What do Michael Connelly and I have in common?
Now I see some head-scratching as some of my friends try making the comparison. I’ll make it easy for you. We share a number of things in common.
We’re both natives of Pennsylvania. We’re both male. We both write mysteries (okay, his are better known and sell far in excess of mine). We’re both former reporters and worked the crime beat. We both knew early on we wanted to be writers. Our interest in the subject was sparked by our youthful reading.
Enough with the comparisons. I could have as easily chosen a number of other writers born in Pennsylvania—John Dickson Carr (master of the locked room mystery and a favorite in my early introduction to the genre), John D. MacDonald or the noir master David Goodis. For my purpose, I could as well have chosen a number of admirable women writers born in the Keystone State: Jane Haddam, Lisa Scottoline, Martha Grimes or even Mary Roberts Rinehart.
Place of birth is of no consequence in making a writer. Nor is gender. Those are matters over which none of us has control. What does actually contribute to our becoming writers, though, is our early reading, our life experience, our association with other people. This mix, which may or may not be augmented by educational experience, is the generative factor.
Whether we succeed depends as much on persistence as on background. There are many others with similar circumstances who set out to become writers and gave up because they weren’t willing to persevere.
That, my friends, is the telling ingredient.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Meet Aaron Brubaker
Aaron Brubaker is the police chief of Swatara Creek in my Sticks Hetrick mystery series.
Though they’ve become closer in later books, Brubaker is both a little jealous and suspicious of Hetrick. Though he has more than 20 years in law enforcement, he readily acknowledges the former chief has something he lacks.
“Most of the time, Brubaker liked his job as police chief of the town of Swatara Creek. It entailed a certain amount of power and gave him respect he’d never expected to have. Normally he faced nothing more taxing than handing out parking tickets and dealing with occasional Saturday night drunks and mischievous kids.” (from Something In Common, Whiskey Creek Press, 2006)
But when it came to murder, he felt out of his depth. It was for that reason he called Hetrick in as a special consultant on their first joint case in Something In Common. Hetrick had dealt with murder, both as a police chief and earlier in his career as a state trooper. Still, Brubaker wanted the arrangement kept between them. His was a political appointment. He didn’t want those supervisors thinking he wasn’t up to the job.
Brubaker is a good, honest man; a good family man, and a good cop. He has grown in the subsequent novels, Cruel Cuts and Corruption’s Child. But even in the fourth novel in the series (awaiting publication) he still harbors a suspicion Hetrick wants his old job back.
Though they’ve become closer in later books, Brubaker is both a little jealous and suspicious of Hetrick. Though he has more than 20 years in law enforcement, he readily acknowledges the former chief has something he lacks.
“Most of the time, Brubaker liked his job as police chief of the town of Swatara Creek. It entailed a certain amount of power and gave him respect he’d never expected to have. Normally he faced nothing more taxing than handing out parking tickets and dealing with occasional Saturday night drunks and mischievous kids.” (from Something In Common, Whiskey Creek Press, 2006)
But when it came to murder, he felt out of his depth. It was for that reason he called Hetrick in as a special consultant on their first joint case in Something In Common. Hetrick had dealt with murder, both as a police chief and earlier in his career as a state trooper. Still, Brubaker wanted the arrangement kept between them. His was a political appointment. He didn’t want those supervisors thinking he wasn’t up to the job.
Brubaker is a good, honest man; a good family man, and a good cop. He has grown in the subsequent novels, Cruel Cuts and Corruption’s Child. But even in the fourth novel in the series (awaiting publication) he still harbors a suspicion Hetrick wants his old job back.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
It's All in the Imagination
“And as the imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
That stanza from Shakespeare defines for me the act of literary creation. I would carry it another step forward to define a particular literary form—that of the horror tale. A story in the Oct. 28 edition of the Washington Post had a round up of favorite horror stories of some well known authors. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR2009102703745.html
What constitutes a horror story is a subjective matter. What chills me might leave you cold and vice versa. I contend a central factor must be an element that is fear-inspiring. To quote Shakespeare again from that same noble work:
“Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”
It’s all to do with the imagination, baby. Webster defines fear as apprehension of evil or danger; dread; anxiety. All conditions deriving from our imagination.
As I said, what gives me goose-bumps may bother you not a whit. I’m not afraid of snakes, but spiders give me the willies. I know others who are psyched out by clowns, monkeys and other critters most find innocuous.
It’s all in the imagination.
Frankly, I’ve had enough with the vampires. They’re too familiar to be scary anymore and few have come up to Stoker’s Dracula. And the slash and gore stuff so popular in film is (sorry fans) not horror.
Some tales that have frightened (and delighted me) would include Poe’s The Premature Burial, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and his Thrawn Janet (despite the dialect), and W. W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw.
I’m sure you have your own list.
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
That stanza from Shakespeare defines for me the act of literary creation. I would carry it another step forward to define a particular literary form—that of the horror tale. A story in the Oct. 28 edition of the Washington Post had a round up of favorite horror stories of some well known authors. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR2009102703745.html
What constitutes a horror story is a subjective matter. What chills me might leave you cold and vice versa. I contend a central factor must be an element that is fear-inspiring. To quote Shakespeare again from that same noble work:
“Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”
It’s all to do with the imagination, baby. Webster defines fear as apprehension of evil or danger; dread; anxiety. All conditions deriving from our imagination.
As I said, what gives me goose-bumps may bother you not a whit. I’m not afraid of snakes, but spiders give me the willies. I know others who are psyched out by clowns, monkeys and other critters most find innocuous.
It’s all in the imagination.
Frankly, I’ve had enough with the vampires. They’re too familiar to be scary anymore and few have come up to Stoker’s Dracula. And the slash and gore stuff so popular in film is (sorry fans) not horror.
Some tales that have frightened (and delighted me) would include Poe’s The Premature Burial, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and his Thrawn Janet (despite the dialect), and W. W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw.
I’m sure you have your own list.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Welcome to Swatara Creek
There is a Swatara Creek, but no town of that name in Pennsylvania. The Swatara Creek of which I write is solely the invention of this author, though it is representative of many of the older Susquehanna River towns that have become bedroom communities for the more metropolitan areas of the Commonwealth.
The Swatara Creek of which I write is the fictional home of Daniel ‘Sticks’ Hetrick, retired police chief of the community and now unofficial consultant to his less experienced successor, Aaron Brubaker.
The town sits on a promontory in a bend of the stream for which it is named. What follows is from Something In Common, first in the Hetrick mystery series:
“The town owes it existence to the descendants of one Jacob Koontz who acquired the land circa 1754 after immigrating from Germany. Tradition said the rise had been the site of an Indian village at some time before the coming of Koontz and there’s evidence to support the legend since it’s still possible to find an occasional flint arrowhead if one looks hard enough down on the flats along the creek after a hard spring rain. It was said Koontz went through two wives and produced a dozen children before he decided the land was not suited to farming; the soil being too shallow and brittle with shale to produce much more than the broom grass that already covered the land when he arrived.
“So old Koontz turned his attention to providing his neighbors in that misbegotten wilderness with what was missing, and what he felt was most needed in their empty lives. He opened the first tavern in the county in a large limestone building which stands yet today on the square, though it now serves as the village municipal building, police station and library. Koontz’s enterprise flourished and led, naturally, to the distilling of whiskey.
“Thus from a simple pot still behind the tavern came the industry that gave birth to the village, which was known for generations afterward as Koontztown. His descendants grew rich and fat and complacent and Koontz Rye Whiskey became a favored brand in that area of the state and was even shipped as far away as Connecticut. By the 1800s, the distillery now located down on the flat provided employment for some two hundred men who resided with their families in the town, and the railroad even built a spur line up along the creek to service the plant. If things had continued as they were, the place might still be Koontztown. But after Prohibition closed down the distillery, the town was in danger of dying and would have had it not been for the arrival of LeRoy Finkbine who purchased the empty distillery and established his shoe factory, which provided employment for those who remained in the moribund community.”
(Next time, Aaron Brubaker)
The Swatara Creek of which I write is the fictional home of Daniel ‘Sticks’ Hetrick, retired police chief of the community and now unofficial consultant to his less experienced successor, Aaron Brubaker.
The town sits on a promontory in a bend of the stream for which it is named. What follows is from Something In Common, first in the Hetrick mystery series:
“The town owes it existence to the descendants of one Jacob Koontz who acquired the land circa 1754 after immigrating from Germany. Tradition said the rise had been the site of an Indian village at some time before the coming of Koontz and there’s evidence to support the legend since it’s still possible to find an occasional flint arrowhead if one looks hard enough down on the flats along the creek after a hard spring rain. It was said Koontz went through two wives and produced a dozen children before he decided the land was not suited to farming; the soil being too shallow and brittle with shale to produce much more than the broom grass that already covered the land when he arrived.
“So old Koontz turned his attention to providing his neighbors in that misbegotten wilderness with what was missing, and what he felt was most needed in their empty lives. He opened the first tavern in the county in a large limestone building which stands yet today on the square, though it now serves as the village municipal building, police station and library. Koontz’s enterprise flourished and led, naturally, to the distilling of whiskey.
“Thus from a simple pot still behind the tavern came the industry that gave birth to the village, which was known for generations afterward as Koontztown. His descendants grew rich and fat and complacent and Koontz Rye Whiskey became a favored brand in that area of the state and was even shipped as far away as Connecticut. By the 1800s, the distillery now located down on the flat provided employment for some two hundred men who resided with their families in the town, and the railroad even built a spur line up along the creek to service the plant. If things had continued as they were, the place might still be Koontztown. But after Prohibition closed down the distillery, the town was in danger of dying and would have had it not been for the arrival of LeRoy Finkbine who purchased the empty distillery and established his shoe factory, which provided employment for those who remained in the moribund community.”
(Next time, Aaron Brubaker)
Friday, October 23, 2009
Meet Sticks Hetrick
Daniel “Sticks” Hetrick is the lead character in a mystery series named for him. Though he’s the primary, there’s a cast of continuing characters and I’ll be introducing others in coming weeks.
In the first novel in the series, Something In Common, Hetrick was introduced as the retired police chief of the rural community of Swatara Creek, Pennsylvania. His successor in the job, acknowledging his more limited experience, reluctantly opened the door for Hetrick to act as an unofficial consultant to the department. There is a continuing element of rivalry in their relationship, though they’ve become closer friends in the later novels.
In addition to his years with the local police department, Hetrick previously served with the state police. His retirement was precipitated by the illness and subsequent death of his wife, Sarah, as well as a feud between him and his political overseer. Both issues continue to haunt him and frequently result in personal conflicts.
Hetrick had been bored in retirement. The challenges of his new responsibilities and comradeship with Brubaker and, particularly, his protégés, Harry Minnich and Flora Vastine have given him a new lease on life.
In the second novel, Cruel Cuts, he renewed acquaintance with an old friend and nearly became romantically involved. Though it didn’t occur then, a new romantic possibility cropped up in the third novel, Corruption’s Child, in the person of Anita Baker. Will love change Hetrick? That remains to be seen.
In the first novel in the series, Something In Common, Hetrick was introduced as the retired police chief of the rural community of Swatara Creek, Pennsylvania. His successor in the job, acknowledging his more limited experience, reluctantly opened the door for Hetrick to act as an unofficial consultant to the department. There is a continuing element of rivalry in their relationship, though they’ve become closer friends in the later novels.
In addition to his years with the local police department, Hetrick previously served with the state police. His retirement was precipitated by the illness and subsequent death of his wife, Sarah, as well as a feud between him and his political overseer. Both issues continue to haunt him and frequently result in personal conflicts.
Hetrick had been bored in retirement. The challenges of his new responsibilities and comradeship with Brubaker and, particularly, his protégés, Harry Minnich and Flora Vastine have given him a new lease on life.
In the second novel, Cruel Cuts, he renewed acquaintance with an old friend and nearly became romantically involved. Though it didn’t occur then, a new romantic possibility cropped up in the third novel, Corruption’s Child, in the person of Anita Baker. Will love change Hetrick? That remains to be seen.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
I'LL TAKE 'MANHATTAN'
Woody Allen. You either love or hate his work. There is no in-between.
Like most of his admirers I have my likes and dislikes in his oeuvre. I was thinking of this the other night as I watched a showing of Manhattan. The film is one of my favorites—right up there with the marvelous Hannah and Her Sisters and topping (in my prejudiced opinion) Annie Hall.
All three films have elements of the standard Allen themes and show a strong European rather than Hollywood influence. My ranking of favorites is more subjective than objective and the films, of themselves, are not the subject of this essay.
Rather I’m considering what a writer may learn from Allen. He is more than a screenwriter and director (possibly one of the best the country has produced). He has been a stand up comedian an actor and even a musician. But primarily he is a writer.
And because of that, we can learn from him. His films and other work have much to say about the importance of character development, about scenes and pacing, experimentation and the ultimate value of plot. Allen says he never titles a film until it’s finished because it may not end as he originally envisioned it.
With a repertoire of more than 50 films, two Oscars and 14 other nominations you would think the man would be confident in his expectation of success. You’d be wrong. And that’s not a reflection of his famous neurotic tendencies. As he said in a recent interview, each film is independent of the others and a new trial-by-experience adventure.
And that’s one of the most important things we can learn from him—each story, each book, each whatever it is you’re writing provides a new challenge to be met and should be treated as such.
Like most of his admirers I have my likes and dislikes in his oeuvre. I was thinking of this the other night as I watched a showing of Manhattan. The film is one of my favorites—right up there with the marvelous Hannah and Her Sisters and topping (in my prejudiced opinion) Annie Hall.
All three films have elements of the standard Allen themes and show a strong European rather than Hollywood influence. My ranking of favorites is more subjective than objective and the films, of themselves, are not the subject of this essay.
Rather I’m considering what a writer may learn from Allen. He is more than a screenwriter and director (possibly one of the best the country has produced). He has been a stand up comedian an actor and even a musician. But primarily he is a writer.
And because of that, we can learn from him. His films and other work have much to say about the importance of character development, about scenes and pacing, experimentation and the ultimate value of plot. Allen says he never titles a film until it’s finished because it may not end as he originally envisioned it.
With a repertoire of more than 50 films, two Oscars and 14 other nominations you would think the man would be confident in his expectation of success. You’d be wrong. And that’s not a reflection of his famous neurotic tendencies. As he said in a recent interview, each film is independent of the others and a new trial-by-experience adventure.
And that’s one of the most important things we can learn from him—each story, each book, each whatever it is you’re writing provides a new challenge to be met and should be treated as such.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Tempted To Idleness
Despite all the devices intended to make our lives easier it never fails to amaze me how many people complain of a lack of time to accomplish all they want to do. I can’t claim to exempt myself here, for I’ve made the same complaint often enough.
Yet, when you compare our lives, it’s astonishing how much people lacking our conveniences accomplished in the past.
Take Dickens, as an example. The man was a veritable fountain of energy. In a life of less than 60 years he penned 20 novels—many of them initially produced as weekly or monthly serials—none of which has ever gone out of print. He would often start one novel while halfway through another and in the midst of continuous journalism. Add to that three short story collections, numerous other short stories, non-fiction, poetry and plays.
And, at the same time, he was heavily involved in social reform efforts, doing public readings, engaged in family and social life and having a secret fling with a young mistress. Nor was he a sedentary creature. He was an energetic walker, often going more than 10 miles a day.
Dickens is only one example of many. There are many similar cases to be found in biographies of writers, artists and other notables of the past. There are lessons to be learned from their example.
What has happened to us? Are we so distracted by our conveniences and entertainment devices we willingly surrender our creativity to their temptation?
Yet, when you compare our lives, it’s astonishing how much people lacking our conveniences accomplished in the past.
Take Dickens, as an example. The man was a veritable fountain of energy. In a life of less than 60 years he penned 20 novels—many of them initially produced as weekly or monthly serials—none of which has ever gone out of print. He would often start one novel while halfway through another and in the midst of continuous journalism. Add to that three short story collections, numerous other short stories, non-fiction, poetry and plays.
And, at the same time, he was heavily involved in social reform efforts, doing public readings, engaged in family and social life and having a secret fling with a young mistress. Nor was he a sedentary creature. He was an energetic walker, often going more than 10 miles a day.
Dickens is only one example of many. There are many similar cases to be found in biographies of writers, artists and other notables of the past. There are lessons to be learned from their example.
What has happened to us? Are we so distracted by our conveniences and entertainment devices we willingly surrender our creativity to their temptation?
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