading "Solomon vs. Lord":
As the father of a genius-but-mildly-autistic child (Asperger's Syndrome) I thought the character of Bobby, the nephew, was right-on-target and much appreciated.
Thank you, Richard. I've heard from many parents and teachers of autistic children. The best, most heartwarming letters I could ever receive.
Recently, a reader suggested a sub-plot involving Bobby that was better than the idea I was working on. As writers, our characters are real to us. To our best readers, they're just as real. I'd like to encourage my fellow Naked Authors to share their mail.
************************************************ OKAY, AGENT BORN. YOU WANT PICTURES. YOU GOT PICTURES.
Jim Born, that pesky provocateur, has been taunting me. Last week, I posted goofy photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Phil Spector from the 1970's. So Jim challenged me to post some vintage photos of my own naked scribbling self.
I generally do what Jim says, if only because he is heavily armed. (Donna says Jim comes to bed "locked and loaded," whatever that means). So, I'm posting some photos from Memory Lane, potholes and all. Perhaps Jim will reciprocate, starting with photos of those wild parties at Florida State.
Paul, wearing lapels as wide as radial tires, and moot court partner Dan Schwartz display their modest National Moot Court Championship trophy. (New York 1971)
Your Naked Scribbler, with an excess of hair, white bell-bottoms, and a purple nylon Nik-Nik shirt. (Helsinki 1974).
Penn State Quarterback (and current CBS broadcaster) Todd Blackledge with your Naked Nittany Lion, wearing a blue velour warm-up suit of the sort favored by Paulie Walnuts. (New Orleans, New Years Day 1983)
Son Michael is surprised to learn on his second birthday that Naked Dad expects him to attend Penn State if he wants his tuition paid. Quick at math, Michael complies. (Coral Gables, 1983)
Paul windsurfs on the ocean in a twenty-knot breeze, making Naked Lake Windsurfer Jim Born insanely jealous. (Aruba 1985)
Following Hurricane Andrew, your Naked Sweeper clears rubbish at ex-spouse Alice's house. (Coral Gables, 1992)
Although your Naked Scrivener and Elmore Leonard share the same fiction prize, Mr. Leonard politely rejects Mr. Levine's creative idea that they pool their royalties and split them 50-50. (Tampa 1994)
After writing four books in 27 months, your Exhausted Scribbler is sent to a "rest home." (Rancho Cucamonga 2007)
Two upcoming events have prompted me to write this post: Cindy’s birthday was last week, June 12th and my third book will be released on July 3rd. For reasons that you will soon learn, Cindy and my book releases are forever intertwined.
I met Cindy Dickson on a film set in the early eighties. We had both come to Los Angeles to seek our fortunes, me via Seattle, she via Australia then London then New York then Las Vegas then Alaska. She was Australian but her accent was British. She told me the teachers in the Episcopal school she attended had schooled the Aussie accent out of her.
She had had many exotic adventures—some told, some only hinted at—which imbued her with an aura of mystery. She was a consummate story teller, and I loved to listen to her lilting voice relate tales of growing up on a sheep station in the outback, traveling from Sydney to London on a tramp steamer, acting on the stage in Melbourne, hosting a talk show on Australian TV, writing newspaper columns for papers in Fairbanks and Sitka. After she came to L.A. she turned her attention to writing screenplays and poetry. She also started working on a novel, a stream of consciousness piece that was a metaphor for a life filled with joy and betrayal.
Cindy and I stumbled through the eighties together and much of the nineties, sharing adventures, a lot of Happy Hour hors d’oervres, and a great many laughs. At some point in the nineties our two roads diverged, as Robert Frost would say. We each took separate paths and drifted apart for a while. One day I picked up the telephone and called her. It was as if we hadn’t talked for days not years.
In around 2001 or so Cindy moved to Marin County in Northern California. Shortly after that she began to call me every week on the same day. It was unlike her. Cindy was a free spirit who never kept to a schedule. She told me it was because she had all those free minutes on her cell phone and wanted to take advantage of them, but I sensed some darker truth. She seemed unhappy, lonely, depressed. Ill? A melancholy overtook her and I began to worry. I sent her a guardian angel pin and told her it would protect her until she could return to Los Angeles where she belonged.
Cindy did come back to Southern California but not to L.A. She said she wanted a more tranquil setting, a slower pace, so she settled in Ventura, a beach town about sixty miles north of here. She was an original and people loved her for it. She joined a poetry group and made many new friends. One September morning in 2003, I received a telephone call from her. It was 7:00 A.M. I was still in bed.
“I’m on my way to the doctor,” she said. “I have breast cancer. I just wanted you to know.”
I was stunned but managed to babble a few words like What? How? The “why” would come later.
I drove to Ventura as often as I could after that. I sat by her bedside during chemotherapy. I walked down the hospital hallway beside her gurney on the day of her mastectomy, stopping only when forced to at the swinging doors of the surgery room. Post surgery I spooned ice into her mouth to quench her thirst.
Despite two massive chemo regimes and enough radiation to nuke a small 3rd world county, the cancer continued to spread throughout her body. The doctor proposed one last-ditch effort to save her life, a third trial of chemo.
In the end it was the pain that controlled her decision. Cindy simply could no longer face that pain or the chemo brain or the debilitating illness. She opted for hospice care at a nursing home instead. Afterward, she questioned her decision but declined to amend it. She got angry for a time, but I never once saw her display a hint of self-pity. She was stoic, never once mentioning the words death or dying. Once during one of our many conversations I mentioned something about the many phases we had gone through in our lives. She responded wryly, “Yes, but I’m not looking forward to this next phase in mine.”
Cindy knew the time would come when she could no longer make decisions about her life or her death, so she asked me to be her Durable Power of Attorney. It was an honor to have her trust, but also a heavy responsibility. She was concerned about dying alone, so I promised her I would never let that happen. The social worker assigned to her case told me that when Cindy was near the end I could come to stay with her in the empty bed in her room. I was frantic. “How will I know? How will I know?” I kept asking her. “You’ll know,” was all she said.
Neither Cindy nor I knew how long she had, so in the next three months we talked a lot. I asked if I could put some of her old photographs in an album. At first she said no but later she relented. When the album was finished, I think she enjoyed showing it to the many friends who came to visit her as well as to the hospice staff. During this period she passed along the guardian angel pin (that I’d given her to her when she lived in Marin) to her friend Doris who promised to pass it along to someone else when the time was right.
Ventura is more than an hour from Los Angeles. On the days I couldn’t visit I called her on the telephone, sometimes more than once a day. November arrived and although Cindy was frail and weak, her spirit was strong and her pain under control. My first book was due to be released on November 22. She was proud of me. She asked me to read it to her, but her concentration was waning and after a few paragraphs she would stop me to ask a question or to reminisce about some past adventure she wanted to share with me.
On Sunday, November 21, I held a launch party for my first book, False Profits. Cindy had been fine the day before, but on Sunday she wasn’t fine at all. I knew when I spoke to her on the telephone that she had turned a dark corner. By the time I got to Ventura that day, her speech was garbled. Still, she was desperately trying to tell me something. Our inability to communicate verbally was agonizing for both of us.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her, “I want so much to know what you’re saying, but I can’t understand you. I just want you to know, I’m here and I love you.”
I kept repeating that last phrase, over and over. Her “I love you, too,” were the only words I could understand.
I sat by her bedside all night, holding her hand, reassuring her I was there, that I wasn’t going to leave, that I loved her. She died at 2:00 a.m. the following morning. It was November 22, 2004, the official release date of my book.
Cindy wanted her ashes scattered in a “lovely garden” somewhere. I haven’t found that place yet, but I will some day. I think I’ve been waiting, thinking that perhaps I would take her back to Australia, find her sister and her brother with whom she had lost touch. I’d tell them about her life and how much she was loved by so many people, including me. I’d show them the photo album. Tell them about the tramp steamer and the poetry. It’s the amateur sleuth in me that yearns to find them.
Cindy had a brother named William John George Thomas Russell, Jr. who may be living in New Zealand and sister named Jean Russell, married name unknown, who may be living near Blackall, Queensland, Australian. Her mother’s name was Catherine Sophia Rose Anderson. Google has turned up nothing. Her friends didn't even know she had siblings. If you can help or know somebody who can, please press the envelope icon below and forward this post.
Don’t know if you saw the news item this week, about a whale caught up in Alaska, that had embedded in its shoulder bone an arrowhead fragment, part of the type of harpoon used back in the late 1800’s. This meant that the whale, a bowhead, was well over 100 years old and might well have been pursued by whaler of the type commanded by good old Captain Ahab. I thought it was sad, really, that the whale had managed to get by for a century, and yesteryear’s harpoon head was found when they were using chain saws to cut up the leviathan. I know the Eskimo feed on this whale, and that traditionally they use every part of the animal, but there was something so sad about that whale’s ending, as if he deserved to go on and on until nature took care of his end. I feel like that about most animals, particularly whales, though I am glad I can count on veterinary science to help me out with my domestic animals.
The idea of living through a century, especially the last century, just boggles the mind. It was only a couple of years ago that the man who had led the last cavalry charge by an American mounted army, passed away, in Menlo Park, I think, or somewhere like that, in an area that is now known for its tech industry. Cavalry charges and iPods, just a couple of degrees of separation.
Years ago, the author Howard Spring wrote a novel about a woman who lived one hundred years. He said he wanted to write such a story, just to explore history’s passing in the life of one person. I thought about that a lot – I think I must have been in my teens when I read the book, and I wondered about my own life. Can’t say as I think living to 100 would be all beer and skittles, what with researchers now saying the oil will begin to seriously run out in four years time. Solar power is looking very, very attractive, and thank heavens I can drive a horse and cart.
I’m only just over the half-century, and the changes I’ve seen astonish me, at times. As a child only one person owned a telephone in the hamlet where I lived, and that was the shopkeeper at the end of the road. We also had a telephone kiosk, but if your relations needed to get hold of you in an emergency, then they called the shop and Fred Cooke would send one of his kids down to your house to give you the message. And because we didn’t have a car, we couldn’t go anywhere until the London coach went through the next day, if we had to go to London in a hurry, because that’s where all our family lived. The "coach" by the way, was just a bus, but because the service had started in the days of horse-drawn transport, people still called it the coach. I thought about those times yesterday, when I announced to my husband that I thought I might like an iPhone, entranced by the idea of having my entire media world in an almost paper-thin do-dad at my fingertips – which was a surprise, really, because I am not what you’d ever call an “early adopter.” All a bit different from Fred Cooke’s black bakelite telephone.
I worked on the local farms as a child – the big advantage of being a country kid, you could always get outdoor work throughout the school breaks – and one day while gathering spent hop bines, I found a pin from the uniform of a First World War Land Army girl. I had that pin for years, and even used to wear it. I was crushed when it dropped off on the London tube one day. I love the idea of being in this world and having some connection to the past, some memory that gives me only a degree of separation or two from history.
I wonder how much that whale had needed to compensate for our oceans becoming more polluted, and warmer. Had he changed his territorial habits, or had he thought, “I’m too old for that!” There he was, a whale who had been born at the time of the sailing ship, and lived long enough to see his kin deafened by the navy’s sonar. And ever since I read that story yesterday, I’ve wished he was the one who got away.
Now, on another note, you may recall that a few times over the past year, I’ve asked that question, “How do I raise the bar on myself?” The question has mainly been in connection with who I am as a writer, but as we writers know, everything about who we are is part of being a writer, otherwise people wouldn’t write or read blogs. I flirted briefly with the idea of doing an MFA in writing, however, I kept coming back, in my deliberations, to a course I had been fascinated by for about ten years that, essentially, delves into what it is to be human, through the lens of mythology and depth psychology. The MA/PhD program in Mythology and Depth Psychology at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California, is the sort of thing I would have loved to do when I was younger, but not only do I think you need a few miles on you before you open a lid like that, but someone would have said, “You’ll never get a job with that for a degree!”
I finally bit the bullet in early April, having already attended two open days and several of their short courses, and spoken to numerous ex-students (many of whom are writers) – and sent in my application. I knew I could handle my studies along with my writing - the fact that it’s low residency and not far from where I live helps – and hoped that one would inspire the other. People come from all over the world to this particular seat of learning, which also houses the Joseph Campbell library, so I wasn’t overly confident when it came to assessing my chances. My interview was scheduled for just a few days after I sustained my shoulder injury, and I decided to go ahead with it, but not take the painkillers, otherwise I might have been way too interesting – to myself, anyway. And at the end of last week I heard that I had been accepted. So, in September, I will be going back to school. I’m more than a little scared, but that particular emotion is outweighed by excitement, and I’m happy to report that a significant number of the students are of the “mature” variety. I’ll keep you posted!
Have a good weekend one and all, and if you want to share this post, you can use the envelope icon below.
I may have written about this before, frankly, I can’t remember. I get asked about my influences all the time.
Like many writers, I’m influenced by a host of other authors. Notably, as the phtos show, Elmore leonard and W.E.B. Griffin. But I’ve realized that I’m influenced in all aspects of my life and wonder if others have the same experience.
Do you sometimes say something and realize you adopted the comment from someone else? I’m not talking about a short story or plot, I mean in real life. The non-fiction book we live every day.
Like many men, I’ve found that my dad’s comments and even his mannerisms have taken hold in me. It may have taken a while but I find my attitude is extremely similar to my father’s even though our backgrounds are very different.
My father was raised during the depression in the 1920s and 1930s in Pittsburg. He was in the army in the Pacific during world war II, or as he called it, the big war. He came home and attended the University of Miami, then went through the UM law school and settled in West Palm Beach. He was also 39 by the time I came along. And big. He was not unusually tall at 5’11” but with wide shoulders and a weight that fluctuated between 235 and 240, he was “Big John” to a lot of people.
As you can see here he is in his army uniform and sitting with the lovely Jane Wickerham, who he married and I knew as my mother.
I was raised in the comfort of West Palm Beach, Florida. I didn’t even see snow until I was seventeen when it snowed in South Florida. I was not in the military and have never actually viewed the Japanese as a threat. I attended Florida State, and, at my father’s insistence, did not attend law school, opting instead for the wildly lucrative degree of a master degree in psychology with a minor in statistics.
Despite the differences, I find that everything my father held dear, I do too. Most the attitudes my father held toward others I find I hold them too. It didn’t happen over night. But, son-of-a-gun if he wasn’t right about everything.
He believed people did what they had to do. It was a way of saying people were good but occasionally did bad things. When I first started in police work I thought this notion was absurd. Now, in most cases, I can see where people make choices that are available to them. Sometimes choices were removed from them at a young age. Maybe a lack of education, an abusive family or mental condition. I’m not excusing criminal behavior but I’ve learned through experience that people often commit crimes for reasons other than the obvious.
My dad believed more work got done in the hallways of courthouses than in the courtroom. I’ve found that informal talks often lead to quicker solutions to serious problems more than organized negotiations. Administration is the anchor on civilization.
My father worked hard every day. He believed that hard work and a friendly attitude would make life more tolerable. For a guy who lived in a tent on Guam wondering if the Japanese would rule the Pacific with an iron fist, lived when no one in the country had a job and saw snow since his first year, he had one hell of a good attitude. I believe his attitude was infectious. People liked his company. I liked his company. Even as a teenager I liked to hang out with my dad.
My dad passed away more than 17 years ago but he influences me and, indirectly, my children, more than he'll ever know.
In publishing, it’s easy to get down on yourself or blame others. I guess those kind of thoughts are easy in any job. What’s hard is being happy and a good attitude is important. If you had to live on Pacific island, dodge bullets and disease, raise kids in a hectic, crazy time and still have a positive outlook you’d influence others too.
I have long been fascinated by antique visions of the future--images and ideas about what life would be like some decades hence, that so often reveal more about one's present than the true outcome of temporally distant events. They are so often better at recording a contemporary sense of style and art direction than they are at revealing any true prescience, not least about fashion.
I love the deco sensibilities of what space-age life was imagined as in the Thirties, from appropriate rocket wear:
To the rockets themselves:
I love the Sixties conception of futuristic architecture, via the New York World's Fair:
I remember reading in my mother's high school year book some 1957 senior's imaginings about the class's 25th reunion to be, which would be held at the school's newly completed lunar campus:
I love the gadgets everyone expected we'd have in our future lives, a la the Jetsons, not least the personal Jet Pack:
And the ubiquitous space-cars that sped along glassy highways on cushions of air:
And the machines that would produce any favorite item of food by some alchemical recombination of molecules, ending world hunger in an atomic flash:
Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: Next Generation is famous for having always ordered, "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."
There are some visions which are better left unremembered, however, especially those from the Seventies:
Many of which seem to have come to aesthetic fruition in certain cities' subway stations:
Can anyone walk through Atlanta's MARTA or some of D.C.'s train stops without thinking of Logan's Run?
Or visit some architectural outposts of Denver without thinking of Woody Allen's Sleeper?
And then, of course, there are the computers:
Both real and imagined. When you look at those pictured below, can you remember how impossible it would have been to imagine, say, Youtube, only twenty years ago?
Even Kubrick thought the computers of the future would take up the amount of space necessary for a small metropolitan museum:
How bizarre that this morning, I can create for free from the safety of my desk a virtual television, in this online journal, which shows HAL speaking and singing in French:
As Dave turns him off, he begins to sing not "Bicycle Built for Two," But "Claire de Lune."
I still really really really want my own Jet Pack, and having a replicator sure wouldn't suck, especially when I realize I forgot to buy the essential ingredient for the evening's dinner.
The Democrats are peeved that Alberto Gonzalez cannot recall who fired a slew of U.S. Attorneys and apparently also forget where he hid the key to the executive washroom. Yesterday, the Senate could only muster 53 votes (out of 60 needed) to tell the Attorney General that's he's a stinkeroo as head of the so-called Justice Department. But unknown to the mainstream media, the macho Senate Democrats unilaterally took action against the famed Bush messenger boy. ("Would somebody please wake up John Ashcroft? Or at least, pull out his tubes!")
In a righteous hissy fit, the Democratic majority placed Gonzalez on double secret probation.
NON-STORY OF THE DAY: FOX NEWS PIMPS FOR BUSH
As if we didn't know...
The Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that Fox News spends only half the time covering the disastrous war in Iraq as MSNBC and other cable news networks.
Here's a shot you WON'T see on Fox.
Here's a shot you WILL see on Fox. Which, I ask our Naked Readers, is uglier?
As anyone who has watched television the last week can attest, Fox and the other cable networks have given substantially more time to the Paris Hilton saga than the war in Iraq. Which brings us to... STOP THE PRESSES: Paris Hilton Finds God in Jail
After a weekend of hard time in the slammer, Paris Hilton has had a spiritual awakening. Yesterday, in a collect phone call, she told Barbara Walters: "God released me." (Even if the judge didn't). "My spirit or soul didn't like the way I was being seen."
Note that Ms. Hilton didn't say that God was unhappy with her actions, only the way those actions were perceived. Ah, but I nitpick.
Now, the young misdemeanant desires to do her full term. That hasn't stopped her cretinous admirers from begging Gov. Schwarzenegger to pardon Paris. They'll also sell you a "Free Paris" bracelet for 10 bucks. Not that it matters, but the website gets it wrong. Ms. Hilton was not jailed for "DUI," but rather for a violation of probation by driving (repeatedly) with a suspended license. At any rate, here's the preamble of the on-line petition:
To: The Honorable Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Paris Whitney Hilton is an American celebrity and socialite....She provides hope for young people all over the U.S. and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.
Pardon moi. But my mundane life is about to hurl chunks.
We here at Naked Scribblers are sworn not to publish any photos of Ms. Hilton, with or without underwear. Therefore, we are forced to illustrate this story with a photo of our esteemed governor. First, an oldie...
And, more recently...
Yes, time is cruel. Let's put this in perspective. In the same era that our Governor-to-be was ingesting enough steroids to kill a herd of buffalo, bizarro record producer Phil Spector (now on trial for murder) was going through his urban cowboy phase.
And, more recently...
A question for our female readers. Would you go home from a club with this man at 3 a.m., knowing he'd consumed about 15 alcoholic beverages that evening and his "castle" was filled with loaded firearms (19 or 20) and at least one jumbo bottle of Viagra?
That was the title of the workshop I presented at the Sisters in Crime/LA “No Crime Unpublished” writers’ conference on Sunday with my friend, Rochelle Krich.
Rochelle is a multiple award-winning, best-selling author of fourteen novels and numerous short stories and I’m…well, you know who I am. I have a master’s degree in business with an emphasis in strategic planning. I also had a marketing plan for my writing career before I had an agent. The two of us have stories to tell and only some of them can be repeated here.
Before my first book was sold I knew four things: (1) That it would be published; (2) My publisher would, in all likelihood, do little or nothing to promote it; (3) Promoting the book was just as hard as writing it; and (4) Ultimately, I was responsible for my writing career.
As it turned out, my publisher did more than I expected, for which I was grateful. However, publishers can do only so much to get your novel noticed among the 199,999 other books released that year.
The big New York houses all have publicists that may arrange book signings and some media coverage, but they don’t continue working on your campaign beyond the month or two surrounding the book’s release. They have other writers to promote. Susan Page has written an insightful book about publishing called The Shortest Distance Between You and A Published Book. She says:
“So it is true that you have to put out a major effort in the first three months. But it is a terrible mistake to stop after that. The best promotion a book can possibly receive is word of mouth. Word of mouth takes time to build, and you have to keep nurturing it.”
Page suggests that for a year and a half following the release of a book, a writer should continue to promote the book and spread the word. Sometimes the task is daunting. All writers have a story to tell of driving fifty or a hundred miles to give a presentation. Two people show up. One of them is only there to get in out of the rain. No books are sold. It's disheartening not to mention costly.
At some point we all stop to ponder whether any of this raises our profiles. Yet, most of us continue to pack our books into those briefcases and hit the road, because we all dream the same dream—to achieve a level of success that allows us to continue writing. In order to do that we not only have to be William Faulkners we also have to be Willy Lomans, because if there is one thing we all know in today's publishing climate it's that attention must be paid.
"You don't understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."
—Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
What about you. Are you more inclined to buy the book of an author you meet face to face?
Hope to see you at my next whistle stop. Until then, Happy Monday.
Jackie’s Messenger of Truth (Sorry have to plug my blogmates whenever possible), I like to read about writing.
Like many writers, I’m influenced by a host of other authors. Notably, as the phtos show, Elmore leonard and W.E.B. Griffin. But I’ve realized that I’m 
