Keep Your Mustache Out of the Hole

It's been a bit, but I'm back in full force. You know how those final edits can be. One "find" feature search of a word like "had" unearths all kinds of ugliness. But while I was seeking out potential things to add to chapter breaks, like quotes-which usually annoy me, so why would I go there?-I found old-school phone etiquette rules published before Heloise or Miss Manners were out of diapers. They were so charming, I added them to my must-share list.

Circa 1910-ish, ATT sent out telephone pledge cards to all their customers that read: "I believe in the Golden Rule and will try to be as Courteous and Considerate over the Telephone as if Face to Face." I suppose they expected the rich-y families who could afford such a luxury to gather around the parlor and recite it as if it were Gospel. If they knew we now butt-dial in discourteousness, they might declare "Astonishing!" as they rub their tonic-slicked mustaches in disgust. I love this 1910 ATT ad:

Not only is the guy on the left a handsome Kevin Costner, but he's sporting a pleasing smile while talking to the grumpy old codger on the right. Next time I'm tempted to unleash on my security company for withholding my refund for their mistake for yet another month, I'm going to think of Mr. Costner and how he was able to hold it together while the old guy uses his fist and his middle finger to make his point. Whew! Glad there weren't video phones in that decade. Tisk-Tisk, you old fart. Profanity via telephone was punishable by fine or jail time.



Speaking of mustaches...

"Speak directly into the mouthpiece," said one instruction manual, "keeping mustache out of the opening."

Also, an invitation by telephone was never acceptable. Prevailing thought of the day was that it put the invitee on the spot to accept (or lie), which is the real reason answering machines, voice mail and texting were invented: better lies come with a zen moment to construct.

Lastly, and most egregiously, was the practice of saying, "Hello?" when answering the telephone. Again, from ATT: "Would you rush into an office or up to the door of a residence and blurt out 'Hello! Hello! Who am I talking to?' No, one should open conversations with phrases such as 'Mr. Wood, of Curtis and Sons, wishes to talk with Mr. White...' without any unnecessary and undignified 'Hellos." The most undignified thing about this is the mental picture of someone barging into someone's residence at all.

So where does this leave us? I can't see that breeches in phone etiquette have changed much. People still talk on their phone when they get to the front of a line, speak too loudly in public, blow off the company around them in favor of those who are texting them, and think everyone appreciates their Lady Gaga soundbyte ringtone. Thankfully, keeping the mustache out of the hole is the least of our worries, which must be a tremendous relief to the Tom Sellecks of the world.

What is your biggest pet peeve about cell phone etiquette?

Casting a Darling Out to Sea

We are on Thriller Island, after all.

After no less than twelve independent critiques, some anonymous, some not, I have reached the conclusion that one of my "little darlings" (favorite lines, as we writers refer to them) must be buried at sea, never to wash up on the shores of my manuscript again. But as with all things in our lives that have always been there, like family or a genetic deformity, it is hard.  So, so hard. A proper burial needs words. From the most recent draft of The Night Caller :


“’Bout time you started hearing things, Mr. Hughes,” Evan mumbled to himself. “At least Howard got laid.”

*

Seven pages later in a phone conversation between my main character, Evan, and a mysterious, alluring woman he's trying to impress....

*

“What’s your name?” Evan said.


“Lily.”

“Like the flower?”

No, like in livered, ass. Hughes would’ve had a better line. Something that would have made Jane Russell strip to her torpedo bra.

While I've gone out of my way prior to these lines to establish that Hughes is not my main character's last name and that he is undoubtedly suffering from agoraphobia, these lines have given pause to over half the cold readers. Yes, some had no idea who Howard Hughes was, which explains the problematic reference. Others thought a young, strapping male in his late twenties would not know this cultural reference, even though Howard Hughes died three years after I, too, was born. But I digress.  Not everyone could have seen the motion picture The Aviator-oh wait, wasn't it an Oscar nominee? But these are literary folks.  Probably not a television set among them.  Some simply thought it made my character seem like an old man because it was from a different generational point of reference.
 

Since the beginning, I held steadfast in my Hughes references.  He was, after all, the most famous agorophobic cup of crazy, then or now. But fiction isn't about me, it's about story. Quite simply, anything that pulls my reader away from the story must go. The people have spoken, and I have finally heard them.

 

Goodbye, dear Hughes. You and your sexed-up cultural references have been fun.
 

A Tale of Two Openings

It isn't often I turn outside my comfort zone for help, but we are all readers here and Vortex followers are notoriously brilliant.

I'm flirting with different openings. I've never had as much difficulty with any first page as I've had with this novel, The Night Caller. Not sure what it is, but my objectivity has shriveled into one quaking core of hardened story-opening doubt. I thought it might be fun to have everyone's opinion.

Try these on. Flirt with them. Chew them up a bit. Disregard genre. Pretend you picked it up off the bookstore shelf and opened to the first page. Which would compel you to read further? Plunk down cash? Dance with glee? Okay, just kidding about the last one.

Opening 1:

The call came before dawn. Had Evan Roth not filled his solitude with crafting creamer patterns in his Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee or watching his neighbor pluck dandelions from her sidewalk crack at four am—antiseptic details to his quiet, hemorrhaging reality—he might have missed the ring completely.

The Victorian’s stark interior magnified the impatient, double bursts.


Opening 2:

Even the whacks have to step out sometime.

The peephole’s glass bubbled the front lawn. Maple leaves spiraled like glass flecks in a pre-dawn kaleidoscope. Past the barrier—law enforcement’s kill zone—a neon sign lauding Michelin Tires blazed and faded in the shop window across the road.

An optical illusion of chaos.

Evan Roth’s only certainty the world existed beyond this zone, The Silver Creek Gazette, lay bundled on itself, too far away. Naked. Exposed.


Weigh in. I have my big girl panties on. I can take it.

Oh the Places You'll Go...Part 2

In this post, I promised secrets contained in the pages of my latest complete novel, The Night Caller. Mind you, none of these are Earth-shattering or subject to a confessional, but they do reflect just how much of ourselves writers put in their stories.

Burger Boy
Though I changed the official name from Big Boy to Burger Boy in my story, the shellacked behemoth statue rising up out of the suburban landscape plays an important role in my main character's backstory. Of all the restaurants I went to as a child, this one left the grandest impression. Maybe it was the juxtaposition between the tropical, plant-filled, sky-lighted, decidedly non-diner interior and the fashion-challenged creepy boy out front that seemed to laugh at passersby and say, "I dare you to eat one of these and not get my gut!" Poor Burger Boy is destroyed in my story, along with Thousand Island dressing perfection.

The Talbot Building
Not satisfied to merely know it was possible for someone to graduate from Boston University's School of Medicine in 1881, I set out to find the exact street its building was located on and the names of a few graduates from that class who went on to become Boston doctors. Here is a sketch as it existed then. The classrooms would have been in the left building, the hospital on the corner. Satisfied? I wasn't either. How can I recreate a scene there with only a sketch? A little further digging produced this photograph. The Talbot building still stands today and houses the School of Public Health. Now that I can sink my imagination into.

The Sacred Scene
The Night Caller contains a scene toward the end that makes me cry, without fail, every time I revisit it. It happened when I wrote it and three of the five times I've come upon it for revisions. I was superstitious to change anything for fear the magic spell would be broken, so I passed over it completely the last two times I edited. I hope readers feel the same.

Love Scene Hypnosis
Some of you might remember my post on self-hypnosis. The setting of The Night Caller's final love scene was taken directly from those research tapes I listened to in high school and never forgot (the setting-not the luuuuve--geez, people). Evidence of the powerful and enduring effect of hypnosis on the mind.

I could write a hundred instances in this book alone: foil-wrapped chocolate bars I sold to neighbors, the Georgetown train depot I stood in when I was eight, the hard rock Evan listens to, the names Henry and Hank, the gas station on a Sunday morning. How can the person I've been not be everywhere, in all those places that pour out onto the page? I suspect even science fiction writers who weave their own worlds still manage to inject the places within into their stories. It is at once frightening and exhilarating to know we've exposed so much and offered up almost everything to reach that moment of connection to a reader.

Tomorrow: I believe in celebrations. Why wait until a book is sold when we have almost no control over the alignment of the planets? BYO favorite drink (or drink recipe) and we'll usher in the weekend with a cybertoast.

Oh the Places You'll Go...Part 1

This week, I'm prepping my latest novel The Night Caller to enter the world. This means pouring over a canary-yellow pad scratched with those vile echo words, seeking them out using Word's Find feature(LOVE it); and yes, utilizing an actual Thesaurus to select alternates. So far, the word brittle is a three-time offender. Now I must decide if brittle best describes the black and gray waist-length hair of an elderly neighbor, pages of an antique journal or one of those nebulous character moods I forever run out of fresh ways to capture.

To kick off this ultra satisfying week for me, I thought we'd resurrect my original opening line from the FastDraft days. You might need to rub Ben-Gay in the nostrils like those crime-scene detectives. This one is foul:

Even his own breath reeked of psychosis. Stale from exhaustion and hours-old Jamaican Blue Mountain coating his teeth, Evan Braun’s urgent, but intimate encounter with the oak door spiked an inferno against the sweat sheen above his lips.

First, and most obvious perhaps, is the unintended proximity of my lead character's name to Adolf Hitler's mistress. I'm sure my subconscious filed Eva Braun's name during some AP History class in high school or while watching The History Channel. My intent was to imbibe my hero with a characternym: Braun=tough, strong. FAIL.

Second, and likely equally disturbing, was the suggestion that my character was not merely staring through a peephole, but humping the door. I guess intimate encounter resides firmly in the mind's gutter, at least in the minds of my beta readers. FAIL.

Third, and lesser known, I'd assumed everyone roaming the world knew Jamaican Blue Mountain was coffee. It could be alcohol or lizard piss used for medicinal properties. Specific is good but dangerous what-the-hell? territory. FAIL.

So there you have it. The not-so-glistening, dependent-clause happy, constipated hook at the story's inception.

Wednesday: Part 2: Secrets in the pages...

Will the Year 2036 Have Pick Up Artists?

If you're a sci-fi geek like me, you've probably heard of John Titor. Today, the Institute for Quantum Living posted an article profiling the details of John's arrival on internet message boards in the year 2000, his answers to questions about the state of the future between his time (2036) and the present day, and how he traveled through time. Entire websites and documentaries are devoted to celebrating and debunking this man and his prophesies. Cafe Press even has shirts devoted to the phenomenon.

For skeptics(also like me), it offers a what-if to chew on for awhile, even if our rational mind dismisses everything surrounding John Titor as a hoax. I've long believed that our society's overindulgence, recklessness and the slippery slope of moral values will endure a backlash. People will stand up and say "Enough is enough." I picture a world reshuffled into true communities again, smaller nexuses of activity where we rely less on purchasing tomatoes from Guatemala and more from local growers. Where townspeople dive into decisions and education and volunteering because resources from the greater governments will have lost the funds and the power to intervene in day-to-day life. A homecoming for people like me who come to realize the "opportunities" that come with big city life aren't worth the ridiculous dance we endure to be part of it.

Strangely, this is part of our future, according to John Titor. Maybe he, or whomever created this fantastic tale grew weary of the noise, the choking exhaust, the prevalent hum of fear and intolerance outside the door. Maybe for some, believing in the possibility of time travel is easier than believing we're collectively capable of real change.

I'm pretty sure my subconscious has been thinking about this for awhile. While entertaining that mind-bending twist at the end of The Night Caller, I wondered what it would be like for the reader to discover that the heroine of the 1880s they'd come to know was actually a hundred and thirty years in the hero's future and society had reversed itself, minus the hard-won lessons of humanity's darkest hours. I can't conceive of it working for this story, but someday, I'm sure the idea will surface again.

And to put this all in the proper, absurd perspective, I leave you a photograph posted of John Titor:
I'll venture he's the one in buckskin on the left. His friend is too Pick Up Artist to be convincing.

If you read the article, let me know what you think. If this is all too much for you, dissect this jokester's time travel couture.

The Black Hole of Productivity and Booksigning

How is it possible that Wednesday's word count exceeded 2100, a monumental record for me, and Thursday's production amounted to two lines:

1) Uli drummed the heels of her Parisian-inspired, kid-leather boots against the passenger car’s wood floor.
2) A pair of spectacled eyes peered at her above a copy of The Albany Evening Times.

Not even particularly riveting lines, but follow me here. I have to justify two hours. Said boots are important in that they convey character and are symbolic of character's goals. Did I also need to know they could have been two-toned or embellished with lace rosettes or that King Louis compensated for his five-foot-nothing frame by inspiring future centuries of women to jack their footwear to unnatural heights?

What about the second line? How was I to know that researching the most likely overland rail route the booted character took would have led me to the name of the most likely newspaper picked up en route in 1881 and the headline of September 20th? Accuracy, people. Potentially the most insensitive headline I've ever read: President Garfield Finally Dies in Washington From an Assassin's Bullet. Did they really need finally? The poor man most likely would have lived had doctors not plundered for the bullet with their dirty fingers. Ooooh, and look-see what another twenty minutes of digging treated me to. A genuine train schedule said booted passenger would have held. Squee!! Can you hear my word count grinding to a halt from where you are?

It is possible research for this novel is the black hole of my page count. Who needs time travel when you have time-suck?

On a far less self-deprecating note, I hope if you're anywhere near the brand-spanking new Barnes and Noble in Hurst, Texas on Saturday, you'll stop by and say hello. It's all new carpet and fresh print smell, a heady combination. I'll be signing Love, Texas Style, along with my fellow anthology authors, from 2-4pm. I'll bring my camera this time and post your support to the blog.

A Costume of the Mind

"Mouth to ear is much more fantasy than eye to eye. A costume of the mind."

~ Nancy Weber, novelist

While researching antique phones of the late nineteenth century for my current novel, The Night Caller, I became fascinated with the subtle points of the medium--the social lines between the dusty facts about Blake transmitters and Leclanche wet batteries.

In New York City, c. 1882, a subscriber would lease a telephone for $150 per year. Western Electric, then the predominant provider, would make a judgment call as to the worthiness of the customer. "Telephones are only rented out to persons of good breeding and refinement," a newspaper advertisement once read. Offering the commodity at such an astronomical price not only spoke to supply and demand, but ensured a device few could understand and many believed the work of the devil would remain respectable.

The invention of the telephone also had a substantial impact on societal interaction. The tea cup bell's jingle, or absence, became a third party to the conversation, filled with uncertainties. Although the phone's initial purpose fell strictly to business and matters of vial importance, its ability to tether people to the age-old questions of the lovesick--Will it ring? Won't it? Why doesn't it?--quickly became apparent. Few can deny the inherent compulsiveness of a ringing phone.

Stripped of body language cues and other non-audio charms, courting men and women entered a mysterious realm of heightened awareness. Emotions came in degrees of vocal tones, often through a filter of telegraph clicks, scraps of other's conversations and croaking frogs. Fantasies took root while listeners diverted the energy normally given to interpreting subtle facial cues into creative images of dress or absent preoccupations of the free hand or body. The perfect blend of intimacy and invisibility.

The freedom to be in touch more often, at a greater and safer distance, also required a measure of trust. Trust that the intended listener wouldn't find other diversions, a wandering gaze completely outside the conversation or a boredom so strong she'd put the receiver down and walk away for awhile, any number of social misfires oblivious to the caller.

I embraced the challenge of a love story told, in part, through this medium. Similar to the way antiquated love letters let the imagination run rampant, subtracting all but one element to growing intimacy heightens that element exponentially. Toss in fear from the 1880s perspective and the disconnectedness from the present day and it makes for a memorable dance.

A fantastic, fun resource to learn more about the evolution of society as it relates to the telephone is Once Upon A Telephone: An Illustrated Social History by Ellen Stern and Emily Givathmey.

Something to Celebrate (Other Than Chocolate)

My Easter candy today...

Happy times: The Night Caller has won first place in the paranormal category of the Great Expectations contest!

Aesthetic Ideal of the Anti-hero

In the nineteenth century, a movement in photography called the "aesthetic ideal of the sublime" urged artists to capture images to elicit the physical sensations of fear and excitement. Prior to this, official surveyors for Congress, and later, photographers commissioned by the railroad expansion west, captured the larger picture. Horizons. Mountain vistas. Workers lining a stretch of rail. Technological advances in photography gradually made it possible for the photographer to reach more extreme landscapes.

Grand Canyon of the Colorado, near the big bend by Peach Springs, by William Henry Jackson, probably 1892, when, along with Thomas Moran, they traveled for the Sante Fe Railroad. Jackson was the offical photographer of the Hayden Survey of the American West, 1871-1878.The National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution.

This new subject matter allowed viewers to take in exceptional examples and trials of the human condition. Suddenly, it became possible for someone sitting in a Victorian parlor in Connecticut to pick up a stereoscope and experience a moment of terror. Awe. Extreme sympathy. An explorer with a spyglass leaning over the rim of the Grand Canyon. Men baracaded behind a stronghold, guns poised for a Native ambush.

One photograph I found moved me more than all the others. Without getting into graphic detail, its subject was death. Not the kind used to preserve historical record as battleground images or matters of medical study, but a completely voyeuristic look into a moment of extreme grief. This became the dark side of the antagonist in my current novel. An 1880s railroad photographer who longs to capture what no one has before him. The moment life slips away.

This is Charles Pierre Baudelaire, an accomplished poet and translator in nineteenth century France. The poor man became the inspiration for my anti-hero.




The With New Eyes: Exploration and the American West exhibit has moved on from where I experienced it at the Amon Carter in Fort Worth, but I highly recommend it if it comes near you and the American West fascinates you.


If you'd like to read more about my work-in-progress, click over to my website. There, you'll find a quick blurb, a few opening paragraphs and some other photos that inspired The Night Caller.

Residual Energy - Mine and "the others"

The Night Caller is a finalist in the Great Expectations contest! Happy times.

The McKay House Bed and Breakfast in Jefferson, Texas is the inspiration for this story. I've been there twice and something keeps drawing me back. The innkeeper, Hugh Lewis, is so gracious with the house's history. He even took one of his six antique wall phones apart for me to break down how it worked.


I haven't stayed in this room, yet, but it's the one I had in mind when I chose a room for Lillie, my heroine. It has matching claw-foot tubs in the adjacent bathroom with a history of guests creating their own olympic watersports. As I tried to find things in the space to tie my hero and heroine together, I kept returning to this window. Although the view from it changed slightly in one hundred and twenty years, one thing remained a powerful constant between them. Any guesses?



This is one of two rooms in the cottage behind the property. The outer structure used to be slave quarters. After the Ghost Walk tour Friday night, we took this photo. According to our tour guide, a scientist and converted paranormal skeptic, any perfectly shaped orb of light captured by a camera's lens is unexplained or residual energy. See if you can find it. The next day at breakfast, we found out the tiny urn on the mantel *supposedly* held ashes of unknown origin.


On my website, you'll find more photos of the non-haunted upstairs bedroom I "borrowed" for my heroine's sanctuary, as well as the staircase found in several scenes. If you're up for a ghostly picture from Friday night's tour, revisit this April 07 post.

Brain niggle today: Breaking Benjamin: Until the End

Art is in the Attempt

Today marks the official day I begin revisions on my WIP, The Night Caller. At some point, even an obsessive plotter must stop and realize the writing will fill in the blanks I have yet to. But here, at the beginning yet again, it does put the entire project into perspective again. At a time when goals and daily page counts dominate my thoughts and the ending I just figured out must echo the beginning scene I am poised to write, I remember back to my other projects. The ones where the journey took me somewhere wildly off-course and the end result didn't reflect the scope and magnitude of the novel in my head.

No where was this more evident than in my short story, The Lost Highway. In my initial vision, there was a bridge responsible for the anomaly in time, a fiery inferno the protagonists had to reach before the window of opportunity faded forever. In the final version, the bridge is still there, in the past. But somehow along the way it became enough for the hero and heroine to simply be. Not racing a ticking time bomb but to simply pause, be in the moment with all the fears and confusion of their internal conflicts, and become aware of the opportunity they'd been given. To simply be.

Would the fiery inferno have made a better story? Perhaps. But when the detoured story is good enough to sell, as The Lost Highway has, does that mean that true art, the words we paint on the imaginary canvas of the reader, is in the attempt, not in the destination? Had I not buckled in and followed the story map of my mind to the bridge, would I have found the same story? Doubtful.

As writers, I don't think we're ever truly satisfied with our words. We're always finding stronger verbs or a different twist that would have taken the story in an entirely new direction. I suspect all creative people wage this battle in their own minds. What emerges is never truly what we envisioned, like something that constantly outdistances us. Who's to say the detour we stumble upon isn't better?

This lessens the looming expectations of the destination and allows faith to creep in. Threads that magically weave themselves into the fabric of our novel and the belief that the characters will find the path they're meant to travel. And for the writer, the freedom to realize that true art is in the attempt.

New Words and Classic Clip

This week, I'm heavy into FastDraft mode, cranking out pages for my new novel The Night Caller. Read more about it on my website.

If you're new to the FastDraft concept, be sure to visit Candy Haven's website to learn more about it. Sign up to be part of her Write Workshop on Yahoogroups. She has an amazing workshop that has changed the way hundreds of writers find success. It worked for my GH finalist manuscript. Check it out.

As I'm completely braindead for all things not related to cops, 1881 or photography, here's a time travel moment in a soon-to-be-classic. Even if you don't *get* the humor in Napoleon Dynamite, this is funny...