Monday, October 21, 2024

The Orphan Scrivener -- Issue # One Hundred and Forty-Nine -- October 15 2024

Greetings from castellated abomination Maywrite Towers, said designation pinched from Agatha Christie's description of a hypothetical suburban dwelling in The Man In The Brown Suit. No suits of any colour here but we trust this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener will suit our subscribers. Read on to find out...


ERIC'S BIT or THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S MOTHER

According to Amazon.com -- which has a better memory than I do -- our first novel, One for Sorrow, had an official publication date of November 15, 1999. So shockingly enough we are fast approaching its 25th anniversary. Perhaps now is the time to reveal that John's mother was a cave girl.

Let me explain. Back in the mid-eighties there was an explosion of indie comic books. Creators took advantage of easy distribution to sell their comics in the thousands of comic book specialty stores in the United States and Canada. Most indie comics were printed in black and white with two color covers and had nothing to do with superheros. Well, except for a few like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a satire of the superhero genre which became more or less the very thing it had been intended to mock.

A friend of mine was scraping out a living publishing comics and he asked me to script a title he'd come up with -- Kiwanni Daughter of the Dawn. He didn't have a story in mind, just something about a cave girl living in a world with dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. Notwithstanding that my favorite comic strip as a kid was Alley Oop, we both knew that humans did not coexist with dinosaurs but the artist he had in mind drew animals brilliantly and could pencil one mean T-Rex.

I enjoyed my venture into scripting and subsequently tried to sell some new ones, based on my own ideas, to other small press publishers. One proposal was a superhero historical. Not long after the fall of Rome, when the surviving Eastern Empire has become a bastion of Christianity, a slave comes across a magic ring, once the property of Julian, the last pagan emperor. The ring gives the bearer super powers, of a sort, depending on which god happens to show up when summoned by the ring, and what kind of mood he or she is in, taking into account that the Roman gods were an unreliable and unpredictable lot.

Publishers weren't interested and my career in comics fizzled out. Then one day in the early nineties Mike Ashley contacted my wife Mary and wondered if we could produce an historical mystery for an anthology he was editing, He needed the story quickly.

"Historical" and "quickly" are words that tend not to go together, considering how much research is necessary before writing can even begin. I immediately thought of placing a mystery in the early Byzantine era because I already knew something about sixth century Constantinople. I had done enough research for the comic book script to prop up a 2,000 word story.

And so we hurriedly co-wrote the first tale featuring as detective John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian. A Byzantine Mystery appeared in 1993 in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits. After starring in more short stories in anthologies and Ellery Queen Mystery magazine, John moved on to twelve novels from Poisoned Pen Press. I'm sure Kiwanni would be busting her buttons with pride, if animal skins had buttons.


NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker is obstinately silent again this time round so with Halloween hoving into view, subscribers may be interested in sampling our short supernatural stories via these links

The Thorn, our tribute to M. R. James (he roolz!): https://kingsriverlife.com/12/25/the-thornan-original-short-story

Or Equivalent Experience, inspired by an advertisement in a Missouri paper:

https://kingsriverlife.com/10/20/or-equivalent-experience/

Waiting, A ghost story:

http://kingsriverlife.com/10/22/waiting-a-halloween-short-story/

There's also our ever-increasing library of free links to tales of the supernatural and classic ghost stories:

https://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/p/stories-of-supernatural.html


MARY'S BIT or SIDNEY THE SNAKE: A MORAL TALE

History records the proverbial description of someone who is hard of hearing as being as deaf as a snake, which have no ears. However, I am reliably informed they have similar inner ear arrangements to ours but connected to their jawbones, enabling them to "hear" through sensing vibrations.

It seems their range of vibrational awareness makes their hearing less than a human's, which is just as well given the loud excited exclamation that floated upstairs when Eric recently went into the kitchen and saw a snake disappearing behind the fridge -- and my sudden equally noisy utterance when I spotted it lurking under our sideboard an hour or so later.

When I was in my teens, a young courtesy cousin once stayed with my family for a bit of holiday. One evening I went up to bed and on turning back the covers saw a snake. It was small and yellow and so obviously a toy I did not shriek and run downstairs in a panic, much to his disgust. Years later, when the Zoo Lady visited the elementary school where I helped, she brought with her a large snake. While showing it to the class to my surprise she draped it around my neck. I am here to tell you snakes do not feel slimy but rather cool to the touch. Having held one, my chief impression was they resemble elongated kippers in that they seem all spine. So I can still look a feather boa in the eye. It's just...different...if you don't know where the reptile in question is lurking. Fortunately research informed me Sidney was most likely a rat snake and so not venomous. Those of a nervous disposition are advised not to go looking for a photo.

Sidney the Snake has not been seen since that morning. He didn't look too well at the time so we've speculated either he found his way outside or conked out somewhere under the house, I say crossing my fingers and glancing over my shoulder. The problem is until we started looking around we had no idea how many places a snake could hide. The average dwelling is full of them -- take a glance around the room in which you are reading!

Anyhow, it's occurred to me a story could be written for children instructing them on their behaviour, a genre particularly popular during the Victorian era. Naturally its title would be Sidney the Snake: A Moral Tale and it would relate how a naughty young snake took no notice of his mother's constant warnings not to go into houses for if he did he would certainly come to a terrible end. Weep no more, tender-hearted readers. The close of the tale would reveal despite Sidney's disobedience in doing just what he was told not to do he managed to escape and got home to his mother. Who bent his (non-existent) ears no end as to his willful foolishness and then sent him to bed without any supper.


AND FINALLY

Speaking of serpents, it may be subscribers were not aware that when reading tea leaves should some form a sinuous shape rising up the side of the cup it means good news will arrive soon, our cue for a reminder the next Orphan Scrivener will slither into in-boxes on December 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and as mentioned above libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter ilk. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our handles on the site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time!


Tuesday, August 20, 2024

The Orphan Scrivener - Issue # One Hundred and Forty Eight -- 15 August 2024

The nights are noticeably drawing in now to a relentless chorus of crickets singing the night away. Soon we shall be organising winter supplies but we took time off from that and other late summer tasks to compose this latest edition of Orphan Scrivener. And here it is....


MARY'S BIT or AN ERKSOME NAME

You wouldn't think Mary could be shortened, right? However, my mother often called me May while my sister calls me Mare to this day. Still, both are respectable enough compared to some of the names I've been called in my time.

No, I don't mean that sort of name! I mean nicknames. In grammar school I got lumbered with a veritable roll-call of names all in a lump: Ladles Merrolls Lunas McHaggis. Loony for short. Well, to be honest, I did clown around a bit. Applying a bit of Holmesian deduction to the list I suspect Ladles was connected with my disastrous results in cookery classes, about which I have written elsewhere*. Merrolls is a bit of a puzzle though I am guessing it is descended from my first name. Having already dealt with Lunas, McHaggis is a mystery given I've never knowingly consumed a haggis and am not Scottish although one of my ancestors came from the Land of the Thistle. However, in the UK McWhatevers are popular nicknames for reasons insulting or endearing -- surely we haven't forgotten Boaty McBoatface already? DB, if you see this, do throw some light on the matter!

To backpedal, I did not care for cookery classes because I was hopeless at it. The invention of the ring-pull tin was a blessing for humanity in my opinion. At some point another classmate took the notion of calling me Mushy after the hapless cook's assistant in a certain TV western series. Good job I didn't get lumbered with the character's full moniker: Harkness Mushgrove III. I confess to rather liking his separated surname Mush Grove. To me it suggests a small cul-de-sac in a sleepy country town, a community replete with summer tea parties, neighbours gossiping over fences or a pint in local hostelries, fetes and whist drives, tennis, and Sunday morning church, the whole forming a traditional Miss Marple type setting in which well-kept secrets are about to be revealed, perhaps in those well-kept gardens of the Georgian houses in Mush Grove.

To return to our muttons, needless to say plain old Mushy was not the end of it. In time it metamorphosed into Mushling or Mushvita (rhymes with sweeter) but in the end it was Mushy that stuck. It must have done so employing super-glue because there are still two or three people addressing me by it all these years later.

Naturally while composing these lines I grilled Mr Maywrite concerning his nicknames and he confessed he has had but one. It relates to when he was a baby and a local youngster always called him Erk because he could not pronounce Eric. That's not so bad, really, given I know three ladies whose nicknames are Haggis, Fanlight, and Ratface respectively.

Indeed, all three are relatively benign compared to some of the nicknames British royalty have been given. Consider John aka John Lackland. I suspect he not only had little acreage to his name but also, as Red Buttons would have said, didn't get a dinner either. Aethelred the Unready (usually described as meaning without wisdom) was forced to buy off foreign raiders with Danegeld raised through taxation. We can all agree bribery in such situations is not wise, it just means the amount demanded will be higher next time.

As for Bloody Queen Mary? Persecution of Protestants during her reign. During his, her father Henry VIII ordered the amount of precious metal in coins reduced and in cases where copper was substituted, overlaid silver wore off the royal nose, revealing the copper base. Hence Henry was dubbed Old Coppernose. I am irresistibly reminded of the bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln near the entrance to the president's tomb in Springfield, IL. By tradition, visitors rub his nose for good luck and as a result it is bright and shiny. Having added to the effect personally, I wonder what Honest Abe, were he to return, would make of the custom.

* https://maywrite.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-orphan-scrivener-issue-ninety-15.html#snap


NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Very little ticker tape clicking has disturbed the dusty corridors of Maywrite Towers of late but this time we do have a dab o' news. For those subscribers who enjoy Golden Age of Mystery novels at least. Yes, we have added more links to our library of free etexts of same though it was a struggle not to stop and read each located as our vast Research Department went into high gear. Enough wittering, here's the URL

http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/p/the-maywrite-library.html


ERIC'S BIT or MY LIFE AS A BUSINESSKID

I can't recall when I first held a coin or understood its significance but I must have been very young because by the time I entered grade school I was dealing with personal finances. My allowance was a quarter a week, "compensation" for chores like keeping my room tidy. Although this might seem a paltry amount it was enough to buy an issue of Detective comics featuring a Batman and Superman team up (ten cents) see a movie at the local theater (fourteen cents) and buy a piece of Bazooka bubblegum, wrapped with a horribly printed and laughably unfunny Bazooka Joe cartoon.

Mary remembers being given a shilling which, according to the Internet, would have been worth only fourteen cents at the time, but then she grew up in a poor part of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne whereas I lived in a middle-class US suburb. Not that the discrepancy was quite as bad as it appears. Admission to her local cinema was only nine old pence, the equivalent of ten cents, so she needed to spend 64% of her income on a movie while I had to spend 56%, a modest difference. I didn't look up what she would have paid for a Detective comic because I doubt she would have wanted one.

I did make an effort to augment my allowance by selling hand-drawn comics on the school playground at recess. Incredible as it might seem my classmates were willing to pay a few cents or a nickel (depending on length and whether pencil or full color crayon was used) on titles like Mortimer the Talking Dog, Elmoe the Talking Fish and King Cotton vs Boll Weevil.

In warm weather I set up a card table on the sidewalk in front of the house to sell lemonade. My parents capitalized the business supplying sugar and lemons, but received no part of the profits. I was a shrewd businesskid. I tried to sell comics too but thirsty adults were not especially interested in a Giant Annual Elmoe and Mortimer Team Up.

Sitting at my computer during the heat wave we're enduring I'm reminded of how my childhood income increased in the summer. My parents ran a picnic grove and the family moved to a cottage there. This opened new and more lucrative entrepreneurial opportunities. I scooped minnows out of the lake and turned over rocks in the creek, finding crayfish which I knew -- being an expert crayfish hunter -- would jet away backwards into my waiting paper cup. A cup of minnows could fetch a dime from picnickers and some would pay a nickel for a single crayfish. At the time I didn't give much thought to why anyone would pay for minnows and crayfish. I liked to watch them swimming or crawling around in a jar and I guess I figured others would appreciate them too. It didn't occur to me that the poor things were bought for bait. I fished but used earthworms which didn't seem so much like actual animals.

Even better profits could be made by picking up discarded returnable bottles. There was a two cent deposit in Pennsylvania. It was like a treasure hunt. I'd search the weeds beside the road around the lake finding an empty Coke here, a Ma's Black Cherry there. The asphalt burned my bare feet if I didn't keep moving. In the grove there might be a sarsaparilla under a picnic table, a Royal Crown Cola beside a birch tree. If so many people hadn't ignored the no-litter laws and been too lazy to dispose of their trash properly I would have been out of luck. I was making money off human weakness and vice, just like the Mafia.

All those empties added up. And a good thing too. The little store where I cashed in my finds sold Davy Crockett cards one year. At five cents a pack it turned out to be an expensive proposition to collect the whole set but I managed.

After I grew up I earned a lot more than I did with returnables, bait, comics, and lemonade stands but I never had as much fun making money, except maybe when Mary and I were writing novels and short stories.


AND FINALLY

No bait and switch from us! The next issue of Orphan Scrivener (comics and lemonade not included) will appear in your in-box on October 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter ilk. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our names on the social site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time!

Sunday, June 30, 2024

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER - ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN - 15 JUNE 2024

Yesterday night at Casa Maywrite we observed a striking orange moon. This was somewhat disconcerting since folklore declares June the month of the strawberry moon, named after the short season for harvesting strawberries in the northeastern United States. Some consider the sweet berry a symbol of modesty and since we don't often tootle our own cornua (orange you glad to hear that?} we shall merely remark we hope subscribers will find this latest Orphan Scrivener of interest. Read on to find out...


ERIC'S BIT or TACKLING TOMES

I prefer brief books. In grade school I'd cart five Doctor Seuss books home from the library, read them all immediately. and go back for more before closing time. The library was nearly a mile from home and up a steep hill. Who says reading isn't good exercise?

Long books overwhelm my attention span. Especially since I'm a slow reader. Not to mention I'm always impatient to discover how the story turns out.

Excuses, excuses...I know I should have read War and Peace by now but I just can't face it. It's so long it's famous mostly for being long...and the characters all having ten or fifteen different impossible to pronounce or remember Russian names. Or so I've heard. I'm not sure since I've never even contemplated tackling the tome.

Classic mysteries are the right size. Agatha Christie is a favorite. Georges Simenon's Maigrets are even shorter. Of course like many short books they are concisely written and all of a piece, which I find satisfying aesthetically. Gold Medal style noir from the forties and fifties share the same qualities. Jim Thompson and John D. MacDonald for example.

Even writers I like can discourage me with lengthy books. I've read virtually all of Steinbeck (including Grapes of Wrath) but not East of Eden. I haven't read Simenon's long autobiography Pedigree either. I did read Stephen King's The Stand but Under the Dome is too daunting. (Not for Mary, I might add. But she's even read Les Miserables! Honestly! All of it!)

Needless to say, being a writer and an English Lit major, my aversion to long books has left me with a fair amount of guilt. There are certain lengthy novels I have always felt I ought to read and felt this so strongly that I actually purchased the books and made the effort.

When I was in college I made day trips to New York City, spending much of my time in book stores. There I found a trade paperback edition of Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, the first of his seven volume Remembrance of Things Past. (In those days trade paperbacks were reserved mostly for literary titles not expected to sell as well as mass market paperbacks and were hard to find where I lived.)

What could I possibly have been thinking? Yes, the work was touted as one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century. It was also more than 4,000 pages long, well over a million words. Oh, the naive optimism of youth! I started to read and got nowhere. Odd because I've read and enjoyed lots of French literature in translation quite apart from Simenon. The book remained on my shelves, taunting me, for decades. More than once over the years I have steeled myself for the task. I've never made it to page three.

There's no point in my trying again. Considering my reading speed the actuarial tables say I'd never make it to the end anyway.

Other important books have similarly defeated me. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, the fantasy classic Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. Do I even have to tell you that James Joyce's Ulysses is on this list. None of these books were page turners for me. I barely turned one of their pages.

Well, so much for the mea culpas. I am now going to start reading Lock No. 1, an Inspector Maigret mystery that is a nice, neat 176 pages long and I fully expect to finish it.


NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker took a trip to the past in order to bring you something of interest or so we hope.

THE INTERNET AS TIME MACHINE or IS THAT THE SOUND OF A CORNU TOOTLING?

Back in 2008 Mike Glyer interviewed us for his Hugo Award winning science fiction 'zine File 770. Since in all modesty we consider it one of the best interviews we've given we thought subscribers who came aboard before then might find it of interest.

In response to Mike's insightful questioning we talked about how we came to write our Byzantine mysteries, our thoughts on research, modern attitudes in historical mysteries, the true character of Emperor Justinian, Roman religions, and more.

The Secret History of John the Eunuch begins on page 22 at

https://efanzines.com/File770/File770-153.pdf

Coincidentally although File 770 is mostly devoted to science fiction, the cover has a mystery theme.


MARY'S BIT or THEIRS IS A SINISTER BEAUTY

This year a striking crop of volunteer foxgloves is growing in the back garden, flourishing in its shady grove. We calculated the tallest to be about six feet by the simple expedient of standing human measuring stick Eric next to it.

Traditional names for the plant that put the digit into digitalis include fairy gloves or thimbles. However, despite these charming names for foxgloves theirs is a sinister beauty, acknowledged by other names for them such as bloody fingers or witches' gloves. Which isn't surprising considering the entire plant is highly poisonous. We've noticed local deer, whose depravations decimated our beds of hosta and day lilies, do not bother them. Perhaps they instinctively realise it is far safer to dine elsewhere.

When recently admiring the display of these striking purple-red flowers it occurred to me it would be possible to utilise the toxicity of the plant as a murder method in a mystery novel. After all, like other plantings in Mother Nature's garden foxgloves may be attractive but can become deadly in the wrong hands.

My thoughts ran on. How could a murderer get the victim to eat them? It might be done by presenting a guest with a dish of stewed foxglove leaves, telling them it's the latest gustatory craze. How about creating a mixed salad featuring foxglove leaves masquerading as comfrey? Further investigation by our vast research staff revealed foxglove leaves have a unpleasant bitter taste and one mouthful of either dish would probably result in plates being pushed away.

Considering how deadly foxgloves are known to be, a Doubting Thomas might wish to know how their taste could have been identified. Elementary, my dear reader. Know-it-all Mr Google pointed me to an article at The National Library of Medicine featuring a detailed description of two cases of accidental digestion of foxglove leaves. Foxgloves do not flower in their first year and in these cases the leaves of a young plant were mistaken for kale. The patients survived to describe the taste of their near fatal dish. *

In closing, let me also mention -- no, I must insist -- subscribers may be interested in a fascinating article on the Open University's CORE website. Titled Digitalis Poisoning: Historical and Forensic Aspects, it includes comments on the use of the foxglove derivative digitalis in real life murders. **

Really, it's little wonder country folks' nicknames for foxgloves included dead men's bells or fingers.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4938686/
** https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82526436.pdf
Includes a section devoted to the use of digitalis in mysteries


AND FINALLY

This is the end of the June Orphan Scrivener but don't worry, there are still plenty of exciting events to look forward to this month: World Sauntering Day (June 19); World Skateboarding Day (June 21); World Refrigeration Day (June 26) and of course International Asteroid Day (June 30). We'll saunter into your in-boxes on August 15th when the next Orphan Scrivener will be issued. Unless an asteroid decides to show up for its own special day first.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter ilk. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our names on the social site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time!


The Orphan Scrivener -- Issue # One Hundred and Forty-Nine -- October 15 2024

Greetings from castellated abomination Maywrite Towers, said designation pinched from Agatha Christie's description of a hypothetical su...