A Cowboy Explains 4th of July

Modern Americans are hazy about our history. With the Fourth of July on the horizon, I thought a cowboy could bring clarity to the origins of this popular holiday.

Author Wars

Writers can be a competitive bunch and can say nasty things about others in their profession. A good barb needs to be pithy and clever. Here are a few of my favorites.

 

Time Travel Anyone?

I love time travel. We’ve all experienced time travel whenever we’ve opened a book and been transported to another place and time. When you slap the book closed, it returns you to where you started. Well, sorta. You may lose a few hours, but nothing's free.

All books do this, but I particularly like the time travel genre. Two of my favorite time travel books are A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Lightening. In 1889, Mark Twain sent his character Hank Morgan back in time to the reign of King Arthur in the sixth century. Like all of Twain’s work, life lessons are delivered with humor and skillful storytelling. Another great time travel novel is Lightening by Dean Koontz. Written in 1988, Lightening takes a unique perspective that cannot be described without a spoiler. Despite being over thirty years old, the novel has traveled to the present wholly intact.

Up until recently, I didn’t believe time travel was real. Then my nephew showed me his time travel machine. After testing it, I assure you that it works perfectly. Instead of flashing lights, electric pulses, or whirling brass spindles, he made his machine with duct tape, a kitchen timer, and a bathroom scale. He duct-taped the kitchen timer to the bathroom scale. That’s it. When you’re ready to travel, you set the timer to where you want to go and then climb aboard. When you hear the timer’s ding, you’ve arrived.

Pretty nifty, huh?

Famous Last Words

The Washington Post has an article on “The 23 most unforgettable last sentences in fiction.” Many critics and readers focus on the first sentence, but the last sentence is the one that leaves the final impression. Here are a few of my favorites.

“I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

“It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

“He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance.”
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

“After all, tomorrow is another day.”
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

“He loved Big Brother.”
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

I can't resist. Here are a couple of my favorites from my own books.

“I kept my head and Chestnut facing east.”
The Shopkeeper by James D. Best
(I didn’t want my hero to ride off into the sunset.)

“And then he was gone.”
Tempest at Dawn by James D. Best
(James Madison, an old man had left the room, but he soon after left the stage as our last remaining Founding Father.)

In truth, neither the first nor last sentence can make a good story. The entire narrative has to pull the reader forward until they read the last sentence. A story told properly will cause the reader to seek out another book by the same author.

Crazy Rich Asians Tells an Old Story Anew

Last night we rented Crazy Rich Asians based on the book by Kevin Kwan. I had heard a lot of good things about the film, but I was disappointed. I had seen the story before. 

Then I remembered an old Kurt Vonnegut lecture on the shape of stories. I had posted the short video a few years prior and followed his advice in Crossing the Animas. Evidently, I was not the only one. Kwan adapted one of his story lines and transferred it to Singapore. Vonnegut said writers were free to use his model and claimed that any who did would make a million dollars. Kwan cashed in. Me, not so much. However, if you liked Crazy Rich Asians, take a gander at Crossing the Animas. (Soon available in audio in a fine reading by Paul Manelis.)

Watch Vonnegut's talk. It's funny as hell, yet still packed with good advice for storytellers.

ebooks vs. print—Who Won

This weekend, I ran across this cartoon. At one time, everyone predicted the electronic books would supplant the printed variety. I think we can see the future and it's here. Every book format appears to have found its natural level in the order of things and percentage changes from this point will probably be in single digits.

I suspect my experience is representative of the industry. All of my books are available in print and electronic formats. Most of them are also available in audio and library bound large print. Although my books sell in every format, there are differences in the distribution of sales. 

My westerns sell overwhelmingly in the ebook format and are trending toward the subscription model. Voracious genre readers are perfect customers for books available inexpensively for a monthly fee. The mass-paperback industry has been pretty much devastated by ebooks. Audio books are also popular with genre readers.

Readers of my history books and historical novels prefer printed books. Large print books are popular with libraries.

It should have been obvious from the beginning that the perfect ebook market was mass paperbacks. A cheap, portable, and disposable reading format. But pronostators love to take a trendline and extend it to the stratosphere.

In truth, I don't care which format my readers prefer, only that they keep reading.

How many New York minutes can you cram into nine days?

We have three grandchildren in New York City and we try to visit them as often as we can muster up the energy and coin. Let’s see, we were there nine days. In that time, we saw a Yankee’s game, celebrated our son’s birthday, celebrated our granddaughter’s birthday, watched our two grandsons play collectively ten—count them, ten—lacrosse games, saw our youngest grandson play two baseball games, watched our granddaughter perform in a school production of Pirates of Penzance, attended our grandson’s First Communion, ate innumerable meals in restaurants, and rode in countless cabs, ubers, and car services. All this, while being entertained by a new bernedoodle puppy that made the energizer bunny look languid. We even snuck in some private time to tour Radio City Music Hall on tickets we bought two years ago.

I know I forgot tons. The entire week is a blur. We’re a couple of retirees who on most days lumber from room to room to get enough exercise to laze about some more. When my wife yells that we need to go to CVS tomorrow, I mutter that she ruined my entire day. If it’s CVS and the hardware store, I get out my iPhone and schedule the chockablock activities in my calendar app.

We love New York, and we really do love all the activity, especially when the weather doesn’t mug us. This was not one of those visits. My son never leaves a Yankee game early, but in the top of the eighth, the stadium turned into the biggest icebox on the planet. A near capacity crowd was thinned to a few guys hawking sodas before the Yankees came to bat. We left our hotel in fine weather to walk to Radio City Music Hall. Halfway there, it turned blustery, cold, and wet. Us, without an umbrella or decent coats. We even entered the restaurant after our grandson’s first communion drenched, with teeth chattering. Last Saturday, the weather for the lacrosse games was perfect. Perfect. It was a trick. On Sunday we were smart enough to wear layers, but twenty wouldn’t have been enough. It went down to forty with gusts of hurricane proportions that made me understand what chilled to the bone really meant. I’ve posted recently about the springtime snow in Omaha. New York likes to do the chill bit without the pretty white fluffy stuff.

In the end, it was all good. We hit the Big Apple at the perfect time to see all three grandchildren strut their stuff, and we got in on some nifty celebrations. But we were exhausted by our last day. 

As we drove back into the city from some farm that boasted plenty of lacrosse fields, my daughter called from Omaha. She wanted to know what time we flew in that night. What’s up, I asked. Our Omaha grandson wanted to know if we could make it back in time for his Sunday evening baseball game.

The weather outside is frightful: Part Deux

Yesterday, the gardener showed up for Spring Cleanup. This morning, I woke to this.

Burr!
Since the same person does my snow removal, I guess he show up today to clear my driveway.

The Weather Outside is Frightful

WTH

Every year, I leave my home in Omaha after Christmas to spend the winter in San Diego. I return each Easter to spend the holiday with family. What’s an egg hunt without grandkids, nieces, and nephews? This schedule has worked out great in past years. I avoid the worst of winter in the Midwest, visit my west coast friends and relatives, bask in the sun, get a little surfing in at Pacific Beach, and return for glorious springtime on the plains. Only not this year. This year, they predict snow three times this week. There’s not a leaf in sight. The prominent color is brown. And polite Midwesterners are a bit grumpy.

I even built a fire the first night to ward off the chill. With the thermostats set at fifty in our absence, the couch cushions made us wrap in blankets. Yeah, “But the fire is so delightful.”

Deluge is still at the editors, but I expect it back soon, which will keep me busy. I also have three more essays to write for this year’s Constituting America’s 90-Day study. Lots of indoor work. Unfortunately, I have a couple problems that need attention in the garage, which is more like an icebox. Oh well, whenever I get lethargic writing, I can get my blood moving again by doing garage chores. 

Or … maybe I’ll check for discount airfares back to San Diego.

Mark Twain's 10 Writing Tips

Curiosity.com published a list of writing tips from Mark Twain. Now, Twain never actually published a list, but his letters provided plenty of tips that just needed to be gathered up in one place. 

Here they are:

1. "Write without pay until somebody offers to pay."

2. "Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream."

3. "Great books are weighed and measured by their style and matter, and not the trimmings and shadings of their grammar."

4. "The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction."

5. "If I had more time, it would have been shorter."

6. "The more you explain it, the less I understand it."

7. "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very.' Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

8. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

9. "Use plain, simple language, short words, and brief sentences... don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in."

10. "As to the adjective: When in doubt, strike it out.”

Good advice, but I believe scrutinizing Twain’s castigation of James Fennimore Cooper provides even more guidence. Among other things, Twain wrote “Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in "Deerslayer," and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.” 

If the criticisms of Cooper were rewritten as positive statements, they would make a great guide to great writing. Which I took the liberty of doing here. You may also want to check out my catalog of writing advice from the masters. 

House of Corn, Stone Presidents, and a Sioux Triumph

Mitchell Corn Palace

We recently moved from Arizona to Omaha and are still getting to know the neighborhood. Friends—and sometime relatives—wanted a road trip to check out the northern hinterlands. We blasted through Iowa to get to South Dakota to our first stop in Mitchell. We came to see the world renown Corn Palace.  Each year, the town decorates the outside of the building with artworks made entirely from corn cobs. Pretty cool. Or at least cooler than a big ball of twine.

K Bar S Lodge

After gawking at the ethanol cathedral, we speed down the road to spend the night at the K Bar S Lodge, which is in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. The huge lodge closes at the end of the month and guests were sparse. As we wandered the buildings, we kept an eye out for a tyke on a trike or a pair of scary twins. I never spotted a worrisome apparition, but the next day at Mount Rushmore, I spotted Gary Grant strolling around in a dark suit and pristine white dress shirt. We found Mount Rushmore to be an impressive feat of art and engineering and the park service has done a good job of presentation.

North by Northwest

The Knuckle Saloon in Sturgis

Lunch found us at the Knuckle Saloon in Sturgis, host city to the seventy-eight-year-old motorcycle rallies. We saw only one lonely rider, but the food at the saloon was good and the ambiance iconic.

Sheridan Inn a bit before we arrived

In the afternoon, we drove to Sheridan, Wyoming and stayed at the historic Sheridan Inn. This hotel didn’t seem haunted either, despite one of the long-term employees having her ashes buried inside the wall of her room. The photographs on the walls are reason enough to pay the inn a visit. After breakfast, we drove to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Here we found ghosts and restless spirits aplenty. Little Bighorn is a sobering experience that reminds us that there are two sides to every story.

Art work detail at Little Bighorn Battlefield

We returned by way of Sheridan and stopped for lunch and a shopping spree at King's Saddlery. If you’re ever in this part of the country, King’s is a must stop. It reminds me of the tent in Harry Potter that looks small from the outside, but goes on forever inside. This is not a tourist store but a serious place to buy ropes, tack, and appropriate attire for horseback riding. If you want something western, whether it be leather goods, belt buckles, clothing, jewelry, art, dishes, books, ropes, or whatever, you can find in at King’s.

Kings Saddlery

On the way home, ate breakfast at Wall Drug and took the 240 loop through the South Dakota Badlands. Due to thousands of signposts, Wall Drug is as hard to find as a fly in a cow pasture. It’s worth the trip, however. Good breakfast, cheap coffee, and lots of western art and artifacts. After breakfast, we sauntered through the Badlands. We saw very few cars, but we did make a sharp turn and almost ran into a Rocky Mountain Big Horn sheep. I stopped the car, wondering how much damage those curved battering rams could do to my side panels, but luckily he seemed more interested in eating the vegetation alongside the road. The Badlands landscape is impressive and when it’s uncrowded, you can feel connected to some bygone era. If you make this trip, late October is perfect … unless it isn’t. Weather during late autumn can be unpredictable, but we had it near perfect. Good luck to you, as well.

Just before we scooted home, we made a stop at Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. We stopped at the Visitor Center, and then went on a guided tour of Launch Control Facility Delta-01. Both are must-sees, but the Launch Control Facility requires a reservation. These nuclear weapon delivery systems are now thankfully in the back of our consciousness, and hopefully will remain there.

This road trip was my second favorite. My favorite is the Grand Circle. It’s a shame more people don’t hit the road nowadays. The expansive countryside of the West has awe-inspiring landscapes, a fascinating history, and friendly people eager to help a tenderfoot.

Talk is not cheap!

“People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. “ Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

“If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.” Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

When I was at the Tucson Festival of Books, I was asked how I learned to write dialogue. Although I had no intention of ever writing a movie script, I studied several books on screenwriting. Screenplays focus on dialogue with only sketchy descriptions of place. The spoken word is crucial for all movies that don’t spray spent casings all over the landscape or use explosive fireballs to punctuate scenes. So, if you want to improve your dialogue skills, study screenplays.

Dialogue exists in novels to move the plot forward or to reveal character, or both. There is no place for small talk in a novel. Every word that’s inside quotes—or outside, for that matter—must have a purpose. Dialogue is engineered by the author. It is not natural, but must sound natural. Authenticity comes from providing clues so the reader can fill in the blanks. For example, a hint of an accent is all that is needed for readers to hear a character speak a dialect.

Richard Ford wrote in The Lay of the Land, “You rarely miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.” This is perfect advice for your characters. Dialogue should be taut and tense. Off the top of my head, here are a few other thoughts on dialogue:

• Dialogue is not the place for exposition.
• Soliloquies are out of style.
• Characters should not tell each other what they both already know.
• Heavy accents and odd speech patterns take the reader out of the story—a mortal sin.
• Different characters should speak differently.
• Personality is revealed in how your characters speak and what they say.

These are not rules, but guidelines. Each one will be broken brilliantly by writers who know exactly what they are doing. I can’t wait to read their work.

Which bestselling author is on American currency?

Money is printed by the government, so the faces on our various bills tend to be politicians. Okay, they’re all politicians. Three were not presidents: Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill, and Salmon P. Chase on the discontinued $10,000 bill. Only one visage on U.S. currency was a bestselling author. In fact, this individual became fabulously wealthy because nearly every home in America owned a copy of one of his books. He also wrote a famous autobiography that has never been out of print.

Most politicians write memoirs or autobiographies to set the record straight, but Benjamin Franklin would probably have taken umbrage at being called a politician. He was a businessman, inventor, philanthropist, scientist, and writer. He just dabbled in politics. Benjamin Franklin was America’s true Renaissance Man. 

His writing made him one of the top 100 richest Americans in history. For nearly thirty years, only the Bible outsold Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, and his articles made the Pennsylvania Gazette the most successful newspaper in the colonies. Even today, schoolchildren can still recite his words. Mostly he wrote nonfiction, but he had the novelist talent for bending the truth to tell a good story. 

William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens have graced British currency, and in 2017 Jane Austen will join their ranks on the £10 note. They were fine writers as well, but here in America, the Franklin is a fine tribute to all of our great and striving authors.

Technology Run Amok?

JR Sanders posted a Facebook reference to a new reading technology. Instead of words spread across a page or screen, a stream of words is presented, one word at a time. You can see an interesting demonstration at the spritz home page. Supposedly, you can read much faster by not moving your eyes. Now you can read completely immobile. You do, however, still need to lift that cup of coffee to your lips and swallow.

Spritz claims you could read one of my Steve Dancy Tales in well under 2 hours. I’m not impressed. I searched all over the site, but found no new gizmo that will help me write faster. While I’m stuck at about a thousand words a day, my readers will plow through my stories at 1,000 words per minute! Something does not compute. I already feel stressed because it takes so long to publish the next book in the series.

I’m not sure what’s so new about this concept anyway; after all, ticker tapes have been around for eons, albeit missing the eye catching red letter, of course. I think there are some great applications for this technology, but not fiction. Fiction should be savored, not forced fed. And force fed was my impression of the Spritz demo. My attention could never lapse, I had difficulty absorbing numbers, and I couldn’t retrace my steps. I felt like I was at the gym trying to beat my personal best. Oh well, I’m an old fuddy-duddy. The kids flit from thing to thing so fast they probably wouldn't read fiction unless they could finish it before getting to the front of a TSA line at the airport.

I do have one question. Will paragraphs matter anymore?

Jack Reacher—my new role model?

I spent some time this morning with Steve Dancy. I didn’t write a lot of new material, but I did edit the last couple of chapters I’d written before we moved into our new home. I was able to get back to Steve because I’ve finished unpacking the last indoor box from our move. (Unfortunately, there are still loads of garage boxes yet to be dealt with.) You might think Steve Dancy is my favorite literary character, but I’ve recently developed a fondness for Lee Child’s character Jack Reacher. Reacher travels unfettered by personal belongings—no house, no car, no wardrobe, no knickknacks. Reacher carries only a toothbrush and buys new clothes when the ones he is wearing get dirty. Wow, the freedom. I, on the other hand, am anchored by countless possessions that possess me.

I enjoy the Jack Reacher novels and suspect Lee Child invented the character after a vexing move to a new house. If so, it was a brilliant way to transform hardship into largess. Dancy moves around as well, but through the magic of fiction, he transports everything he needs effortlessly. I wish I could jump into one of my books where everything happens in an ordered fashion. My order, of course. Unfortunately, I live in a world of corrugated board, cluttering stuff spread all over every flat surface, and pictures galore leaned against any open wall space. I think I’ll make a trip to the pharmacy to buy a toothbrush.

See ya on the other side ...

Instead of writing and blogging, I've been moving. What a pain. It's been twenty-two years since our last move and I forgot how hard it is. Boxes everywhere, all filled with more packing paper than possessions. We gave away about a third of our library before moving and we still have boxes of books as far as the eye can see. I hate corrugated board.

The popular refrains around the house are:

What is this?
Where is the rest of this?
and Why did we keep this?

I've heard there's no rest for the wicked, but I haven't been that bad. Really.

Paper Books are Alive and Well!

I was looking at my recent book sales and saw that a vast majority of them were e-books. Was the oft predicted demise of traditional books upon us?  Luckily, I keep good records of my book sales and noticed January had traditionally been a poor month for printed book sales. January had also been a blockbuster month for e-books. I surmise that it's all the fault of Christmas. Many avid readers of printed books received over a month's supply of the old fashioned variety on Christmas and were not yet in the market to buy new reading material. On the other hand, e-reader enthusiasts got new devices and gift cards for Christmas, so they went on a buying spree.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Here's a popular television ad that kinda backs me up that paper will be around for a while longer.



 The ad reminds me of the old joke that the paperless office will arrive just after the paperless bathroom.

Was Curly from City Slickers right all along?

One thing. Just one thing.

The Telegraph in London reports that “Scientists find secret to writing a best-selling novel.” Boy, was I eager to read that story. What claptrap. It concludes by stating, “Previous work has attempted to gain insights into the ‘secret recipe’ of successful books. But most of these studies were qualitative, based on a dozen books, and focused primarily on high-level content - the personalities of protagonists and antagonists and the plots. Our work examines a considerably larger collection - 800 books - over multiple genres, providing insights into lexical, syntactic, and discourse patterns that characterize the writing styles commonly shared among the successful literature.”

In other words, they counted the number of nouns, conjunctions, and such. Yup, I’m sure that’s the trick—arithmetic. According to these scientists, bestsellers shun action for introspective protagonists.

There used to be an old axiom of computing, GIGO, which meant garbage in, garbage out. Computers are obedient creatures. They do what they are told at the speed of light. If a scientist starts with faulty logic or data, the results smell rank. There is some good news in the study. Since it occurred in England, American tax dollars didn’t fund this particular busy-work. 

"There is no friend as loyal as a book.” Ernest Hemingway

We’re putting the finishing touches on our new home in Omaha. We bought a 1948 ranch style house that needed major updating.  In our last three homes we've had a library. Not this time. Instead we will a wall of bookshelves in our entry and another in a multipurpose basement. I plan on doing most of my writing on the sun porch.

This is a picture of Sting’s library in London as presented in Book Riot’s article “Libraries of the Rich and Famous.” None of our previous libraries ever looked anything like this. Darn. If I had piles of money, my new home would have a dedicated room for our book collection. It would include a very comfortable chair for me to sit in as I read my Kindle.

Time is stealing my future

I was reading BuzzFeed’s  “10 Lovable Things About Brick-And-Mortar Bookstores,” when I saw a photo that tugged my memory back to my days in Boston.  Boston is a great town. I lived there for a couple of years and commuted there for a decade more. Boston is brimming over with history. For instance, you can find buildings scattered all over that are more than two hundred years old. This was an eye-opener for a native of Southern California where everything over forty years old was torn down —buildings, people, traditions, and anything else with poor survival instincts.

Boston also has a fascinating collection of new and used bookstores. They seem to be everywhere. The store in this picture from the BuzzFeed article was my favorite.  Situated across from the Commons, it was not the best used bookstore in Boston, but it was the most fun. I spent untold hours combing through the stacks. It had everything, but you had to find it yourself, making this outdoor book market a treasure hunt. After you found and bought a pearl, you could examine it over coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts a couple doors down. Fond memories.

Then a realization hit me. It has been six years since I’ve visited Boston. Where has all the time gone? Damn it. Time is the culprit. There’s a lot more behind me than ahead.

I once told my grandson that I was a time traveler. Needless to say, he didn't believe me. Then I told him I had traveled from March 4th, 1945 directly to this point in time. He looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, "I get it," and walked away. Darn, what's it take to impress a seven year old?

Now I'm retired, so if I don’t count writing as work, which I don't, my time is my own. That thought made me feel better. My time is my own. I no longer rent my time to someone else who can demand that I do things I may or may not like. Much of my life may be behind me, but I can craft whatever's left to do whatever I want. That is pretty damn good. Maybe getting older is not as much of a bummer as I thought.

I think I’ll sign off now and enjoy the day with people I love.