The Big Fear

    First, a bit of BSP: I recently decided to try an experiment in electronic publishing. My friends J.A. Konrath and Lee Goldberg have had some success putting stuff up on Kindle and other e-pub formats. So I thought I'd stick my own  toe in the digital water, so to speak,  and put my novel STORM SURGE on line, for those of you who are electronically enabled. In keeping with the idea that e-pubbing should be cheap, it's only $1.99. 

     You can find the Kindle version HERE, and Smashwords has other formats HERE. Let me know how you like it. I'll report back,  as Joe and Lee have done, on my experience with the experiment.

     Now, on with the show:

It's spring again. Gorgeous outside, despite the yellow clouds of pollen hanging so thick in the air that it looks like we're under some sort of chemical warfare attack. It's warm, the trees are blooming, it's a great time to be alive. 

So naturally, perverse critter that I am, I'm thinking about fear.

Recently, while looking for something else,  I stumbled across the work of photographer Joshua Hoffine, who's done a stunning series on childhood fears:

  If you click through (and I recommend that you do), be warned that some of these images are extremely disturbing and some are definitely NSFW.

 (All images used with the permission of the photographer, who also invites you to visit his blog).

 

     A short time later, I was having a conversation with my wife, who's currently reading a Nevada Barr book that features spelunkers--people who explore caves for fun.  As she described passages about exploring narrow passages deep in the earth, crawling along chutes too narrow to even sit up or turn around in, I recalled one of my own childhood terrors.

   When I was growing up, there were a number of storm drains and drainage pipes in my neighborhood:  long, narrow concrete tubes to divert storm run-off away from the roads and people's yards. I remember looking down one of those pipes and wondering what it would be like to be crawling  through one of those and get stuck halfway through, unable to go forward or back, where no one could reach you or hear your cries, where the only thing to do would be die a long slow horrible death, alone in the dark....

    I was a lot of fun as a kid, believe me. But you will never,  EVER get me into one  of those chutes underground.

    It  started me thinking about how everyone's afraid of something:

    I was talking to my girlfriend the other day, and I asked her, "what are you afraid of?" And she said, "I'm afraid we're growing apart, that you'll leave me some day and that I'll die alone. What are you afraid of?" and I said "Bears." -Mike Birbiglia

    And how, despite the fact we hold many fears in common, each of us has, locked within us, the one Big Fear, the one thing we just can't abide: 

'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.' George Orwell, 1984.

  And then I started thinking about my current WIP. One of the antagonists is a former military specialist in PSYWAR--psychological warfare. His specialty involved things like this. His job was to scare the enemy, literally, to death. And now, he's come home, bringing his private war with him, wielding his favorite weapon: stark terror. 

   And so,  in the interest of research, I want to hear what it is that scares other people. So tell me....what are you most afraid of? I'm not talking angst here, or worry. I'm talking about the one thing on earth that even thinking about makes you cold. The thing that can send you skitttering backwards across a room to get away. What's your "worst thing in the world"?

    Sharing time, boys and girls...

Separated By a Common Language

by J.D. Rhoades

     As most of you know,  I live in a Southern state. Since my area is a big resort destination, though, we have  a  lot of transplants from various places, particularly the Northeast and, for some reason, Ohio. (Will the last person out of Akron please turn off the lights?)

    There are any number of  funny stories illustrating the linguistic  misunderstandings that occur between Americans and our British cousins (Hi  Zoe!) I  may have told the story here of the time I was working as a DJ in a hotel bar and played a song that's popular in the Southeastern US  extolling the joys of "shagging" (it's a dance). This led to much consternation on the part of a nice British couple at a nearby table.   The disconnect led George Bernard Shaw to famously observe that the British and the Americans are "two peoples separated by a common language."

     You don't have to cross the ocean, however,  to find locutions that puzzle, baffle, and confuse. We get plenty of that with folks from right here within our own national borders.  Most often, I see it in court, which is the place where worlds  collide.  Lately I've been hearing so many examples in the day job that I figured I might was well use them in a Murderati post, for you fans of using  regionalisms in your writing--and, frankly, because they amuse me.

"I want to say": this is used by someone who's really not sure of an answer, but who's giving it their best guess. Such as:

 Q: "How long did the two of you live together?"
 A: "I want to say...two years?"

Clueless comeback: "Don't tell me what you want to say, tell me the truth."

A: "Huh?"

"Whenever": this is used as a substitute for "when." Example "Whenever I was in high school..."

Clueless comeback: "Wait, how many times did you go?"

A: "Huh?"

 "Kindly": Its use is fading a bit, but you still hear older people from out in the country use this one  to mean "kind of." I once heard an older lady, from the teeming metropolis of Black Ankle, North Carolina, admit on the stand that her son had, on occasion,  been "kindly violent." A social worker from (of course)  Ohio, who'd been involved in the case, immediately got into a state of the highest dudgeon. When it was her turn on the witness stand she blasted the old woman: "That's what's wrong with this family! There's no such thing as 'kindly violent!" Embarassed silence. Finally the judge (who, as it happens, was born and raised in the same county as the old lady) leaned over and asked the social worker:  "you're not from around here, are you?"

"Talking": This was common in the African American community a few years ago. It means, basically, having sex. I rermember talking to a  client who had cross warrants with an older man for assault with a deadly weapon. He informed me that it was all a result of a misunderstanding involving the older fellow's daughter: "Me and her been talking for while and I guess her daddy got mad." So, I naturally thought the older fellow had overreacted to someone merely striking up a conversation with his litte girl, and I was all ready to paint him as the unreasonably violent agressor. Fortunately, an older colleague set me straight before I made a colossal ass of myself. More than usual,  I mean.

So, wherever you're from, tell me what regionalisms from your area tend to befuddle the average outsider.  Or tell me about a localism that befuddled you.

Hallelujah, Everybody Say Cheese

by J.D. Rhoades

It's Christmas Eve Eve, as we sometimes say.  I've got to tell you, the motivation to do anything useful has fallen off drastically for me, the closer I get to the 25th. I'm ready for a few days off. Hell, I've been ready for a few days off since I came back from Thanksgiving. So rather than ruminations on writing, marketing, life,  the universe, or everything, I offer you a few laughs for the holidays.

By now, you've probably seen dozens of those YouTube videos of insanely complex Christmas light displays. And everyone by now has heard of the popular video game Guitar Hero. Well, according to this blog, "former Disney Special Effects Guru Ric Turner" has combined the two concepts: 

Using a Nintendo Wii and few high tech lighting controllers from Light-O-rama, Ric has rigged up his very own neighbor-terrorizing, virtual guitar challenge: Christmas Light Hero.

Check it out:

 I think it's worth it just to see the grin on the kid's face.

From the sublime to the...well, kind of disturbing, here's Euro-disco-sensation  Gunther, with the Ding Dong Song (somewhat NSFW):

Pray to the Baby Jesus that that's meant to be a joke.

Speaking of things that were meant to be a joke, this Kansas City Homeowner:

Had his heart in the right place when he hung up this "display" of a decorating mishap. (No, it's not real). But he soon discovered that it might have been a little too realistic:

I would hear screech after screech in front of my house from people slamming on the brakes or quickly turning into my driveway and, many times, into my yard. I really needed to take him down as I'm sure there would have been wrecks...a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder, almost killed herself by putting it against the house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy).

As Murderati's Resident Redneck, I of  course,  have to share with you my favorite Christmas song, Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas From the Family."

Happy Holidays Y'all!

Cover Me

by J.D. Rhoades

A few days ago, I was browsing in one of those big chain bookstores when a title on the "staff recommendations" shelf   caught my eye:

Two thoughts went through my head, one following hard on the heels of the other: (1) "Hmmm, that looks interesting," and (2) "If you are ever seen in public reading this book, you will be marked for life as the skeeziest middle-aged creep ever to walk the planet."

I didn't get the book.

Yes, I'm one of those people who  read in public. You can see us in the parks and restaurants, our meals or drinks barely tasted, our minds wandering in whatever world we've decided to carry with us to wherever we've come to rest. But as a public reader, I occasionally find myself leaving a book at home, even one I'm totally into, because of the cover.

I've heard that in Japan, it's not considered remarkable for middle-aged salarymen to openly read hard-core pornographic manga on the subway. But I can't imagine even sitting in Mac's Breakfast Anytime reading,  for example,

Or:

without drawing stares.

It was awkward enough the Christmas I opened a box at my in-laws' house and pulled out a gift from my sister-in-law:

 which resulted in those frozen smiles my mother- and father-in-law  always get when they're confronted with something even vaguely risque. (They are, to be fair, extremely nice people, but they don't know from hardboiled, much less noir).

It's not just the covers with steamy subject matter or scantily clad women. I don't go in much for self-help or self-improvement books (can't you tell?) and I've never read

But can you imagine reading it in front of a room full of people? And what would you think of someone reading one of these:

over their MegaMaxi Enchilada and ElGrande Nachos (with extra cheese) at Bob's Burrito Barn? Nothing complimentary, I'm thinking.

Culturally sensitive guy that I am, I once left

at home because I was paranoid about getting the stink-eye from the wait staff at the Peking Wok.

I'm sure that the science fiction fans among you are familiar with the phenomenon. SF and fantasy, after all,  are famous  for some of the cheesiest, worst-conceived covers ever. There are, of course, the types of fantasy covers that John Scalzi once summed up as "strippers with swords," but there are some classic SF covers that, shall we say, give one pause. Like these...

...which are, to put it mildly, Freudian as hell.

What do you think? Am I just being neurotic?  Do you read in public? Have you ever left a book home that you wanted to read because of the cover? Or do you just not give a damn? I'm particularly interested in hearing from the romance fans, who are used to stuff like this:

(Okay, that's not an actual title. It's from this great website of Romance Covers That  Never Were, which I recommend to all).

Hope all the US 'Rati have a happy Thanksgiving, and all our non-US friends...well, have a good Thursday!

Rust Never Sleeps

I am supposed to be a writer, and unless I do a little writing everyday it’s hard to tell that’s what I am.

-Otis Twelve

I turned my latest work in to my agent a couple of weeks ago. And then I did...nothing.

Oh, I still did the newspaper column and the Murderati posts as they came due. Those tend to take about an evening to write and edit. 

But the thing is, I'm what I optimistically call "between publishers" right now. I don't have editor's notes to pore over,  or copy edits, or promo stuff to do. I'm waiting to see what happens next. While I wait, I haven't been doing any fiction writing. I've been reading, hanging out,  playing with the new puppy, picking up the guitar again...that's the good stuff. But I'm also watching a lot more TV and drinking a bit more than is really  good for me.

After a week or so, I began  feeling restless, like there was a tickle in the back of my brain. I know that feeling well...that's  stories and ideas in the back of my head, scratching to get out.

And I've written...nothing.

Because I'm waiting to see what happens next. Or so I tell myself. Sometimes I tell myself I'm just "recharging the batteries", which I suppose is at least partially true.  However I rationalize it,  I haven't been working on a fiction project for the first time in five or six years. Even  during the times I was goofing off and feeling guilty about not working on a project,  I was goofing off FROM something, if that makes sense.

It's ironic, because during this short hiatus,  I'd done a couple of appearances and classes in which I solemnly told aspiring authors  that in order to consider yourself a real writer, you have to write every day. And I meant it, too. Every time I said it, though. those  little mocking voices in the back of my head went "so what does that say about you, you fraud?"

Finally, the other day, I sat down and started to try to write a scene in a book I'd been sort of desultorily outlining while I was finishing up the last one. It's quite different from what I have out on submission, which in its turn was quite different from anything I'd done before. But I could see it, I could hear it, I could feel it. And if I could do  those things, I could get it written down.

Except I couldn't. Nothing came. I wrote a bit. I deleted it. I wrote a bit more. I checked my e-mail.  I checked Twitter and Facebook. I went back to what I'd written. It sucked. I deleted it.

I was rusty. After two friggin' weeks, I was rusty. I'd lost the rhythm  of working every day. It reminded me of picking up the guitar again after a long layoff. When you do that, all the calluses on your fretting hand  get soft and the  fingers don't leap  right to the notes with the assurance you only get when the memories are engraved into the nerves and muscles through practice. What I was putting down on the page was the literary equivalent of buzzing notes and blown chords.

I'm not worried. Not much. I'm keeping at it, because this new book can be really good.   I know, just like the guitar, I'll get it back. It'll start flowing again. But I'm here to warn you:

Rust never sleeps.

So...what's your longest layoff from writing, and what was the effect? How long did it take you to get your groove back? Readers, have you ever picked a skill up after a long layoff? How did it go?