Happy birthday to me...and Gar!

By PD Martin

Well, today is my birthday. When I first drew 22 May in the Wildcard Tuesday schedule I was going to swap it, but then I thought maybe a birthday post would be fitting. You know, another year older (although today I’m actually only a day older!), have I accomplished what I wanted in the past year, cool birthday presents, you know…easy, right? Plus, I discovered via Facebook alerts that I’m not the only Murderati with a 22 May birthday…hard to believe that both Gar and I were born on the same day! 

Anyway, here in Australia it’s night time – and I’ve had a fabulous day. But first, leading up to my birthday I’ve been feeling all reflective about this past year. What have I accomplished? What haven’t I accomplished in the year that perhaps I wanted to? Do you do that? 

Here are my runs on the board for 22 May 2011 to 22 May 2012:

• My daughter started school (big milestone for us both in this past year)
• I’ve gone crazy on the ebook strategy and released two Sophie Anderson short stories (The Missing), two true-crime shorts (When Justice Fails), The Wanderer (Pippa Dee fantasy novel) and Hell’s Fury (the first “PD Martin” book in over two years, and book 1 in a new series)

Things that I expected to happen this year, but haven’t:

• Really thought I’d have a new agent by now (my last one passed away nearly eighteen months ago)
• I thought I would have edited my mainstream drama novel and have it out at agents (too busy with the ebook stuff, I guess)
• Thought I’d be a little bit wealthier (financial wealth, that is … sigh)
• I thought I’d be slimmer (double sigh and pat of the tummy that doth protrude too much)

Still, all in all it’s been an excellent year. I’m happily married, loving family life (especially my gorgeous Grace), PLUS I’ve actually been very productive in terms of writing, especially in the last five months.

 

As for birthday presents. Here’s my catch: 

• Kindle Touch – sooooo excited!!!!!
• Bright pink nightie (yes, from Grace)
• Chocolates
• Wireless mouse (much-needed)
• Massager set (probably also much-needed but I need to sit down and relax long enough to use them)
• Cash (to be spent on heart rate monitor with calorie counter, I think)

And I’ve had an amazing day. Hubby took the day off work and we went to see Dark Shadows AND The Avengers. We’re both huge movie buffs but find actually getting to the movies much harder nowadays. Then there was birthday cake, and a stunning dinner. Yes, I’ve been spoilt. 

So … how do you celebrate and/or deal with birthdays? How’s your year going so far? And what’s your best birthday present ever? Hopefully Gar will stop by today to tell us about his birthday too! 

Happy birthday to me…and Gar! 

Keeping It Unbelievably Real

By Tania Carver

Or at least half of her.  It's Martyn here.  I’ve just got back from a week away, working hard on things to do with writing but not actually writing itself.  I know it’s expected of authors but it’s still time consuming and takes you away from what you’re supposed to be doing.

Not that it wasn’t enjoyable.  Far from it.  You see, for the past four years I’ve been Reader in Residence for the Theakstons International Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England (Or the Harrogate Festival for short, or just Harrogate, for even shorter).  I suppose a job description would be the go to guy for events involving and encouraging reader development among the audience and attendees for the Festival.  Part of that is the Big Read, which is what I’ve been on the road doing this week.

The Big Read is an annual event.  It takes a classic crime novel (Past books have been Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP, Christie’s MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and Highsmith’s THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY) and gets readers all over the North of England reading it then coming together to discuss it.  It’s become quite successful.  The books are supplied by the publisher, the events are held in libraries.  I go along and host each session and it can be hard work.  I mean not digging ditches hard work, but quite demanding.  I have to be on top of things and know my stuff.  But it’s also very rewarding.  It’s a great opportunity to talk to readers, engage (or re-engage) with novels, to become involved with and celebrate the genre we love and live in. 

This year’s book is Reginald Hill’s ON BEULAH HEIGHT.  It’s slightly different from the others in that Reg only died this January and he was the first of the chosen authors that I knew personally.  But it’s still a classic book.  And, for an added frisson, set in the area the Big Read takes place in.  Reg was also one of the first special guests at the very first Festival and the first recipient of the Theakstons Lifetime Achievement Award we thought this was a good way to honour his memory.  I hope it is.  I hope we do him proud.

But that’s just an aside.  I wanted to talk about something that arose out of where I was for the weekend.  I was booked to do an event alongside Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Frances Fyfield at the Astor Theatre in Deal, Kent.  Now Deal – for those of you who have never been and I’m guessing that’s quite a few – is an interesting place.  It’s a little seaside town on the Kent coast, just up from Dover, quite old and well conserved, and seems to have become a retreat for (usually rich and posh but not exclusively) the more bohemian-minded.  As a result, there are some genuinely interesting and lovely people there mixed in with some genuine eccentrics.  Think Midsommer (of ‘Murders’ fame) by the sea.  If that doesn’t work, imagine Patrick McGoohan being chased down the high street by a huge balloon.  You get the picture.  

I have to say, we were made very welcome.  Frances lives down there, as does mine and Val’s agent, so we were squired round to different people’s houses for food and drink.  It was like being invited to a party every three hours.  Consequently I think we consumed a week’s worth of food and drink (a lot of drink) in a couple of days.  And still did our event on Friday night.

And it was meeting one of the town eccentrics that got me – and Mark and Val – thinking.

We had been invited to a couple’s house for coffee.  A lovely couple, both archaeologists with fascinating stories, with a beautiful house on the sea front.  We sat on the veranda overlooking the beach chatting, drinking coffee and enjoying ourselves very much.  We were then joined by someone who I can only describe as a character.  Tall, thin, ascetic, imposing.  Dressed as if he’d just stepped out of the Weimar Republic and accompanied (or rather accessorised) by a small, dark, ugly dog.  He demanded he join us for coffee and came up.  Whereupon he, as Shakespeare once said, let loose his opinions.  This mainly involved making disparaging remarks, mainly about our clothes and professions.  Mark and Val and I were too gobsmacked to reply.  He was being quite offensive but we didn’t respond.  Not just because we were guests and therefore being polite but mainly because we were doing what all writers do in that kind of situation: filing him away for future use.  

Mark, Val and my agent eventually left to make our way to the next hosts, the next house and the next bout of eating and drinking, laughing as we went about the character we had just encountered.  My agent asked which one of us was going to be the first to use him in a novel.  And that’s when we fell a bit silent.  Because we realised that we couldn’t.  None of us could use him.  He was a larger than life character, a one off, someone who would need enormous toning down to appear in a novel.  Someone who, if presented as he was in real life, just wouldn’t be believable to a reader.  

And that was a shame, I thought, but it got me thinking.  In rather a sad way.  It’s one thing to encounter an extreme person and to use that encounter as a source for anecdotes to share with friends.  It’s quite another to use that person as a character – or even the basis of a character – in a novel.  And I’m not just talking about the morality of it.  I think all writers subscribe to Graham Greene’s statement about a writer having to possess that little chip of ice in their heart.  No.  What I mean is, how many times has a writer – and I’m not just thinking of myself here – been in a situation or encountered a person and thought, ‘There’s no way I could use that/him/her, no one would ever believe me’?  Yet the situation was experienced.  The person existed.

And in a way it’s a shame you can’t do that.  I remember when I was in drama school (I trained as an actor before I became a writer) a director told us why he didn’t have time for Method actors.  Method acting, he said, was something bad actors had to work at and good actors did instinctively.  And that a slavish adherence to the Method precluded any kind of spontaneity or surprise.  ‘How many times,’ he said, ‘have you walked down the street and seen something out of the ordinary?  Something unexpected?  And what would your response be as a Method actor?’  I knew what he was getting at.  There being more to Heaven and Earth than is dreamed off in a realist’s philosophies, as Shakespeare almost once said. 

I’ve thought about his words for years.  And when I met this character a few days ago and had a realistic novelist’s response to him it made me think of it again.  Was he right?  Should we be unafraid to present things and people that a reader may find implausible but were actually real?  Or should be temper our experiences to what a reader expects and prepare to be met with derision?

I don’t know the answer.  I’m not sure any of us do.  If anyone can throw light on the subject, please let me know. 

I’m off to the North of England for the second and final week of Big Read events now.  If I meet any more unbelievably real characters, I’ll let you know.    

WORD SPILL

by Stephen Jay Schwartz

Sometimes I have no room for blog-thought.

Sometimes I just let the words spill...

1.

In this little beach town

on any given morning

and especially in the morning

the world is good

The sun shines

and enough people are unemployed or retired

to enjoy the day

Even the bums

on their benches

in their madness

seem content

In the morning

before the bars and restaurants open

(their owners sweeping sand off the steps)

the cafes sell their coffee and

croissants and wi-fi

and the rare business man walks by

in a suit

drawing stares

from the rest of us

in jeans and shorts and wetsuits

driving bicycles and rollerblades and surf boards

The old and young

sporting tattoos

walking their dogs and

grandchildren

It's a different sound

in the morning

No drunken brawls over

women

Just the parrots

overhead

and the Coast Guard helicopter

and

in the morning

women dancing in the

streets

with babies in their arms.

2.

I have to remind myself

sometimes

that I want to write

that I do it because it's what I want

to do

that it's not a means to an end

that it's not the

work

or

the deadline

or

the career

In those times I'll pick up a pen

and a notebook

and write

what might be mistaken for

poetry

Because I know it won't be sold or,

likely,

published

it's just for me.

Because sometimes

I just want to write

3.

I'm never so happy as when I'm

petting a dog

The child in me erupts

I roll, laughing,

an idiot on the

sidewalk

wrestling the dog that only has eyes for me

"I've never seen him play like that"

"He usually doesn't like men"

"Okay, I think it's time we say goodbye"

The dog usually tires before I do

I'm never so happy as when I'm watching

the pelicans

fall

like Olympic divers

into the waves

their silly shapes and dangling legs

I'm never so happy as when children

catch my eye

And wave

and peek

and hide

and laugh

The laughter is the best

And when parents say

"She's usually so shy"

"He's really taken with you"

The kids

usually tire

before I do

I'm never so happy as when I watch

my own children

sleep

In quiet warm dreams

Eyes moving under the lids

Feet twitching

The dog curled between them

On occasion

I'll have a day

like today

and know happiness

What you bring and what you take away

Zoë Sharp

It’s the goal of any writer to engage the reader in the story to the point where they forget just about everything else. One of my biggest thrills has always been receiving emails or comments from people that go something along the lines of: “You cost me a night’s sleep—I just couldn’t put the book down!”

Trying to create characters that readers can sympathise or empathise with, be repulsed or engaged by, is what we strive for. People tell me they’ve cried over some of the things that have happened in my books. I confess I’ve shed a tear or two myself while reading something that I can really connect to on an emotional level.

But it seems there’s much more to it than that.

Research by the Ohio State University has recently identified what they call “experience-taking” from works of fiction. Basically, this is what happens to people who find themselves closely identifying with and responding to the emotional thoughts and beliefs of characters. In the right circumstances, experience-taking may lead to real changes—albeit temporary—in behaviour and attitude.

In one study carried out by the university, seventy male heterosexual college students were asked to read a Day In The Life Of story about a fictional student. There were three versions of this story—one where the character was revealed to be gay early on in the narrative, one where this reveal happened late in the story, and one where the main character was heterosexual.

The results showed that these test readers reported higher levels of experience-taking from the version in which the sexual orientation was revealed later rather than earlier. It seems that if the students knew almost from the beginning that the character was not like them, it prevented them from really identifying with that character and experience-taking. But those who learned this fact late were just as likely to experience-take as those who read the heterosexual version.

And not only that, but they also reported what is described as “significantly more favourable attitudes towards homosexuals”. Similar results were recorded if the character was of different racial background to the student readers.

Experience-taking can have other subtle side-effects, according to Ohio State. Another experiment involved a story about a student encountering various obstacles—such as car problems, weather, long queues—on his way to vote. The different versions varied by having first-person or third-person narratives, as well as having the student attend either the same university, or a completely different one.

It possibly won’t surprise you to learn that the first-person account by a student from the same university had the highest level of experience-taking.

But it may surprise you to hear that this experiment was carried out on the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections. The participants were all eligible to vote, and when questioned later it was revealed that sixty-five percent of those who read that first-person/same-university story voted, compared to only twenty-nine percent who’d read a different version.

But experience-taking doesn’t happen every time you sit down to read. It only happens when the reader is able to fully immerse and lose themselves in the story, including to a certain extent putting aside their own identity while they’re doing so.

In one example, students were unable to experience-take if constantly reminded of their own self-image by the introduction of a mirror in the cubicle where they were reading. In these instances they were more likely to “perspective-take” instead, meaning they could understand what the character was going through, but without losing sight of their own identity.

Nevertheless, the university concluded that experience-taking could be very powerful because it was an unconscious process.

This information was particularly interesting to me as I write a first-person narrative with my Charlie Fox books and people have always told me how much they identify with the character. Charlie is a survivor, who’s come through some nasty experiences and developed inner strength from them.

I’ve always written primarily to entertain. But if people can take something of this inner strength of character, this determination not to be a victim, to walk tall and equal in an unequal world, then my work here is done.

What about you, ‘Rati? Have you ever found yourself experience-taking or perspective-taking from books you’ve read? Or books you’ve written, for that matter?

This week’s Word of the Week is eidolon, meaning a phantom or apparition, a confusing reflection or reflected image. From the Greek eidos form, from idein (aorist) to see. Also with the same derivation is idol, which has the archaic meaning of a phantom or a fantasy.

Finally, just to let you know that fellow 'Rati PD Martin has a brand new book out today. HELL'S FURY, book one in her new spy thriller series. Buy it today for $3.99 or £2.55

Please share your laughs with me

by Pari

This was going to be a profound blog about my meeting Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and reveling in the presence of someone who has given so much for so long on behalf of so many people.  I also planned to regale you with stories about how when the Secret Service gets involved in an event, well, things change.

But you know what? I’m pooped. I’m bone tired from having worked on a public happening for months and months and then experiencing the mental, physical and emotional exhaustion of the letdown the day after all that work comes to fruition.

I just don’t have much oomph left in me at all.

However, I do still have the capacity to laugh. And right now I want to fill my cup with as much enjoyment as possible.  

Please help me do it. Have you discovered any new websites that tickle the heck out of you?

Here’s one I learned about this weekend. Much of its content is incredibly inappropriate.
When you open these links, be sure you’re someplace where loud incredulous laughter is allowed; I don't want you to get into trouble at work.

For someone like me who has spent years in PR and marketing, Cracked.com contains many a dream come true. Among its entries are wonderfully horrid ideas realized and turned into products because a bunch of brilliant people didn’t think things through quite as well as they assumed they did. This is the link my friend’s daughter showed me on Mother’s Day.  It takes you to unintentionally x-rated toys (Don’t look if you’re not into that kind of thing). This other link, which I found today, brought me great joy. I especially like Spader Man. And there's this one with the Norman Rockwell.

Now, please return the favor. Send me a couple of urls that please you -- silly games, goofy products, jokes, fun videos, whatever  -- and include the reasons you like them.  

I’m at work and can’t play on the computer, but I’ll check them out during the coming week when I get home and need a good laugh.

Thanks in advance.