The Orphan Scrivener: 2004

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # THIRTY -- l5 DECEMBER 2004

This is a bleak time of year, even though the coldest part of the winter has yet to come down the pike. Yet despite our being in the middle of Keats' drear-nighted December, the shortest day is within sight so it won't be long before the nights will begin to draw out again until all too soon we'll be complaining about the heat.

In the meantime, while Tennyson's exhortation for the wild bells to ring out to the wild sky referred to the peals that traditionally ring in each new year, we ought to point out any tintinnabulation smiting the ear hereabouts is more likely to be Poe's brazen alarum bells screaming out their affright at our announcement that this final 2004 issue of Orphan Scrivener is now formally declared open. Read on!

ERIC'S BIT or THE SQUARE ON THE HIPPODROME

I've written before about accuracy in historical fiction but it is a subject worth revisiting. Mary and I do our best to stick to reality when we write about the past. Perhaps because we both started as fans of sf and fantasy we are sensitive to the differences between those genres and historicals. However, the nature of history allows plenty of scope for creativity.

One interesting thing we have discovered in researching our novels is that what scholars "know" is as often as not a matter of intense dispute amongst scholars themselves and varies wildly from one individual to the next. Further, our "knowledge" of the past is often based on far less evidence than a casual reader of history books would imagine. For example, even today scholars cannot agree on the exact location of many landmarks in ancient Constantinople, small as the area is. Further, the past has a peculiar habit of changing right along with the present, with current thought, new generations of historians looking to make their mark, fresh discoveries, intellectual fads, and academic movements. Whatever the past really was, the past we know is in constant flux. However one scholar might describe the past, we can be assured that some other reputable scholar differs, or is busily writing a treatise which will differ. However we understand things to have been, looking back from our current vantage point, fifty years hence those looking back will see something different.

As writers of historical mysteries Mary and I are, first and foremost, trying to tell a good story. We aren't historians nor do we pretend to be. I'm not aware that historians present original research in the form of novels. Clearly, if you want pure history you read pure history. However, since we write historical mysteries and not fantasies, we try to get our facts right. We can't describe the Hippodrome as being square because the oblong ruins are still there to see. It's a fact. On the other hand, we have some leeway in describing the environs of the Great Palace since little of it remains and scholars are not sure what it looked like. Various opinions have been presented, but they are not facts even though some scholars tend to present their opinions as facts.

Thus, Mary and I ask whether something "could happen." In asking ourselves whether something "could happen" we don't mean could it happen in an alternate history where all the conditions exist to make it possible. For example, we wouldn't write a historical mystery in which Leonardo da Vinci built a workable flying machine. Da Vinci thought up a lot of amazing inventions when he wasn't busy writing codes but the technology of the time probably wouldn't have been adequate to create them even if the general theories were correct. In the world he lived in, he probably couldn't have built a workable flying machine.

In deciding whether we can include something in a novel we first ask whether the matter at hand is fact or opinion. If it is fact the matter is settled -- but as it turns out a lot of historical facts are really opinions. When we are faced with an opinion we then look to see whether there is some reputable modern academic support. As mentioned, in many cases there are conflicting views. If the view which aids our story appears to have some reasonable support among scholars we feel free to go with it, even though some may disagree. The opinion or viewpoint of an individual scholar is not a fact. For example, many Byzantists insist that in an important work Cyril Mango got the location of the entrance to the Great Palace entirely wrong, and Mango is one of the greatest authorities on Byzantium.

Fiction -- even modern fiction -- is, after all, about things that haven't happened. All the world-threatening plots one reads about in modern thrillers haven't happened. But they could happen. Maybe. I'd bet that modern thriller writers stretch the fabric of reality further than the most careless writers of historicals when the former imagine what might be possible. So, although Mary and I want to stick to what "could happen" in our historical era we don't feel we have to constrain our creativity either to the point of only using ideas that can be absolutely verified or that historians all agree upon. (If something absolutely could not have happened than we obviously can't use it nor can we use something that verifiably didn't happen.)

Here's an example. In Two For Joy, Philo, John's former philosophy tutor who has spent a few years in Persia, brings a chess game back to Constantinople. It was called Shatranj at the time. Chess was not mentioned as appearing in Byzantium for several decades. However, it existed already in the east. We saw no reason why we couldn't postulate that a traveler to the east had brought a chess game back, before its presence was mentioned in the surviving literature. Perhaps no writer remarked on this isolated chess game, the only one in the city. Perhaps one did but the manuscript was lost, along with the vast majority of classical writings, in the intervening centuries. This is the sort of thing we are talking about when we ask could it have happened. Could certain things have happened during the historical period as we think we know it? Not whether history could've turned out differently.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

There's only a couple of items on the ticker this time, so it'll be a fast read!

JOHN IN KANSAS or FIVE GOES FORTH

We were honoured to learn recently that Five For Silver has been chosen for transmission by the Kansas Audio-Reader Network, based at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It will air December l7-29 at l0 pm central time.

Broadcasts are intended primarily (although not exclusively) for people who find reading standard print difficult because of a visual or physical disability. Interested parties can access the printed word in various ways (including Internet broadcasts), details of which can be found on the KARN website at:

http://reader.ku.edu

To find Audio Information Services in other parts of the country point your clicker at the International Association of Audio Information Services at:

http:///iaais.org or call them at l-800-280-5325.

Upon reading this, the original crew of Carry On thespians immediately arose in the mind's eye -- walnut-faced Sid James with his fruity laugh, dimple-chinned and jolly Joan Sims, buxom Hattie Jaques with her sweet smile, outrageously camp and nostril-flarer Kenneth Williams, impishly grinning Charles Hawtrey, he of the round-framed spectacles and absentminded air, and bubbly Barbara Windsor, her tottering blond hairdo nigh as tall as herself.

Over thirty Carry Ons have appeared, although twenty years after the series began -- say around the mid-l970s or so -- they began to star fewer of the original crew for one reason or another. In some cases death had taken them forever offstage. Between those losses and shifts in what was and is considered comical, these later entries are generally regarded as not up to scratch, but in earlier times the series was much loved in the UK and not surprisingly placed consistently among the top-grossing productions at kinematic palace box offices.

What was it about the always less than politically correct Carry On films that appealed so much to British filmgoers? It's hard to put a finger on it exactly (a perfectly innocent phrase which would have leapt upon and made much of in any of these films). I believe it was largely due to the fact they carried on several fine old British traditions not entirely unconnected with music hall -- smuttiness that somehow didn't offend and a healthy amount of honest vulgarity along with huge helpings of robust sexual innuendo of the naughty seaside postcard variety, the resulting mix well laced with occasional glimpses of as much female pulchritude as the censors would allow. Plots were paper thin, serving merely to set the scene and then launch a seemingly endless stream of groanworthy puns, double entendres, naughty jokes, outrageous situations, racy comments, and sight gags, held together by character types that changed little from film to film.

Character names contributed to the fun inasmuch as they were so inevitable that, like familiar family jokes, they raised a laugh no matter how obvious they were. A few examples: Senna, wife of Hengis Pod (Carry On, Cleo), Albert Poop-Decker (Carry On, Jack), the Khasi of Kalabar and Bungit Din (Carry On Up The Khyber), Sid Plummer and W. C. Boggs (Carry On At Your Convenience), the Duc De Pommfrit and Citizen Camembert (Carry On Don't Lose Your Head), caddish Sir Roger de Lodgerly (Carry On Henry), and Doctors Stoppidge, Nookey, and Carver (Carry On Again Doctor). One of the most memorable was Charles Hawtrey's character in Carry On Up The Khyber, which reappeared in a recent biography of the actor bearing the proud subtitle of The Man Who Was Private Widdle.

Another likely reason for the success of the Carry On films was the affectionate but pointed fun they poked at British institutions. Carry On Sergeant, the team's first film in l958, dealt with National Service, a two year conscription period that British men aged l8 and upwards were required to serve at the time. The plot concerns a particularly hopeless bunch of new recruits who form the last squad Sergeant Grimshawe will train before he retires, and one which he bets a colleague he will knock into such good shape that it will be voted the Star Squad of that year's intake. Audience members familiar with square-bashing, potato peeling, bayonet practice, and being marched on the double everywhere by stentorian-voiced sergeant majors doubtless enjoyed seeing the system mercilessly sent up as well as its depiction of the camaraderie that such service inspired.

Such was the success of the film that the team went forth again. Its next outing was Carry on Nurse, the first of an eventual quartet poking fun at the familiar National Health Service (the other three were Carry On Doctor, Carry On Again Doctor, and Carry On Matron). Needless to say, all featured gags about bedpans, painful injections in the rear, hospital food, haughty specialists, and bolshie patients. These medical shenanigans introduced Hattie Jacques' signature role as a dragon of a matron, striking fear into doctors, nurses, patients, and hospital support staff alike.

Needless to say, other kinematic productions were not safe from the script writers, and more than one had the mickey mercilessly taken out of it. Carry on Cleo utilised the same sets and some of the props and costumes from the Burton-Taylor epic -- even its poster had a rather familiar look to it. This was the Roman epic containing the much-quoted line from Kenneth Williams, whose just-stabbed Caesar cries out "Infamy, infamy, you've all got it infamy". Carry on Jack made fun of the great British seafaring tradition as well as Hornblowerian sagas and featured an anything-but fearless Captain Fearless and a mutinous crew, while Carry on Screaming parodied Hammer's successful run of horror films, complete with a dark, cobwebby house inhabited by a sinister scientist and his sister whose doings are investigated by a Victorian policeman and his medical sidekick in an attempt to find out why young local women are disappearing.

British culture took its lumps as well. Carry on Camping had fun with the era's popularity of those sylvan breaks under canvas, while Carry On Abroad satirised the increasing number of Britons taking foreign package holidays, only to find unfinished hotels as the destination to which they all unknowingly flocked, in this instance in the Spanish holiday town of Elsbels.

In due course, certain periods in history became targets. The French Revolution and the Scarlet Pimpernel both provided grist for the mill with Carry On, Don't Lose Your Head (perhaps one of the weaker entries in the series) while Carry On Up the Kyhber dealt with the waning days of the British Empire when tribes were waiting to pour down the pass in order to get up to no good, especially once they found out what the much-feared Scottish regiment really wore under its kilts. It was in this film that Joan Sims as Lady Ruff-Diamond observed in true stiff upper lip fashion "I seem to be getting a little plastered" as the ceiling fell down around a dinner party being held during the bombardment of the British Embassy. In Carry On Henry Sid James played a bawdy Henry VIII trying his lusty best to beget an heir with Marie of France, a wife previously unknown to history. She unfortunately liked to eat garlic and refused to stop, thus leading to a royal demand she be removed one way or another without causing offence to her cousin, the French king. Then there was Carry on Dick, which dealt not with private eyes as one might expect but rather folk hero and highwayman Dick Turpin, with jokes that no doubt can be imagined.

While recent resurgence of interest in sword and sandal epics has led to occasional interesting if ultimately fruitless contemplation here at Casa Maywrite as to what sort of shambles the Carry On crew would have made of John's adventures, I must admit to surprise that they never got around to skewering Shakespeare and his times. Think of the wonderful material they'd provide -- an era of robust manners and morals, plays featuring women disguised as men and mistaken identities, a roistering society cursed with primitive sanitation, and endless courtly intrigues -- plus the golden opportunity to title a Carry On film in their traditional slyly suggestive manner, which is to say by using the common diminutive of Shakespeare's Christian name.

AND FINALLY

Speaking of Shakespeare brings to mind those doleful lines in Cymbeline, whereby Arviragus asks his companions what they'll have to talk about during the freezing hours of windy, rainy Decembers when they were old. Ever helpful, had we been within hailing (or even sleeting) distance of that Welsh cave, we'd have suggested a brisk round or two of last issue's Name That Emporium Challenge. Which leads us nicely to subscriber RG, who contributes not only a set of business appellations but also provides an appropriate slogan or three:

Sleep in a Procrustes bed tonight -- you'll be a new man tomorrow!
Buy your next car from Jason's Used Car Emporium -- you won't get fleeced!
Find your next pair of spectacles at Argus Eyeglasses -- tell them Polyphemus sent you.

To close with another sort of spectacle, subscribers in the habit of marking red letter days on their calendars might wish to note thereupon that the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will flap into their in-box on l5 February 2005, which by the way marks the fifth anniversary of Orphan Scrivener's first leap out upon an unsuspecting world.

Until then, we wish you and yours all good things for the holiday season and the new year.

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the aether at

http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects, including more personal essays and an interactive game as well as an on-line jigsaw puzzle (if you have a java-enabled browser) featuring One For Sorrow's boldly scarlet cover. For those new to the subscription list there's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!

Friday, October 15, 2004

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # TWENTY-NINE l5 OCTOBER 2004

A citrus landscape spreads out around us as these words are written. (Yes, you in the back row, we can both type without looking at the keyboard!). We mean, of course, the autumn colour is just at peak, and so flaring patches of deep orange, bright lemon, and lustrous lime foliage (not to mention branches bearing grapefruit pulp ruby leaves) are to be seen glowing here and there, brilliant islands in a dark, rolling sea of evergreens.

But it won't remain that way for long.

Robert Browning was of the opinion that autumn mutely appeals for sympathy because of its decay, but what a glorious decay fall exhibits! Not only the splashes of colour spreading across the hills, but also its crisp nights followed by milky curtains of morning mist, dissipating into golden days that surprise with the heat of their afternoon sun. Pumpkins and chrysanthemums, along with the first nuts and last apples, crowd farmers' markets, while in the evenings our thoughts turn to cocoa and hot cider.

A few leaves have already fallen, reminding us winter is not far away. The latter's impending arrival also means the probable appearance of a field mouse or two at Casa Maywrite, bent on finding winter quarters, not to mention nocturnal opportunities to steal cat chow and squirrel it away in murine moonlight maraudings.

However, it's no good subscribers belatedly trying to steal away to avoid this latest edition of Orphan Scrivener. It's here, and since you've read this far you may as well read on!

MARY'S BIT or MYTHING LINKS

Eric has invented a new parlour game.

It came about during a conversation concerning brand names based on mythology, a topic which arose from my observation that naming a light bulb after Mazda (Zoroastrian god of light) displayed more than 60 watts of brilliance.

Once the subject was broached, it was surprising how many examples came to mind.

Given America runs in more ways than one on personal transport, it's not surprising that several cars have been named after mythological figures. Among them are Mercury (god of travellers) and Aurora (Roman goddess of dawn, who was also mother of the winds, and thus suggesting swift journeys).

In mentioning fleet passage, we must not forget Nike, who as winged goddess of victory was the inevitable choice for the name of a brand of athletic shoes.

In some instances the reasoning behind a particular brand name remains obscure, so we indulged in a wild surmise or two. For example, Phoenix Insurance hints that which has been destroyed will rise again, triumphant, while Ajax, one of the mightiest warriors in Greek mythology, certainly suggests the cleanser is more than a match for any stubborn stains.

And speaking of matches, Swan Vestas was an inspired choice for what used to be called Lucifers (itself a Name With A History). As is generally known, Vesta, Roman goddess of the hearth, was served by priestesses who maintained the sacred fire and suffered very severe penalties should it be extinguished. But what are we to make of the swan? Northern legends of swan maidens are plentiful, but on the other hand, Helen was born of Leda after Zeus visited her in the shape of a swan. There again swans were sacred to Apollo, another god of light. Perhaps the presence of the swan is merely a matter of a difference or two of a pinion?

One might speculate if the founder of Amazon.com named it after the mythical race of women warriors in homage to the purchasing power of female shoppers, and even suspect the camera was named Olympus as a nod to the spectacular view obtainable from that mountainous dwelling of the Greek gods. Then too might it be the muffler company is called Midas because silence is proverbially golden?

It was after we failed to think of any reason why a candy bar should be named after Mars, god of war (a slogan along the lines of "Mars, a bar worth fighting for" did however suggest itself) that Eric came up with the game mentioned earlier: inventing companies to match mythological characters.

"How about the Pandora Box Company?" he said. "Or the Cyclops Vision Care Centre? And what about a revolving charge account known as the Sisyphus Credit Card, because holders would keep endlessly rolling the boulder of payments uphill but with such outrageous interest charges would never be able to pay it off?"

Having thus introduced the subject, we hope you'll feel free to email mythological brand name suggestions, which we'll list in our next newsletter. Can't say fairer than that, can we?

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Since the last newsletter appeared, we've been scrivening away at Six For Gold like all get out. Thus, akin to the lands where the Jumblies live, our appearances during that time have been few and far, far and few. We do however have a couple to mention plus The Official Blurb about Sixfer, so onward!

E-MAIL SUBMISSIONS or HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Freelance writer and former Derringer Judge Jodie Ball recently published an article on Preparing E-Mail Submissions. Your humble scriveners make a cameo appearance in this piece, which is to be found at: http://www.longridgewritersgroup.com/rx/wc04/e_submissions.shtml

A TIP OR TWO or YET MORE ON SUBMISSIONS

At the recent New England Writers' Network (NEWN) workshop in Marlborough, MA, writer Cathy Cairns presented Demystifying the Submission Process. Her presentation included a list of submission tips from some of the best and most successful writers in short fiction, G. Miki Hayden, Michael Bracken, and Stephen D. Rogers among others. We were honoured to be included among the latter! You can read these tips when they appear online shortly at the NEWN website http://newnmag.net/workshops.htm

SHEEP PERTURBED or THE OFFICIAL BLURB

Here's Sixfer's official blurb, as recently released upon an unsuspecting world: Why are sheep in a remote Egyptian village cutting their own throats?

That’s the mystery Emperor Justinian inexplicably sends his Lord Chamberlain John the Eunuch to solve, at the very time John desperately needs to clear himself of accusations he murdered a senator in the Hippodrome.

Mehenopolis, a pilgrim destination thanks to its ancient shrine to a snake deity as well as the home of the late sheep, is nearly as byzantine in its ways and undercurrents as Constantinople.

Among suspicious characters John encounters there are a pretentious local landowner battling a self-styled magician for control of the lucrative shrine, an exiled heretical cleric, an itinerant bee-keeper, and a disgraced charioteer. Meanwhile, in Constantinople, John’s good friend Anatolius does his best to trace the senator’s murderer.

At stake are not only John’s honor and his head, but also the family with whom he recently reunited, now in danger of being broken apart -- or worse.

ERIC'S BIT or FALLING INTO A REVERY

In the northeast the leaves are just starting to fall.

Whenever I look out the window, I see yellow leaves in the air, drifting, twirling, tumbling, swinging slowly to and fro on their way down. The cat sits on the sill and watches leaf creatures slide across the porch roof.

A few times, however, what I first mistook for a particularly erratic leaf turned out to be a small butterfly Surprising, since already we’ve had a hard frost.

Soon the world will be too cold for butterflies. I don’t suppose these autumn butterflies know how near they are to the end times. There are still enough warm days to encompass their brief lives. The drifting snows of winter mean no more to them than the final extinguishing of the sun means to us. Less, because they have no concept of some future from which they will be forever barred Nor can they regret, as they live out their few days in a world without hot sunlight and bright flowers, that they were not born into an endless summer long since past.

I’ve always been fascinated by the past and the future. Any time other than now. When I was younger I devoured science fiction. The imagined futures were more attractive, or at least more interesting, than my dull and constrained present. SF books reminded me not only that the future would be different, but by extension that the present could be different. After all, the present was not just “the way things are” that so many believe it to be. Once it too was a malleable future ready to be shaped by choices yet to be made.

Today I spend a lot of time writing historical mysteries and I continually try to remind myself that 542 AD is as alien and unreachable as the far future. I have read historicals in which the author was bent on pointing out similarities to the present, but to me the differences are more interesting.

Of course, we are always unavoidably writing about our own times since we have no experience of others. I can’t actually put myself into the mind of a character who cannot even guess at the next 1,500 years, which for us is all graven in history books, a person who has never seen an electric light, who doesn’t realize North and South America exist. I can’t even write in ancient Greek, let alone think in it. But I can pretend not to know what the future holds. I can respect beliefs my characters might have which they would probably not adhere to now in the light of twenty-first century knowledge. I can allow our fictional Justinian to imagine, as he must have, that perhaps the Goths could be thrown out of Italy and the Roman Empire fully reconstructed, without slyly reminding the reader of my superior knowledge thanks to fifteen centuries of hindsight.

Distant eras and people long dead had their own agendas which had nothing to do with creating a world of the sort to which we are used. At the present moment, we’re what’s happened, but we’re not what our predecessors were aiming for. A historical rings false when it gives the impression that its era is only a way station along a road leading directly to where we are today, or a reflection of a future that did not yet exist to be mirrored.

I suppose writing a historical is mostly a matter of creating an illusion. A novel will always be written according to the tastes and preoccupations and methods of the time in which it’s written. If readers didn’t want the past shaped to their current needs to some extent, they would turn directly to what people of the times wrote for themselves. Nevertheless, the illusion of a difference between our era and the historical one depicted is worth maintaining.

But people themselves never change, or so it's said. That is true to an extent, or true for the short period of recorded history for which we can vouch. Yes, the ancient Greeks wrote about the same emotions we feel today, the identical virtues and vices. Yet the beliefs people lived by have been as variegated as -- well, as the different beliefs people around the world live by today. Something I find instructive in history is that our common human nature has never led irrevocability to one particular kind of society. Rather, the society human beings create has mostly to do with their beliefs. And though human nature might not be changeable, beliefs are. Is that cause for optimism?

Given the shortcomings of the world we live in, I guess I find it comforting to contemplate, to spend some time in, worlds of the future or worlds of the past, which give me hope for something different.

Then again, I always have a tendency toward somber reflections when the leaves begin to fall.

AND FINALLY

Not surprisingly, between colder weather and shorter days, we in the northern hemisphere at least are entering that part of the year where we tend to stay home o' nights and read a good book. Fittingly, Henry David Thoreau observed when winter arrives we lead a more inward life, enjoying warm fires and watching motes in sunbeams.

We don't know about how sunny it was over there, but in mid-December the Romans demonstrated their outward life by joyously celebrating Saturnalia, that most popular and intoxicating festival featuring riotous behaviour and social disorder. Since the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will be emailed on l5 December, we will do our best to ensure its content does not provoke riots and public unrest.

See you then!

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the aether at

http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Sunday, August 15, 2004

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # TWENTY-EIGHT l5 AUGUST 2004

We're writing this newsletter as the dog days of summer go snuffling mournfully off over the horizon until next year. And a good job too. The two months since we last hounded our subscribers have been so wet and humid that trees, lawns and bushes -- usually crisped to an attractive toasty brown by this time of the year -- remain a brilliant Irish green, the sight of which suggests house windows have been mysteriously fitted with green filters overnight.

Speaking of turning green, doubtless readers are feeling somewhat emerald about the gills at the sight of this latest issue arriving at their email in-box. At least the editorial staff of Orphan Scrivener aren't as bad as those "concocters of newsletters" whom Chamber's Book of Days (l879) described as a "mob of unscrupulous scribblers". And just as well given the outraged writer went on to remark that said scribblers as well as ballad-singers (apparently given to uttering political pasquinades) annoyed the government no end, while sentences to pillory or jail had done no good.

Political the Scrivener is not, but as for pasquinades, since we have been known to indulge in a lampoon or two even if we don't go so far (literally) as to paste them on Pasquino's statue in Rome, perhaps our best plan would be to change the subject entirely.

So we shall.

ERIC'S BIT or BATTING IDEAS AROUND

WARNING: HEREIN THERE BE SPOILERS

I don’t like to write about writing.

In my opinion, a lot of what’s written about writing doesn’t mean anything. Most criticism is just personal opinion disguised as science. You’ll never convince me that there’s any objective measure of something like a "wooden character” when, demonstrably, one reader’s puppet is another’s real live boy.

Besides, for me, writing mostly means telling stories and what can you say about making up stories? There are some technical tricks, of course, but a recitation of such stuff is yawn-inducing.

Mary and I collaborate, so some of what happens in our books is her idea and some is mine. I’m not exactly sure how my story ideas occur to me. Mostly they arise from the characters and whatever research I’m doing while I’m working on a chapter.

For example, in Five For Silver there is a scene in which a holy fool quite unexpectedly visits Theodora at the private baths in the palace. I had seen a photograph of a well preserved Roman bath, a circular pool in a small domed room. The dome had an opening in the middle to let in light and allow steam to escape. Hmmmm. Hole overhead, bath below. If you’ve already got a half-crazed, wild fool in your story you just know he’s not going to be able to resist an opening like that.

Who could he drop in on? Well, since the fool aims for the maximum outrage and there’s an empress in the book, the answer was obvious. As for visualizing a weird figure in billowing costume plummeting down, that wasn’t much of a reach for someone whose favorite comic book hero was Batman.

But don’t suppose all my influences are quite so low-brow. When I was wondering what Theodora might be doing before her visitor arrived, I recalled the Lawrence Alma-Tadema painting of two Roman women splashing each other in a bath, one of those classic Victorian excuses to display naked women. Anyway, when I thought about Theodora splashing a couple of court ladies, that led to a little byplay between the characters because considering the empress’ temperament, if she’s urging you to splash her, perhaps you'd think twice.

Because Mary and I are typically writing different parts of a book simultaneously, we work from an outline to make sure we’re not getting in each other’s way. These outlines are not all that detailed. For instance, the outline for Chapter 20 of Four For a Boy begins:

"John and Felix pass an uncomfortable and cold night."

We know already they have been sent out into the streets by the Prefect, supposedly to lie in wait for malefactors. As it turns out they are attacked at dawn, but in between there needs to be a little about passing the night.

My first thought was they could hide in an alley. There are lots of dank, dark, and dangerous alleys in our books. According to your point of view, they are either cliches or repeated images fraught with meaning about the nature of John’s time. Where else would you hide to watch the main street anyway? Not that an alley, in itself, offers much concealment. The Byzantines didn’t have dumpsters, so how about a heap of refuse behind which you can hunker down? That’s certainly uncomfortable. Not very interesting though.

I have a weakness for visuals which probably goes back to my comic book days. Gotham City was filled with bizarre architecture and gigantic animated billboards, perfect for Batman to swing from while he fought the Joker. So, aside from rotted produce which is not very visually appealing, what else might be thrown away? I recalled reading there were so many excess statues in the city some were stored in an otherwise deserted square. So, how about broken statuary? Marble is also cold. John and Felix can be truly cold and uncomfortable now, peering out from behind a pile of marble limbs.

Now we need a moon to illuminate the marble. That’s a more interesting picture, but static. I added a window in the wall of one of the alley buildings and the dwelling's cranky tenant. Still not quite enough action to get through the whole night. Hmmmm. What else might be in an alley? Cats! I know that from Top Cat cartoons. Two cats get into a fight on the pile of marble limbs. Bif! Pow! Yowl!

That’s certainly enough excitement for one night.

At dawn, according to the next part of the outline, John and Felix are attacked and a riot breaks out, involving their assailants, various shopkeepers and street people. Unarmed beggars taking on men with swords seemed farfetched. Then I realized the beggars had plenty of arms right to hand, not to mention legs so they came out swinging marble limbs from that heap in the alley.

Sometimes scenes write themselves.

Now that I’ve tried to unravel my mental processes, I’m not sure I like where they lead. I seem to have admitted I get my ideas from comic books and bad art.

Worse, I’m thinking about John. By day, he is a rich and powerful man. By night, he haunts the alleys of the city bringing criminals to justice. He has a callow young sidekick in Anatolius, a faithful elderly servant in Peter. His nemesis, aside from Theodora, is the former court page Hektor, who has always painted his face but recently has more reason to do so having suffered disfiguring lye burns.

I think I've just admitted that John is Batman.

I told you I didn't like to write about writing.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

We've often been asked why John is a secret Mithran in Justinian's Christian court and an essay explaining why will be published in the September, 2004 issue of The Write Stuff http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wstuff. This monthly newsletter is a service of Catholic Writers Online http://www.catholicwritersonline.com and is devoted to news and articles devoted to writing and the Faith.

MARY'S BIT or KEEPING COOL IS A SIRIUS BUSINESS

As is well known, the ancients believed the rising dog star, in tandem with heat from the sun, was responsible for the annual stretch of hot weather between the beginning of July and mid August, this being what you might call a Sirius theory although not perhaps scientifically sound.

British summers are never that hot, especially in my home area, the windy north-east. Thus it'S not too often the temperature rises enough to feel really uncomfortable. While we were growing up, if the weekend turned really warm, the family sometimes trekked down river to the coast -- along with what seemed like half the city -- on day trips about which I wrote at

http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/geordie.htm#attic

However, one week-day during the summer holidays while the adults were at work, it started to get really warm not long after we'd spooned down our milk-mushy Weetabix breakfast. By dinner time it must have been in the low 70*s, because we reckoned it hot enough to have the calamine lotion bottle on standby for the anticipated bad cases of sunburn and kept sniffing the milk bottle to detect any suspicious aroma, the presence of which would mean anyone adding milk to their evening cup of tea would see lumps rising to its surface even if the bottle had been kept in a bucket of cold water all way -- our version of a fridge.

Keeping cool in an industrial atmosphere heavy with smoke and grit and chemicals in a city where air conditioners were not so much unknown as undreamt of, was a serious business. Once you've thrown up the sash windows to let in stray breezes, what else can you do? Eventually, having tired of throwing cold water on our faces and mopping up the flooded the scullery floor, my younger sister and I were suddenly inspired. Indeed, one could say perspiration was the mother of invention.

Bear in mind this particular dwelling had no indoor plumbing except a cold tap in the scullery. Hot water was dispensed in small quantities from a wall-mounted gas-heated geyser although if larger amounts were required, a metal bucket was pressed into service to boil whatever was needed on the cooker. However, and it was perfect for our plan, we lived in an upstairs flat whose back door opened to a precipitous flight of outdoor steps leading down into our back yard.

So what we did was gather together several common household items from which we handily constructed a nifty outdoor shower. It was a good example of makeshift engineering, formed by suspending a colander with three pieces of equi-spaced string from the handle of a broom. The bristle end of the broom was firmly tied with a skipping rope to the railing at the top of the stairs, so placed as to jut out over the yard below. Then a hosepipe was attached to the cold tap in the scullery, the sink being placed only a few steps away from the back door, and the other end of the hosepipe tied into the colander -- although a close eye had to be kept on it as well as the kitchen tap since both ends had a tendency to slip out of their allotted place.

I now wonder why we happened to even have a hosepipe, given there were no gardens to water around our way and nobody owned a car or anything else that would occasionally need to be washed down. In any event, once the contraption was in place, having put on our prickly black wool one-piece swimming suits and rubber bathing hats, we took turns to stand under the cooling sprays of water coming down through the colander holes while the other sibling kept a close eye on operations.

It worked pretty well, all in all, not to mention the concreted back yard got a good wash down as well.

Nowadays swimming pools, water parks, and visits to river, coasts, and islands are very popular and attract thousands of holidaymakers. Bearing that in mind perhaps we should consider patenting Reed's Miniature Portable Cooling System, which could be marketed with that wonderfully attractive slogan "No batteries required". Even better, if its purchasers grew tired of standing around getting wet, they could press its various components -- broom, colander, string, skipping rope, and hosepipe -- into their usual everyday use around the household and garden. Talk about frugal!

AND FINALLY

The imminent start of the new academic year draws closer as we send this issue, with the dreaded red blight of "Back To School" sales signs appearing more and more in stores and malls every day. Thomas Merton observed that October in America is fine and dangerous but a wonderful time to begin something new. You'll be able to rashly begin something new, if not dangerous, in mid October, since the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will roll into your in-box on l5th October.

See you then!

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the aether at

http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # TWENTY-SEVEN -- l5 JUNE 2004

The recent transit of Venus across the sun caused a fair bit of excitement, not to mention publication of a barrel o' splendid photos underlining humanity's long fascination with various sorts of eclipses.

There have been only a few solar eclipses during our lifetimes, and strange indeed they were to experience, with that disquieting and marked drop in temperature, a deathly silence falling as birds gradually stop twittering, and strangest of all the contemplation of dancing, crescent-shaped points of light beneath trees when all around us ordinary light, albeit of a greenish hue, is as "solid" as ever.

Speaking of turning a greenish hue, readers may well do the same when they spot this latest Orphan Scrivener swim into view through the aether, its imminent arrival casting a shadow over their sunny summer day. Never mind, it doesn't arrive all that often, so ratchet up the fan, grab yourself an ice cream sandwich, and read on.

MARY'S BIT or YOUTHFUL FORTITUDE

Jack Frost came a-calling on Gibson Street, leaving a bouquet of ice flowers and rime ferns traced out on the insides of our windows overnight.

Under a Wedgewood blue sky plumed with palls of smoke from countless coal fires and factories the thick snow that had fallen while we slept lent a temporary dignity to the surrounding sea of smoke-blackened bricks and slate roofs and deadened the noise of vehicles passing along Coatsworth Road.

Although it can be cold and there's usually a fairly brisk wind coming off the river, it doesn't snow all that often up north. Women living in our street improvised boots by tying plastic bags over their chunky-heeled shoes, a common though dangerous makeshift measure -- and particularly so if we guttersnipes had had time to make ice slides on half-cleared paths before adults ventured out to go to work or on a message, as running an errand was known.

Already on this particular morning a swift sorty or two to shufti around the corner revealed our traditional enemies in the next street had reached an advanced stage in the construction of a defensive wall. Raids were obviously in the offing.

The boys from our street therefore decided to build not only a wall but also a fort in the narrow back lane running between the back yards of our row of terraced houses and those belonging to the next street, Scarcely pausing long enough to toss a snowball at us girls or even shove snow down the backs of our coats or into our wellies, the lads set to work with a will, running up and down with their arms full of snow, knees blue and knobby under the short trousers boys wore then, soot speckled slush soaking into their jackets and home-knitted Fair Isle v-necked sweaters. (Rreaders have likely seen Tristan Farnon wearing the grown-up version).

Whether or not they had obtained inside information on our opponents' battle plans from eavesdropping after climbing up and lurking behind timber piled on the roof of the garage on the corner of our back lane -- a favoured spot of the boys from the next street, who routinely gathered there to plan their latest mischief and occasionally smoke cigarettes stolen from their parents -- we mere lassies did not know. However, it transpired the building of this fort was so urgent we were recruited to toil on the task, a joint effort hitherto unknown.

Looking back, I wonder why we only built one wall and not two. Obviously, if raiders from the next street circled around, crossed the foot of our back lane, ran up our street, and then turned left for a short distance they could attack us from the unprotected rear. But the decision was to build one wall, and one wall was built.

Staggering up and down, hauling lumps of snow patted into blocks with waterlogged gloves that froze to fingers and snow with equal impartiality, we soon had the lone wall built, cementing it together with more snow pounded between its blocks. The fort was a more casual affair, formed from a large amount of snow piled against a stretch of wall between two back yard doors and hollowed out igloo fashion by scooping away the inside of the pile in the time-honoured manner utilised the world over by children building sand forts.

Take that! we thought somewhat prematurely, standing back to briefly admire our handiwork before proceeding to the equally important task of making a goodly supply of snowballs to have on hand when the attack finally came. Some of these missiles (I am sorry to say) had small stone hearts. It was war, you see, and nasty indeed can be the wars of childhood.

Suddenly from the next street there came the sound of a muffled, dull, drawn-out "crrrruuuump", coupled with a low thud that shook our fillings.

Abandoning our igloo and defensive wall we rushed up the lane, turned left at the empty stable where some poor horse once lived far from fields and pastures but which was now only occupied by rats, raced along the short cross alley, and burst out into the next street.

Down the hill to our right clouds of dust were falling lazily, brown snowflakes laying a concealing blanket over a chaotic scene. A huge pile of bricks, tangled curtains, and smashed furniture had fallen into the street. It was obvious at a glance the front walls of several houses in the row had been blown out, presenting a view reminiscent of a giant doll's house with the front opened up. We could see the patterns on bedroom wallpaper, the colour of painted walls of staircases that led from landings of splintered wood and broken bannisters down into a muddle of masonry and bricks.

We stood agape as a terrible quiet fell along with dust and plaster.

Then an adult rushed by on their way to the local phone box to summon aid as neighbours began pulling bricks and splintered doors off the pile. It must have reminded them of war time.

Soon we heard ambulance bells clanging harshly from the direction of Bensham Road. One of these vehicles tried to take a short cut up our back lane but couldn't get past our snow wall, so it had to hastily reverse out, continue along the road crossing the foot of both our street and the next, and so up to the site of the explosion. We all later heard at some length from the grown ups about our handiwork and how it had blocked the way, and we also gleaned the cause of the disaster was reckoned to be an elderly lady had turned on her gas stove and then forgotten to light it. Or possibly the flame had blown out and she had not realised gas had been escaping for some time before attempting to relight it. A third theory was it was due to a gas leak from the mains.

So far as we ever found out nobody was killed although there were said to be injuries. The lesson we learnt that day was not to block narrow ways, and although the small fry's raids on each other's streets continued, we never again built a wall or an igloo in the back lane.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker had only a short work day this evening, so just a couple of items to pass along this time around.

TWO ARE JOYFUL or GREECE IS THE WORD

We recently learnt that Govostis Govostis Publisher S.A. of Athens (in European, not the southern US) has purchased Greek rights to Two For Joy. No further details yet, but subscribers may recall Govostis issued a Greek edition of Onefer about l8 months ago so it seems likely John's fellow countrymen are enjoying reading about his adventures.

ANOTHER MYSTERY SOLVED or FOUR AND A BOY

If readers happen to have been looking for the iBook mass market paperback of Fourfer (it leapt fo(u)rth into the world earlier this month) only to be told it was "not in the system", it might be worth enquiring if it's lurking in there under nom de littérature Four And A Boy, as was reported by a reader on the east cost. The book itself has the correct name on its cover along with an interesting subtitle: A Lord Chamberlain Mystery. Class may discuss conclusions to be drawn from this.

ERIC'S BIT or HOW NOW SNOW PLOW?

Mid-June is as good a time as any for us to talk about snow, when the memory of the last storm has faded and the next lies too far in the future to worry about.

It isn’t so much snow I hate as the cold it needs not to melt. Snow can be beautiful -- on the other side of a window. If it covered the landscape on a hot summer day it would probably be pleasant enough to walk around in it. Snow is wasted on the winter.

Occasionally, when I was a kid, I braved the frigid elements to play, however briefly, in the snow. Building snowmen was fun, until my mittens soaked through and my hands became as numb and useless as a snowman’s stick arms. To be honest, I have about as much insulating fat as a stick, which is why I feel the cold more than most.

One winter my friends and I built a “flying saucer” run down a steep, wooded slope in our neighborhood. The banked chute wound through a threatening maze of trees. Wobbling and spinning downhill kept me a few degrees from hypothermia for an unusually long time before I had to limp home, shivering. When I pulled my slush-filled overshoes gingerly off and with some trepidation, I was happy to find that my feet were still inside even though I couldn't feel them anymore.

That fall of snow turned a hill in a patch of scrubby trees into an amusement park thrill ride. That’s what I think about when it comes to snow, its power to transform. When you wake the morning after a blizzard and peer into the whitened landscape outside, is there any doubt you have been transported to an alien world? One not quite fit for human life?

I remember the impossibly high drifts of my childhood. Suburban yards were turned into an Arctic wilderness. Our little mutt, Sandy, had to leap from footprint to footprint, or else be forced to burrow like a mole. Years later I hiked around through the unnatural, day-long twilight of a record setting snowfall. Unplowed streets ran imperceptibly into sidewalks and lawns. Street signs were capped and obscured with white. Fine, endlessly falling snow hung in the air like pale smoke. There were no sounds except the crunch and squeak of my own boots. I would not have been entirely surprised if I had returned to the house and found it gone.

It’s no accident, I think, that Santa drives a sleigh and children hope Christmas will be white. Santa and his flying reindeer seem so much more feasible in a snowy world. At this far remove from last winter's drifts, with a run of recent temperatures nudging ninety, I could almost dream of a white Christmas, rather than having a nightmare about it.

Running will keep even an assemblage of bones like me warm. I have been able to enjoy being out in the cold so long as I keep moving. At one time I used to run through the wooded park at the end of the block. One day I ventured out in the evening, immediately after a few inches of new snow had fallen. By the time I had passed the pond and jogged slowly along the paths near the far end of the park, there were no footprints. Tree trunks loomed darkly, and the undisturbed snow undulating over the uneven ground and covering every twig of every limb glowed violet in the deepening twilight.

It was then I saw my first and only albino squirrel. You would think a snowy landscape would be the worst place to see a white squirrel, but this one was circling around a black tree trunk the way squirrels always do, putting the trunk between me and it. I thought at first I was imagining things, but as I ran toward the tree, fast enough to surprise the squirrel, I got another glimpse of it and could even make out its pink eyes. Then it went claw-clicking out of sight around the far side of the trunk and vanished up into the snow laden branches.

It really is a different world when it snows, one that is even more enjoyable to contemplate in torrid mid June.

AND FINALLY

Although he might not have been talking about a June day as such, Henry James declared he considered "summer afternoon" the two most beautiful words in the English language. This sentiment is well and good when uttered in milder climes or during the warm but not overpowering days of early spring and late autumn, but already we've begun to hear the faint yapping of the steaming dog days of summer as they draw ever closer each day.

Speaking of dogs reminds us of cats and thoughts of felines lead to contemplating mice. And what has this to do with John and his world?. Well, it's our way of introducing a stop press news item. This very morning, even as we scurried about preparing to catapult this newsletter out into the world, we received a note from fellow mystery author Mark Terry. He is attending a professional conference at an Anaheim hotel about four blocks from Disneyland and had visited Downtown Disney, a shopping and restaurant area. And lo and behold, a book shop there was displaying the iBook edition of Fourfer in its mystery section.

And what's more, it was placed *face out*.

John has therefore managed to make his way into the Land of the Mouse, and we are pretty tickled about it, to say the least.

Returning to our muttons, or rather the fast approaching dog days, unfortunately for our subscribers by the time the next issue of Orphan Scrivener bounds into view the baying pack will have long since arrived at our collective doorsteps. We're off to buy a few shares in ice cream and cola manufacturers and hoping the summer heat won't be too bad, but in any event in the spirit of the well-known observation that misery loves company we'll see you all again on l5 August.

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the aether at
http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects, including more personal essays and an interactive game as well as an on- line jigsaw puzzle (if you have a java-enabled browser) featuring One For Sorrow's boldly scarlet cover. For those new to the subscription list there's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!

Thursday, April 15, 2004

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # TWENTY-SIX l5 APRIL 2004

As T. S. Eliot observed, April is the cruellest month and although we suspect he may have been casting a thought in the direction of Tax Return Day, of course the fortunate fellow wot not of Orphan Scrivener. Alas, our subscribers' luck just ran out, for this latest issue arrives (as you see) to contribute to the annual insult that is April l5th.

Some have derived the name of the month from the Latin aperire (to open), April being when leaves start unfurling in the green mist that spreads over hill and vale and heralds spring. Appropriately, then, April is now when -- having fought our way through the foggy wasteland that is the Form l040 instruction booklet -- we open our cheque books and send slips of paper representing green-backs off to the Department of the Treasury.

Those living in the l800s considered April to be ruled by diamonds, which in the Language of Jewels denoted innocence. It therefore seems a pity US tax returns are not due in March, for according to this charming Victorian belief, that month is ruled by bloodstones, representing courage. We therefore salute those subscribers with the courage to wrassle tax returns into submission *and* read this newsletter on the same day. Read on, ye innocents!

ERIC'S BIT or RED STAR, SILVER LINING

As Mary could attest, my philosophy is that every silver lining is just trying to draw our attention away from the enormous, menacing black cloud looming behind it. This is why I can find something worrisome in Five For Silver's recent starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Now please bear with me. On the one hand I naturally take some pride in our books, but on the other I'm uncomfortable saying much about it, though I'm told I ought to do so for publicity purposes. Admittedly one could hardly say "Please read my book, it isn't very good", but I have been subjected to all too many strutting and crowing authors to want to appear as such myself. See the poet Crinagoras in Five For Silver, for example. What's more, to attempt to discuss a negative aspect of a book's success is to veer perilously close to what I might term "Ruth territory".

"Ruth" was a perfect girl in my grade school classes, who was not named Ruth (I'm protecting the innocent and all that...) Of course, she had endless reasons to brag, but being perfect, she couldn't. Instead there would be exchanges such as:

Ruth: "So what'd you get on your report card?"

Eric: Mostly 'A's. "Except a 'B' in Arithmetic."

Ruth: "A 'B'? You got a 'B'? Really? Oh let me see! Oh gee...you're lucky...I wish I could get a 'B'. Its sooooo boring getting nothing but silly old 'A's every time."

Having said that, I hope this is taken as the observation it's meant as rather than a disguised brag. The starred review, while most exhilarating did not strike me as an entirely positive thing. Because...now what? Either we get another (been there, done that) or we don't (abject failure, having had a star.) The strategy we've taken thus far is to try to make sure that successive books are different from each other in significant ways. We vary the tone, the mix of characters, the type of plot, thus avoiding the feeling that we have to continually top ourselves, by doing the same thing all over again...but better.

Thus there will be more sunlight in Book Six.

An even worse problem -- oh, yes, there's always worse -- is that I just can't put myself in a state of mind where I feel I'm writing anything worthy of a starred review anywhere. Generally I feel as if I'm writing something that would be sneered at by the editor of my college literary magazine, and I've been out of college 30 years. I've been writing stories of some sort with no success for decades, and the writing process, while I'm engaged in it, feels no different to me now than it did when nobody would give the results the time of day. The idea that what I'm laboring on will be criticized by a professional reviewer from Publisher's Weekly is just plain terrifying.

Then too, one shouldn't be contemplating reviews while writing. It is generally true, in any endeavor, that it can be disastrous to be worrying about the result when you should be concentrating on the process. I have enough problems figuring out which end of the sentence to place a word in, let alone wondering about anyone's reaction to the finished 75,000 word narrative.

So the way I see, good reviews are the first step on the slippery slope to writer's block.

However, having said that, I have to admit, when I saw that starred review, I not only felt misgivings, I also couldn't help thinking "Please, please...let Ruth read Publishers Weekly."

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Just a couple of news items this time around, but how wide apart their content!

ERIC QUOTED or THE GAME'S AFOOT

As we've occasionally mentioned, in addition to writing fiction and essays for Orphan Scrivener, from time to time Eric has been known to construct interactive fiction (text- based games). He was therefore honoured to be quoted in a recent Australian article devoted to this somewhat lesser known area of the scriveners' craft, which can be seen at http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9091818%5E15 388%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

RELIGION IN MYSTERIES or FICTION INVOLVING THE FAITHFUL

Mystery Readers Journal, a thematic quarterly review, will have two issues focusing on religious mysteries this year. As usual, each issue will contain reviews, articles and author essays. Part I, just published, offers essays from Julia Spencer-Fleming, Bernard Knight, Sharan Newman and many others, including (we are thrilled to report) several paragraphs from Casa Maywrite. On this occasion, among other things we talk about trying to capture a sense of living in 6th century Constantinople, a world steeped in religion, without becoming entangled in religious discussions, as well as how it was we came to invent a religion based on a Quadrinity. Part II will appear in June, but meantime you can check out MRJ's website at http://www.mysteryreaders.org

JOHN HAS GONE FORTH or FIVEFER GOES LIVE

Five For Silver was published last month and is therefore now darkening bookstore shelves on-line and off. And noir Fivefer certainly is, being set during the plague of 542. Peter, John's elderly servant, has a vision in which an angel tells him an old friend has been murdered, which turns out to be true. Thus John pursues his latest investigation in a city whose inhabitants are dying by the thousands every day, and death is murder's accomplice. Those who have not been able to flee Constantinople must deal with hunger, crime, and such abominations as a holy fool who dances with the dead, invades Empress Theodora's bath, and lives to tell the tale. And then...

MARY'S BIT or MAKING A READER ATRABILIOUS

Subscribers who've been with us for a while may recall that in Issue l3 (February 2002) we revealed a correspondent had clarified something that had exercised us for years, to wit the identity of obelist, as in Obelists Fly High, C. Daly King's l935 "locked room" mystery set aboard a lengthy flight. (Answer: Obelists are folk who mark passages they think significant in mystery novels. Are *you* guilty...?)

Discovering the meaning of obelist is a good example of when reading mysteries are educational, as I've also recently found to be the case when perusing several old mystery novels and random gothic tales. In doing so, my vocabulary has been enlarged by several unusual words, the meanings of which were established only after consultation with Messrs Webster, Funk & Wagnall, Wordsmiths to the Trade.

Even after their sterling lexicographical assistance, I remain unenlightened as to the meanings of one or two so far untraceable words. For example, beaupots, spotted in the description of a manor house garden. If it is not a typo for beauty spots, my guess is they might be large, decorative containers in which flowers and greenery such as geraniums or ivy are planted. And equally puzzling, what should the reader make of a reference to a Bolo form of government? From the context it appears nothing to do with either a machete or a string tie with a fancy clasp, but could well refer to Bolshevik rule.

I will admit to some surprise when a character "elaborated a cigarette". At first blush it seems, as the old catch-phrase declares, a good trick if you can do it. However, further investigation established that to accomplish this apparently remarkable feat all the smoker had to do was make an elaborate show of painstakingly lighting his gasper. Then again, a slim character's physique, described as an appanage of birth, gives a hint of its meaning, being something belonging to someone by right or custom. An example given was of land settled by a prince on his younger sons, and the author's word choice is particularly apt given that these days for many in the public eye their physical appearances are their fortune.

Then again, I took to rhodomontade (variant of rodomontade), meaning vain, empty boasting or ranting. Indeed, it strikes me as a good name for a provocative or controversial publication, although its euphonious nature might lead unsuspecting readers to expect a quite different type of content.

My impression is the authors of many of these older works assumed readers would be familiar with words in less common usage nowadays, just as Victorian writers in particular seem to take it for granted their mythological, literary, and poetic references (as well as occasional Latin or Greek phrases) would be immediately understood by their reading public.

There again, such readers occasionally needed a fair grasp of esoteric phraseology, although it's always fun to take a stab at guessing meanings before looking them up. However, had I perused William Harrison Ainsworth's Auriol or The Elixir of Life while this bubbling potboiler of a gothic novel was first serialised in the l840s instead of only a month or so ago, I'd doubtless have immediately known that menstruum is a solvent rather than an archaic musical instrument, a burette isn't a hair ornament but a glass tube. and athanor signifies an alchemical furnace instead of one of J. R. R. Tolkien's minor characters, if indeed any of Professor Tolkien's creations can be termed thus. Auriol also mentioned gourd-shaped cucurbites which, as it transpired, are not malformed vegetables, but rather rounded vessels forming part of a distilling apparatus. Further, I discovered from this same novel that a fauteuil is an armchair, and as for estrade (a dais or platform) how many homes these days can boast one, with or without a fauteuil, cucurbite, or athanor?

Ainsworth's novel certainly rattles along at a frantic pace as scenes jump all over, and at times under, the landscape. Its plot is so byzantine that the closer I reached its denouement, the more I doubted the author could tie up all the loose ends dangling hither, thither, and yon. As it transpired I was not far wrong, for I eventually discovered this narrative confusion was largely due to the order of the chapters having been mixed up in the e-text I was reading.

Far worse, however, was that the closing page or so were such let-downs they must surely have been enough to provoke readers of even the mildest disposition to become atrabilious to the extent of provoking rhodomontadic outbursts of a ranting nature. -

AND FINALLY

Speaking of provoking readers, this issue is being composed during what the Swan of Avon described as the uncertain glory of an April day inasmuch as it's sunny at the moment, but snow flurries are expected overnight. Even so, daylight hours are drawing out noticeably and by the time the next Orphan Scrivener trundles out we'll be into summer, with its seasonal delights of plump red strawberries and fragrant orange-fleshed melons, the delicate scent of roses, and (hopefully) time spent lounging in deck chairs in the back garden or at the seaside. Not to mention lots of good reading.

At this point subscribers may suddenly recall Ralph Waldo Emerson's observation that no matter what we do, summer unfortunately brings flies. In keeping with this, the next Orphan Scrivener will buzz irritatingly out to you on l5th June, the month represented by agate, signifying long life and good health. So if even the thought of the next newsletter's impending arrival gives you a headache, break out the aspirin well in advance and meantime take comfort from contemplating there's a reasonable possibility of being able to escape into enubilous meteorological conditions when our June 2004 issue casts its dark cloud over your email in-box.

See you then!

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the aether at

http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects, including more personal essays and an interactive game as well as an on- line jigsaw puzzle (if you have a java-enabled browser) featuring One For Sorrow's boldly scarlet cover. For those new to the subscription list there's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!

Sunday, February 15, 2004

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # TWENTY-FIVE l5 FEBRUARY 2004

February must surely be the Wednesday's Child of the year. Despite its subtly lengthening days, this shortest of months routinely exhibits an unfortunate tendency to woe, with a middle o, and that rhymes with snow.

It has been said that snow and teen years are problems that, if you have the fortitude to ignore them for a sufficient length of time, will depart of their own accord. Well, we've been giving increasing piles of snow the cold shoulder (in more ways than one) for the past three months, but it just won't to take the hint, and instead continues to linger about the landscape like acrid smoke from a burnt dinner or house guests who've over-stayed their welcome.

Which latter social transgression we trust is not the case with this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener, which we now (as union-card-carrying relatives would say) put on the table for full and frank discussion.

MARY'S BIT or WOOLLY THINKING

When we were children 8'o-clock was set in stone as the time when we had to hit our sacks. It's true that by special parental dispensation we were allowed to stay up "late" some nights to listen to the Goon Show or Journey Into Space, but by l0 past 8 most evenings my sister and I were tucked up in our bunk-bedded snuggery in the attic.

Needless to say, we'd read by torchlight for at least an hour after retiring, secure in the knowledge that even if one of our parents came tippy-toeing up the long staircase that hugged three walls on its journey from the landing below, the loud creakings of its Victorian era wooden steps would warn us of their approach in good time to conceal books and torches under the covers.

However, a much more sinister type of approaching steps were heard once a week most weeks, since they were often featured in one of our favourite BBC radio programmes.

Presented under the title Appointment With Fear, the series featured half-hour plays introduced by the suitably sepulchral and sinister tones of Valentine Dyall, The Man In Black. In memory at least these dramas were replete with menacing footsteps tapping slowly along dark alleys and exceedingly strange noises at ungodly hours -- often emanating from fictional attics, I may add, which made the shadows in the corners of our sloping-roofed bedroom seem *much* more interesting after these plays ended. Between the best efforts of the BBC Sound Effects Department and the vivid imagination of the young, we could almost see the thick, swirling fog pressing close to the windows of some isolated mansion, muffling all sounds except the grandfather clock in the hall as it began its whirring run-up to striking the twelve chimes of midnight and the supposedly locked study door began to squeak open...

However, it wasn't until I looked up the programme this afternoon at http://www.britishdrama.org.uk/mib.html#FEAR that I learnt plays for the series were mostly originals written by John Dickson Carr, with a sprinkling of reworkings of classic tales by Stevenson, Poe, and other luminaries of weirder fiction, including (of course) an adaptation of The Monkey's Paw.

The format of Appointment With Fear involved Dyall's Voice of Doom book-ending each play as well as providing occasional mid-drama links. By modern day standards the stories were not that ghastly and whereas our mother always claimed eating cheese sandwiches before bed-time caused nightmares -- although I for one did not find it so -- this wonderful drama series did cause a problem of a related kind in that after having had our latest Appointments With Fear neither my sister nor myself wanted the job of turning off the light.

The difficulty arose because the light switch was (naturally enough) next to the door, on the far side of which stood the old, mesh-fronted radio. The door was several paces away from our bunk. Who knew what might be lurking with evil intent behind the wardrobe between the door and our side of the room, or for that matter under the lower bunk? Which, I may add, was my berth.

Well, with a bit of ingenuity we came up with a solution. The light switch was of a type long discontinued, consisting a short, protruding stub terminating in a tiny knob. In the UK, dowsing a light involves switching up rather than down. So we obtained an appropriate length of wool, tied it tightly under the head of the switch knob, and then ran it from there up over the top of the afore-mentioned wardrobe, down to the bunk, and so into our grubby grasp.

The following week, once the play had concluded, I switched off the radio, got back into bed, and gave our semi- automatic light-switcher-offer a good, hearty tug.

Unfortunately the wool broke.

Childhood sometimes inflicts sad disappointments.

Looking back, it now occurs to me that a piece of string would have been a better choice for the task, but for some reason that never occurred to us. We continued to listen to the plays and then have whispered arguments about who should get the dreaded task of turning radio and light off. As oldest, it usually fell to me, and groping my way back, it struck me more than once how long it takes to cross even a familiar room when your eyes have not adjusted to the dark and there might be something nasty waiting...

In a touch of irony the programme's producers would surely appreciate, I noticed on the website mentioned above a presentation in a later series was called A Day At The Dentist. Now *there* is a play whose sound effects I shudder to contemplate -- let alone its plot line.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The BSP Ticker has picked up a wee bit of speed of late, so without further ado we'll let it rip!

AMAZING NEWS or LIES, LOVE, AND LACK OF LOQUACITY

We were speechless -- not something that happens often at Casa Maywrite -- when we recently heard Four For A Boy has been nominated for the first Bruce Alexander Historical Mystery Award. The award will be presented in about a week's time during the Left Coast Crime conference in Monterey. The other two nominees are fellow PPP scrivener Ann Parker for Silver Lies. Set during the silver rush, Lies revolves around Inez Stannert, a lady who runs a saloon/gambling joint in l879 Leadville, CO. Rhys Bowen, who writes about Irish immigrant Molly Murphy's adventures in l90l New York in For The Love Of Mike, is the third nominee.

MORE MYSTERIOUS MUTTERINGS or CONVERSING WITH CAROLYN

After our virtual voices returned, we chatted at length with Bellaonline's Carolyn Chambers Clark, who posed some very interesting questions concerning John's world. Our alibis, er, answers are freshly online and may be viewed at http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art16916.asp Our thanks to Carolyn for this opportunity to bend the virtual ears of her readers.

LOOKING AHEAD or CITING THE FIFTH

Speaking of John, his fifth adventure, Five For Silver, will soon sally forth into the world. While we don't wish to say anything incriminating, we will say it's something a bit different from early entries in the series. John's latest investigation is set during the plague of 542 and is undertaken after Peter, his elderly servant, is visited by an angel bearing a strange message which, it turns out, is true -- for an old friend of Peter's has indeed been murdered. Fiverfer will be published by Poisoned Pen Press on l March, so will be available momentarily. We hope you enjoy it.

ERIC'S BIT or A SPELL CAST BY WILLOWS

For years I've named Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In The Willows as my favorite book. My grandmother read to me the adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad and I remember those evenings spent sitting and listening beside the rocking chair in her living room as my introduction to the enchantment of the written word. Our circle of orange lamplight and the shadowy Victorian furniture beyond would dissolve into the Wild Wood or Badger's warren and my grandmother's voice might have been the sound of the River by which the animals lived. But while I recalled clearly the spell cast by the words, I recalled very little of the words themselves.

So I decided to read the story again -- or rather to read it for myself for the first time -- a perilous undertaking after nearly 45 years. I was not disappointed. My grandmother's comforting voice has been stilled for twenty years and her cozy living room long-since remodeled by strangers. But Grahame's words still held the magic that had touched me so long ago.

There are the gorgeous descriptions of river, fields and woods in all their changing aspects throughout the seasons, creating a vivid, irresistible world. And of course the appealing characters, all save for some nefarious denizens of the Wild Wood, as friendly and caring a group as any child could wish, but with enough quirks and peccadilloes, from Badger's anti-social tendencies to Toad's manic irresponsibility, to appear real, hardly a bunch of boring do-gooders.

Then too, the book is mostly about home, the thing best known and most important to a child. Ratty and Mole and the rest are always safe in some lovingly described home, or going home on a cold night, or thinking about being at home in their own warm beds. Which is probably why it is so horrifying when Toad arrives back from his adventures to find Toad Hall occupied by weasels and stoats.

This is one of many harrowing scenes. Losing one's home, or being lost in the dark woods on a cold night as happens to Mole, or having one's freedom taken, a fate suffered by Toad when he is thrown in prison for stealing a motorcar, are not trivial matters. The fears they stir are deep, so The Wind In The Willows makes for exciting reading.

Grahame's world is not only filled with real danger, but with mystery. The Wild Woods and the far off Wide World both harbor things unknown. In one chapter Mole and Ratty encounter the god Pan, who strikes the memory from their minds. As children, like Grahame's animals, we readily accept our strange and contradictory state, creatures seeking mundane physical comforts, some cozy den, in a limitless universe full of mysteries and wonders beyond our comprehension. But as we grow older we too often take the comforts for granted and forget that the wonders exist. I think it might be Grahame's mingling of domesticity and awe that makes The Wind In The Willows a classic. Then again, trying to explain the book like that makes me wonder if I haven't just caught some of Mr. Toad's overwhelming conceit.

[Editorial note: Eric contributed this essay to the Fostoria, OH, Library's celebration of Children's Book Week a year or so ago.]

AND FINALLY

Speaking of the mingling of domesticity and awe, as Scarlett O'Hara memorably observed there is no convenient time for childbirth, death, or taxes. Given 2004 is a leap year, we do at least have an extra day and all of March before l5 April rolls around again, bearing on its back that pair of most inconvenient horrors, Tax Day and the next issue of Orphan Scrivener. Whereas filing tax returns can be put off beyond that date for a while, the arrival of our next newsletter is more than likely, so unless you leave the country or change your email address before then, we'll see you again on l5 April!

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the aether at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/

Therein you'll find the usual suspects, including more personal essays and an interactive game as well as an on- line jigsaw puzzle (if you have a java-enabled browser) featuring One For Sorrow's boldly scarlet cover. For those new to the subscription list there's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned!

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

ERIC'S BIT or THE SQUARE ON THE HIPPODROME

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

JOHN IN KANSAS or FIVE GOES FORTH

HIST, A LIST or FOUR FOR THE HONOUR

YET MORE GOOD NEWS or FIVE FOR THE KUDOS AT YOUR DOOR

MARY'S BIT or WHAT A CARRY ON

AND FINALLY

Friday, October 15, 2004

MARY'S BIT or MYTHING LINKS

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

E-MAIL SUBMISSIONS or HOW IT ALL BEGAN

A TIP OR TWO or YET MORE ON SUBMISSIONS

SHEEP PERTURBED or THE OFFICIAL BLURB

ERIC'S BIT or FALLING INTO A REVERY

AND FINALLY

Sunday, August 15, 2004

WARNING: HEREIN THERE BE SPOILERS

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

MARY'S BIT or KEEPING COOL IS A SIRIUS BUSINESS

AND FINALLY

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

TWO ARE JOYFUL or GREECE IS THE WORD

ANOTHER MYSTERY SOLVED or FOUR AND A BOY

AND FINALLY

Thursday, April 15, 2004

ERIC'S BIT or RED STAR, SILVER LINING

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

ERIC QUOTED or THE GAME'S AFOOT

RELIGION IN MYSTERIES or FICTION INVOLVING THE FAITHFUL

JOHN HAS GONE FORTH or FIVEFER GOES LIVE

MARY'S BIT or MAKING A READER ATRABILIOUS

AND FINALLY

Sunday, February 15, 2004

MARY'S BIT or WOOLLY THINKING

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

AMAZING NEWS or LIES, LOVE, AND LACK OF LOQUACITY

MORE MYSTERIOUS MUTTERINGS or CONVERSING WITH CAROLYN

LOOKING AHEAD or CITING THE FIFTH

ERIC'S BIT or A SPELL CAST BY WILLOWS

AND FINALLY