The Orphan Scrivener: 2009

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SIXTY -- l5 DECEMBER 2009

The first storm of winter arrived a week back and snow lingers on as this bumper bundle issue of Orphan Scribbler is written. While we did not sing welcome to the drifting snow as Eliza Cook so chirpily suggested -- doubtless after adding a bit more nutty slack to the fire and making another pot of tea -- it is noticeable how much lighter the nights are when snow is lying deep and crisp, if drifted rather than even, and that despite December being the darkest time of the year.

While this is one of our longest issues to date the shortest day is only a week or so away, underlining even the darkest things pass, so our advice is the quicker subscribers begin reading this newsletter the swifter the dark task will be done!

ERIC'S BIT or SENT UNDER BROWN PAPER WRAPPER

Today the whole universe of books stretches before us in plain sight on the Internet. Wonder what an author wrote, and where the works can be found? Bookseller, publisher and author sites, Wikipedia, and blogs will tell us anything we want to know. (Mary and I favor Fantastic Fiction for author bibliographies). What’s more, tens of thousands of old and often obscure titles are available for free in electronic form at sites like Gutenberg and Google Books.

It's a good thing, for the most part. But I sometimes miss the days when books were treasures to be sought after. I still remember my amazement during the early eighties when I found, on the used book table in a second hand shop outside Rochester, NY, the original paperback of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s A Cellar Full of Noise, his first-hand account of the band’s Cavern Club days. The book may have been in print at the time but if so I didn’t know about it.

Back in the sixties and seventies when I read voraciously, it wasn’t easy to find out that books existed, let alone find them to read. During one of my day-trips to New York City I learned about the publisher Dover Books and subsequently ordered from their catalog many of the public domain titles presented so beautifully in stiff covered trade paperback editions. I enjoyed Ernest Bramah’s tales of blind detective Max Carrados, Jacques Futrelle’s The Thinking Machine stories, The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy, and the Doctor Thorndyke detective stories of R. Austin Freeman. These books were entirely new to me. They had long since vanished from print for the most part and even from the shelves of the local library. Although Dover made a few such books available, I had no idea how many more the authors had written. Today most of what such authors wrote can be found on the Internet.(One exception is the work of popular thirties mystery writer C. Daly King whose Obelists Fly High greatly impressed me, even while I was mystified by the title.)

Years ago huge well-stocked bookstores and specialty bookstores tended to be confined to large cities. I took the bus to New York not so much to buy books I couldn’t find locally but to browse the shelves to see what delights I was missing. Manhattan stores carried New Directions trade paperback translations of Jorge Louis Borges, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Jean Cocteau, Arthur Rimbaud, and other enticingly unfamiliar foreign authors. There was almost always something different and exciting behind those distinctive black and white covers. At the time, trade paperbacks were much rarer than they are now and usually reserved for work considered, a bit too off-beat for commercial success. Exactly what I usually prefer.

Only in New York was I able to find novels by the French author Allain Robbe-Grillet, to whom I had been introduced during a college class. Although considered a literary -- or perhaps more accurately anti literary establishment-- writer, Robbe-Grillet penned a delightfully peculiar and complex detective novel (of sorts) entitled, in English, The Erasers. I have always preferred to think of the French title Les Gommes, since it evokes, for me (if incorrectly) the term gumshoe.

College was an excellent, if expensive, way to discover new books. The works of many of the authors I encountered in literature classes were available in Penguin Classic editions, but only the New York City stores had large sections of those. When I moved to Rochester, New York, I was astounded to discover that a large downtown “news vendor” also stocked books and, in particular, boasted a huge selection of Penguins. Right next to a huge comic book section. What a choice. Middlemarch or Iron Man? Okay, I blush to admit, I have yet to read Middlemarch.

One of the joys of exploring a big bookstore was that there would be far more titles by individual authors than in my local haunts. I was thrilled to find an endless supply of Michael Moorcock beyond the few Elric books with which I was familiar. What’s this? The Ice Schooner. The Fireclown. Another installment of the Elric saga I never knew existed!

Of course British authors do not necessarily see all their titles in print in the United States and even the biggest bookstores didn’t always stock all the UK titles. So I ordered science fiction from an overseas bookseller. The British paperbacks I found when I eagerly tore the brown paper from the parcels were of a slightly different dimension than American ones, their covers much glossier, the artwork typically, to my taste, better. They seemed like books from some parallel universe.

It was also possible to buy directly from the big publishers. In the back of a paperback there would be a tempting list of titles and an invitation to send in an order. I remember when I was in high school sending away for a big stack of John Steinbeck novels. It was also possible, when making an extensive order, to happen to check off something such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the purchase of which might be problematical at the local bookshop. Maybe I should have done that.

No doubt I could have saved myself all this questing for books if I had been content to stick to the bestsellers which were as omnipresent then as they are today. However, while I do not, like some, object to bestsellers on principle (Stephen King is perhaps my favorite author) I’ve always felt that except for rare works of genius which become classics, books manage to speak to more readers by saying less to them individually. The books which most appeal to me are those which are -- or perhaps have become through the passage of time -- a bit too eccentric to find mass popularity. Jealousy, my favorite novel by Robbe-Grillet reportedly sold 746 copies in its first year after publication.

Is it surprising that Mary and I write the sort of books we do?

We’re grateful that Poisoned Pen Press has seen fit to publish our Byzantine mysteries -- books that would probably never attract sufficient readers to interest a publishing conglomerate. And we are even more grateful for our readers, who give us an excuse to keep writing. Books are easier to locate today than they used to be, but I know that you can’t always be assured of finding the adventures of John the Lord Chamberlain at the local library or of running across one of our mysteries in a bookstore. If you have read our books you have almost certainly gone to the trouble to seek them out and taken pains to order them specially, a high compliment. I hope you find a little of what I have found in the books I’ve sought out, that they are just enough different to be worth the effort.

Being a fool to myself, I took no notice of the introductory note stating Ladies was the first act of an unfinished play. Having found the playscript intriguing I decided to take a stab at a possible solution.

As the curtain rises we discover a number of upper crust people at dinner, the final meal of a week-long house party before it disperses. It is realized there are thirteen diners, portending "something staggering" will happen to one of them. The butler, Dolphin, reluctantly counteracts this possibility by sitting briefly at the table to make fourteen, and then resumes his duties.

Just as dessert is passed around host Sam Smith reveals one of those present murdered his younger brother Dick two years before in Monte Carlo.

Dick Smith was certified as dying of natural causes but Sam looked into the matter, ultimately establishing his brother drank poisoned coffee, that an English speaker was responsible, and that this person had been gambling at Monte Carlo on the evening of the murder. Having made exhaustive enquiries he reveals his suspects are now sitting round his table. In a further outrage to hospitality he admits to secretly examining the contents of his guests' trunks and read their letters.

It's suggested the culprit was a woman dressed as a man and the murder revenge for being scorned. The house party had played charades, during which women guests dressed like men, permitting their devious host to ascertain who could carry off such a sartorial deception. On the other hand, Smith minutely describes his brother's wallet and mentions a large sum of money had disappeared that night, so theft was another possible motive.

The host announces the ladies will not go to the drawing room after dinner as usual but rather will assemble in Dolphin's room, where the men will join them later. When outraged guests try to leave they discover a policeman stationed at the door.

More than one present has something to conceal. As the act progresses two ladies drop wineglasses and another faints, the host tells a guest's supposed sister he knows this is not the case, a lady who denies knowing Dick Smith is trapped into betraying she did, a male guest is revealed to be a doctor struck off the register, and therefore one with knowledge of poison.

After the ladies depart Smith reveals Dolphin had been his brother's servant and to aid his new master has taken the guests' fingerprints from their wineglasses, and sent the dabs to Scotland Yard. Then just as the men are leaving to join the ladies a terrible female scream is heard from the direction of Dolphin's room....

The curtain falls.

A couple of points occurred as I mulled over possible solutions, assuming there was one and Barrie was not just having us all on. For example, why did the host insist everyone go to a servants' room? Since he had already searched their luggage, was there something there he wished them to see? Why didn't the outraged guests complain to the policeman on the premises, or were they afraid of scandals coming out?

It is my contention Dolphin was the murderer.

Since Dolphin was Dick Smith's servant he would know about the large amount of cash on the premises. Sam said the culprit spoke English and was sitting at the dining table. These both apply to Dolphin, if we bend the latter point in that he had only briefly sat at the table a short time before.

Even the best butlers gamble and a large sum of money was stolen that night. As butler, Dolphin could poison coffee and invent a caller to deflect suspicion elsewhere. He sent fingerprints to Scotland Yard, allowing him to omit his own. Then there's the female scream from the direction of his room. Had the woman who initially denied knowing Dick Smith recognised his wallet lying say on Dolphin's dresser? Did the older Smith employ Dolphin in order to bring the crime home to him?

After the scream is heard Dolphin reappears with a look of mingled horror and appeal -- horror at being found out, appeal for mercy from Dick Smith's brother? But will it do any good, given "something staggering" was bound to happen to someone in Sam Smith's house that night?

AND FINALLY

Tennyson exhorted the happy bells to ring out the old year and ring in the new across the snow but John Greenleaf Whittier's somewhat sinister lines about a wave breaking ashore and the echo of a chime fading as the shadow moves across time's dial-plate are more appropriate since a month or so after we've stepped through the gate of the year the next Orphan Scrivener will fly out into subscribers' in-boxes on 15th February.

We close with good wishes for the holidays and new year. See you then!

Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), and our growing pages of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Thursday, October 15, 2009

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # FIFTY-NINE -- l5 OCTOBER 2009

Colour began creeping slowly across the landscape while this issue was being assembled, with several recent colder nights giving impetus to its spread. We estimate it will be at its full glory within a week, unless high winds strip the trees first. Today, however, under a glowering grey sky trees already sporting yellow foliage flare out against the dark green pines around them, with here and there scarlet, orange, and ruby tints just beginning to appear.

Yesterday was warmer than the previous misty, raining-like-stair-rods days and a plump groundhog took his opportunity to waddle round the back lawn sampling the remains of the wood asters. Soon he will be drawing his burrow curtains for his winter hibernation, for as Henry David Thoreau remarked this month is the sunset of the year, and November the later twilight.

In his beautifully rendered though somber painting of girls piling up Autumn Leaves at twilight John Everett Millais captured the pensive musings brought on by the closing days of fall, but this year -- this very month, in fact -- a cheery new jamboree will brighten October's darkening days.

More about that as subscribers, we hope, read on.

MARY'S BIT or 200,000 FEET AND THEN UNDER THE SEA

It was a blazing autumn morning in Florida. Fifty miles away queues were already forming at Disney World and where was I?

Under a brassy sun in a cloudless sky, travelling an otherwise deserted minor road threading a vast expense of palmetto scrub land on Cape Canaveral.

For I was on my way to launch a rocket.

A weather rocket, that is.

It was a privilege not extended to everyone and these days doubtless no longer extended at all. But back then, having passed the check at the gate, an hour or so later I found myself sitting about a hundred yards from the ocean in a block house, so small and cramped it's been described as a block cottage, in an isolated area of the USAF base on the tip of the Cape.

I had watched two white-coveralled Pan Am technicians prepare what was probably to them just another rocket in a procession of taking routine meteorological observations.

To me of course it was an extraordinary event. So I beamed on them as my dinky little rocket -- about five feet long and somewhat less than three inches in diameter -- was made ready. And though I call it a rocket, I'm reliably informed by a weather wallah that its technical name is a rocket motor. Whatever you care to call it, however, its nose was now loosely fitted with a dart about three feet long, carrying an instrument probe attached to a small parachute.

What I shall continue to call rockets are launched about once every three days or daily near the time of a major launch. They're sent on their way via an adjustable framework metal launcher resembling nothing so much as a Victorian era open-work telescope:

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/rocket/superlok.html

As a preliminary step, wind observations are made using a small balloon in order to calculate the correct elevation and azimuth to launch the rocket so its body will fall safely out to sea. Sometimes, however, they fall back onto land, usually into the scrub but occasionally into the sand between block house and launcher.

So much for the technical details. Now back to the block house.

Preparations completed, everyone had retired to the small slit-windowed building. A number of personnel were present but being familiar with the routine they were not, like me, boggling about in amazement but just stood about talking to their colleagues.

Whereas I was given a seat at the control panel along with detailed instructions about what I was about to do and how to do it.

Then we were off to the races.

First, the entire area, isolated though it was, was sealed off and then to my amusement a loudspeaker began to broadcast a count-down. It's just like the big rocket launches, I thought, and began to feel nervous. My part of the proceedings was to press the arming button and then on the ze- when zero was announced to push back the cover over the launch toggle, and on -ro pull that toggle down.

But what if I fumbled it?

Fortunately I did not.

I confess I was staring like all get out through the narrow horizontal window as I pulled the toggle on -ro, but alas I did not see my rocket rise majestically into the air as I had anticipated. They move at such speed their departure is marked only by a puff of white smoke and a whoosh. However, being faster than the eye, cameras can catch a launch and this one did, with the launcher discernible in the smoke trail:

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/rocket/lokilaunch2.html

And so my rocket reached about 5,000 feet in a couple of seconds, at which point the motor burnt out while the aerodynamically stable and streamlined dart continued upward at undiminished speed to the astonishing height of 200,000 feet. At that point a charge of compressed air pushed out the loosely sitting probe, the dart fell away, and the probe began its parachute descent, radioing temperature data to a ground station on the Cape while the parachute was tracked by radar to determine wind speed and direction during its descent.

And while it leisurely drifted to earth, down in the block house I couldn't help grinning so widely I nigh dislocated my cheekbones.

Fortunately for Anglo-American relations my rocket behaved itself and so far as I know resides in the water off the Cape even unto this day.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

In our introduction we hinted at a cheery jamboree, and the first few feet of the issue's ticker is devoted to that very topic. Read on!

THE WEBCON HOVES INTO VIEW or OCTOBER EXCITEMENT ON THE HORIZON

Much of the past month or two has been spent lending a hand in organising the first live mystery conference to be held online.

It's not long now to October 24th, when the Webcon, co-sponsored by Poisoned Pen Press and the Poisoned Pen Bookstore, sets sail. Interested parties may check the Webcon site at http://www.ppwebcon.com for information and announcements about this international event, including the names of twenty registrants who won a chance to pitch to an editor. Orphan Scrivener subscribers may have missed the boat on that opportunity but never mind, all attendees will receive an electronic goody bag containing dozens of items donated by attending authors.

The programme will offer numerous text, live, and prerecorded audio and video presentations, panels, and interviews, not to mention broadcasts featuring GoHs Dana Stabenow, Lee Child, Kate Miciak, Adrian Muller, Tom and Enid Schantz, and Kate Stine. As residents of Luddite Corner we'll be represented by electronic ink and by contributing to the goody bag, but we do plan to drop into the day long coffee shop live chat room now and then, so perhaps we'll see you there?

MYSTERY HINTS FOR LIBRARIANS or A NEW RESOURCE

At the end of October Kris Swank's article advising librarians who wish to write mysteries will appear when Writing & Publishing: The Librarian's Handbook, edited by Carol Smallwood, is published by the American Library Association: http://tinyurl.com/yl6h9qo

Her article contains tips and examples from several mystery writers and two of them were us! Our thanks to Kris for including us in this useful resource.

RUNNING RIOT or NOT YOUR USUAL NIKAS

And speaking of mysteries, Eightfer's handsome cover has now been revealed, and it's a real corker. See the cover on Eric's blog: http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

John's latest adventure is set in January 532, during a period when the mob ruled Constantinople. Against a murderous backdrop lit by raging fires, he must find those seeking to use the Nika Riots to dethrone the emperor. But are the ringleaders still in the city -- or even alive?

Porphyrius, the most famous charioteer of his time, may know more than he tells about the mysterious disappearance of two men under imperial guard. What roles are a pair of brothers with a distant claim to the throne playing? Does a headstrong young girl hold the key to the mystery? With the fate of the empire at stake will General Belisarius and his armed troops side with the rioters or remain loyal to Justinian?

The answers to these and other questions will be revealed in April next year!

STOP PRESS

As this issue of Orphan Scrivener was written, we learned that Poisoned Pen Press works are becoming available in various formats for the visually impaired via http://www.ReadHowYouWant.com RHYW produces large print editions with varying type sizes as well as Daisy and Braille versions, and we are pleased to announce that Four For A Boy, prequel to the series, is available from this source.

ERIC'S BIT or AMUSEMENT FOR INFERIOR MINDS

I'm no Sherlock Holmes. Not even Gideon Fell. Recently, when I read John Dickson Carr's classic locked room mystery The Hollow Man (also known as The Three Coffins) I made no particular effort to figure out the solution before Dr Fell. A man shot to death in his study, the only door to the room locked from the inside, with people present in the hall and both the ground below the window and the roof above covered with unbroken snow. I was stumped.

I learned long ago that trying to solve locked room puzzles is a fool's errand, at least if I'm the fool reading. Nevertheless I enjoyed being perplexed and anticipating the explanation. It's rather as if I watched a magician cut his lovely assistant in half and reassemble her and he then took me backstage and revealed the trick boxes, screens, and mirrors used to create the illusion. When Dr Fell described the "trick" behind the murder I was impressed by the author's ingenuity.

In our writing collaborations Mary is usually the magician in charge of creating the trick that will, hopefully, fool the reader. Which is odd. By all rights, she ought to be the lovely assistant. I'm not really the lovely assistant type, although I guess I do tend to supply a lot of the scenery and misdirection to hold the reader's attention while Mary's working the apparatus.

Not surprisingly, Mary is also one of those readers who actively competes with the detective and delights in reasoning out who the murderer is before the author reveals the guilty party.

But I am not alone, as a reader, in preferring to leave the brain-work to the detective. In his Notes on the Mystery Story, Raymond Chandler, author of classics like The Big Sleep, says "I, in the role of reader, almost never try to guess the solution to a mystery. I simply don't regard the contest between the writer and myself as important. To be frank I regard it as the amusement of an inferior type of mind."

I'm not sure I would agree with the last sentence, and I suspect Mary would take umbrage, but it is good to know that I at least read mysteries like Raymond Chandler.

As a writer I like the whodunit puzzle because it creates the basis for the mystery format which offers an excellent framework on which to hang some writing. Finding a murderer gives the protagonist something to do, a chance to visit interesting places such as dark alleys, and to talk to fascinating people. Murder suspects are always interesting, aren't they? Finding a murderer gives the protagonist a compelling goal, and it isn't hard to introduce an element of danger when dealing with some unknown person who has already killed.

A disadvantage of the mystery genre is that the circumstances and events leading up the murder are often more interesting and dramatic than the investigation can be. Yet it is the investigation which is front and center, while the drama of the murder is only revealed retrospectively in bits and pieces. In addition, the murderer and the victim are usually strong characters. Yet we can know the deceased victim only second-hand and since the murderer cannot be revealed until the end, he or she occupies far less of the book than the character's role as instigator of the whole story actually warrants.

R. Austin Freeman provided a way to get around these weaknesses when he invented what he called the inverted detective story in his 1912 collection of short stories The Singing Bone.

"Some years ago," said Freeman, "I devised, as an experiment, an inverted detective story in two parts. The first part was a minute and detailed description of a crime, setting forth the antecedents, motives, and all attendant circumstances. The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell, but I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter."

Freeman's In the Shadow of the Wolf, an example of such a mystery, begins with a murder on a yacht at sea -- what the killer imagines to be a perfect, undetectable crime. However, he has not reckoned on the crime-solving skills of the medico-legal Doctor Thorndyke who employs both Holmsian reasoning and up-to date (for the early twentieth century) forensic analysis.

It was fascinating to watch him in action. But thanks to the inverted format I also got a full portrait, through the entire narrative, of the killer and the motivations for a crime which is rooted in complex personal and psychological relationships worthy of Georges Simenon.

And all without having to beat myself over the head for not trying to spot clues and being unable to out-think Thorndyke. A perfect sort of mystery format for readers like me.

AND FINALLY

Sir Walter Scott once observed that the dark and gloomy days of December take away the joys of autumn. However, now they've read this far there's two months of joy left for subscribers before Orphan Scrivener returns to cast a pall over their December days, for the next issue will not flap into their in-boxes until the 15th of that month.

See you then!

Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), and our growing pages of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Saturday, August 15, 2009

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # FIFTY-EIGHT -- l5 AUGUST 2009

Dr Johnson advised remembering the calamities we've escaped when one catches up with us. We regret to report we did not follow this wise counsel but rather uttered robust language when a pair of nasty computer viruses ganged up and came a-calling at Casa Maywrite last week.

In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot talks about measuring life out in coffee spoons, but this crisis de jour was resolved with tinkering fueled by ladles of black Brazilian roast, and so this issue appears on schedule after all. Read on!

ERIC'S BIT or RETURNING TO READING (NOT THE TOWN IN BERKSHIRE)

During the past year I've made an effort to read more books. Those rather long and complex collections of words I grew up with, rather than the short bursts of simple information endlessly available in cyberspace, the endlessly distracting but not very substantial world news, sports scores, political commentary, blogs, Yahoo groups. Words that do little more than temporarily fill and quickly pass through the mind. Intellectual Olestra.

It's embarrassing for a writer to confess that for years he hasn't read many books. It's true though, and my lack of reading predates the Internet. The Internet is only the newest slayer of books in my life. Starting in the early seventies I began increasingly to spend my diminishing spare time on my own creative efforts. When I got to law school I was barely on nodding terms with real reading. Sure, I had to read, but appellate court cases and legal treatises don't have much in common with things written in English.

Job and family responsibilities followed. After days filled with eye-glazing memos and departmental meetings which lasted till the heat death of the universe, or seemed to, I went home to an everlasting Big Bang of incontinent infants and rampaging toddlers. What few spare hours were left I devoted to my own writing which included mini-comics, small press, magazine and newspaper articles, newsletters for the local zoo and orienteering club, programming computer text adventures, and, eventually, co-writing stories and books with Mary. I am a slow writer. I hate to think how many novels I could read in the time it takes me to co-write one short mystery.

Hard as it is to believe, for most of my life I haven't been much of a reader. Less than two decades passed between my hauling stacks of Doctor Seuss back from the library and shoving aside books in order to pound away on my manual Smith Corona instead.

Even so, I suspect all the science fiction and fantasy I absorbed in that short but formative period went a long way toward forming my attitudes. I've never believed the world has to be the way it is. I spent too much of my youth reading about alternatives.

I read other genres, to be sure. As early as high school I went on a Steinbeck spree. As my reading diminished I turned to mysteries. I once had collected from used book stores, thrift stores, and library and yard sales nearly 100 paperbacks by John D. MacDonald. But a couple years ago, I realized that I rarely looked at a book anymore. And suddenly, for the first time in years, I missed reading.

The six books a month I've managed this year wouldn't have kept me going for a week in the old days. And deciding what, exactly, to read has been a problem as well. I have no favorite genre. One week I embark on a study of philosophy with Pragmatism by William James and Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy. Then I'm diverted by some fifties Gold Medal type crime novels and from there lurch into some mysteries by Simenon, Tey, John Dickson Carr. Next I decide to read a few classics I never got around to. Even after Moby Dick, To the Lighthouse, and Appointment at Samarra, there are a lot of all-time great books left. And I haven't neglected my first love, fantasy. William Hope Hodgson's The Nightland is still as awe-inspiring (and in parts as mind-numbing) as it was when I first encountered it, and At the Mountains of Madness is great fun too although Lovecraft's debt to Hodgson shows.

Although genre isn't very important to me, I've noticed I prefer older books. There's something about the style or attitude or who knows what of current books that puts me off, although I sometimes find exceptions such as the remarkable sf/mystery The City and the City by China Mieville. So I tend to stick to things written in the mid-sixties or earlier. I am perfectly comfortable with novels penned back in the dark ages of the nineteen-thirties and my favorite science fiction is from the Golden Age.

Maybe this is because early on I devoured the books that were on the shelves of the local library. Most of those were probably written before I was born but to me they were brand new and they formed my taste.

But enough of this. There's a man dead in his study. The door was locked. There are no footprints in the snow outside the window. The murder's inexplicable. The heck with finding a clever ending for this essay. I've got to get back to my reading.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

We've a mixed bag of news this time around, and one event was a surprise to us! Keep reading for details of this and other happenings since our last issue.

A DOG BLOG or GRAPHIC WRITING

Christine Verstraete, author of Searching For A Starry Night, recently began a First Graphs series for Wednesday entries on her Candid Canine blog. Earlier this month she featured an excerpt from our Locked In Death, an Inspector Dorj outing in The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, edited by Mike Ashley. Here's the link: http://candidcanine.blogspot.com/2009/08/first-graphs-locked-in-death-by-eric.html

A WOO WOO WOOHOO or CZECH THIS OUT

Talk about serendipity! The very day after the prior paragraph was scribbled we received a copy of the hardback Czech edition of the same anthology. Not speaking the language we are unable to give its foreign title or publisher, but nonetheless we can doubtless be excused for a woohoo at this prime example of literary woo woo!

FREE SAMPLE or SEVENFER TO THE FORE

We recently discovered Blackstone Audio are offering a free sample of their recording of Seven For A Secret. The reader is James Adams, formerly CEO of UPI and managing editor of the Sunday Times, so the recording has a British accent well to the fore. Click on this link at Blackstone's site to hear the snippet http://tinyurl.com/nzh9ww

MORE ON THE PP WEBCON or GET OUT YOUR BUNNY SLIPPERS

Planning proceeds apace for the Poisoned Pen Webcon, to be held on October 24th. Alphabetically, guests of honour are Dana Stabenow, Lee Child, Kate Miciak, Adrian Muller, Tom and Enid Schantz, and Kate Stine. The conference will be entirely online and there will be panels and discussions, live chats, video and audio presentations, an electronic goody bag containing e-books with stories, samplers, and other material from mystery authors, interviews, and much more. Registration is $25, $20 of which will be returned in the form of a book voucher valid at the Poisoned Pen bookstore. You can attend in your jammies and bunny slippers if inclined -- and if that doesn't appeal how about the chance to pitch an idea to an editor at a publishing house? In addition, 100% of all profits will go to a public library to be chosen at random from registrants' nominations. Point your clicker to http://www.ppwebcon.com/ for full details of this exciting mystery jamboree!

YET MORE REVELATIONS or TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

On July 8th we were featured in what Caitlyn Hunter, author of Snow Shadows, dubbed a double-barreled, two-for-the-price-of-one extravaganza over on the Dames of Dialogue blog. Our lengthy interview covered such revelations as sources of inspiration, handling promotion, and how a name mentioned on the acknowledgement page of one of our novels was instrumental in reuniting two old friends who had lost touch with each other. Read all about it here http://damesofdialogue.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/mary-reed-eric-mayer-answer-the-dames-dozen/

MARY'S BIT or NO SIREN SONG FOR US

When Sir Thomas Browne mused back in the 1600s concerning what song the Sirens sang, he wasn't thinking of bursts of noise from an ambulance, police car, or fire engine, or wartime's WAHwahWAHwahWAH warning of advancing enemy bombers and the blessed continual wail of the all clear, or the poignant British summons bracketing the annual country-wide two minute silence remembering the war dead.

Then there's the alert for the imminent arrival of a tornado.

As it happens, the closest brush we ever had with a devil's spinning top was unheralded by a siren's song because we lived out of hearing of the nearest installation boasting such equipment, and even if we've been within range the power had been out for some time so a warning could not have been sounded. Thus we were alerted late one night when a neighbour who'd heard the announcement via her battery-driven radio rang up.

"Get into your basement immediately, a tornado is coming straight for us," she said quickly and hastily rang off.

We took her advice and, grabbing important items - the cat, my mug of coffee, a couple of torches, a candle in an old pierced tin lantern, and the box of important family papers - we moved downstairs to an inner room with no windows.

The cat, which had been acting strangely that evening as if it sensed its napping was going to be rudely disturbed, leapt out of my one-armed grasp as I descended and raced away to hide in the darkness under the stairs. We shut ourselves into the small room and set the lantern on top of a chest of drawers. I perched on an old chest next to an antique pot, swigging cold coffee and wondering if our computers would be damaged if the worst happened. The lantern threw sunflower-shaped shadows on the ceiling as shadows gamboled in the corners and the wind rose to a shriek, howling around the house. It roared with a shrill, high sound of rage, punctuated by dull thuds and crashes as the bin of recyclables fell over, loosing a multitude of tins to join garden chairs and the barbecue grill rolling round the garden or smacking into the side of the building.

It's been said in times of mortal stress we review our lives in the course of a few seconds. However, despite the imminent danger to life and limb, I did not find this to be so. Rather, a combination of excitement and apprehension produced an unreal sense of calm curiosity. I remember looking down at the decorative pot beside me and feeling sorry it would get smashed if touchdown happened to be in our footprint, and further hoping if disaster befell us the cat would not be killed.

It wasn't the first time I'd experienced this strange effect. The IRA were carrying out a letter-bombing campaign in London during the time I was passing through the immigration process. One winter evening I arrived at my underground station for the main line to catch a train home. I was on a tight schedule as it had already gone 5 PM and I had to be at my suburban doctor's office at 7 PM for the required medical, my commute taking one and a half hours. But the railway station was shut down because a suspicious parcel had been spotted and nobody was allowed up there until the package had been taken away by the bomb squad and defused if necessary.

A milling crowd of disgruntled travelers was therefore gathered underneath the main station and waiting with them I suddenly thought how terribly embarrassing it would be if there was an explosion, the roof came down on us, and the full specimen bottle in my handbag was broken, distributing its contents all over the place. At the time it simply never occurred me that possibility would be the least of my worries if the worst happened. In the event, the parcel was removed and normal commuter service resumed. I arrived at my appointment just in time, but the US Embassy would not accept my clean bill of health because, as it turned out, the medical had not been performed by one of their approved doctors. As for the strange package, I checked in the London paper over the next few days but saw nothing further about it.

Returning to the meteorological excitement unspooling some years later, there we were, sitting in the basement waiting to see how events played out. Suddenly an eerie hush fell, an unnatural silence more menacing than anything we'd heard all night. What those few seconds of dead calm meant I've never been able to establish, but the wind picked up again and departed in a dwindling, disappointed wail, grumbling away over the hill.

The rest of the night we took turns bailing out the well holding the basement pump until the power returned. Then we went out and started picking up tins.

AND FINALLY

Honore de Balzac was of the opinion that misfortune is the headiest wine, and since much of this newsletter seems to be devoted to disasters, we'll stay on theme and point out subscribers' next catastrophe may well fall on October l5th, when issue 59 of Orphan Scrivener flies out of the aether and into their in-box.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

Monday, June 15, 2009

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # FIFTY-SEVEN -- l5 JUNE 2009

Of late the rustic life for us ink-stained wretches has not been as smooth as that Shakespeare claimed for monumental alabaster.

We've had to change servers.

This naturally involved moving the website, a stark horror even Lovecraft would have found difficult to describe in adequate terms, although exquisite morbidity and cacodaemoniacal ghastliness, applied to certain musical instruments in The Hound, suggests itself as a good beginning. For it was a dog of a job, now thankfully completed.

This means, however, while wrassling with the Internet was as rough as nutmeg graters this past week, it's now our subscribers' turn because we've somehow managed to get another issue of the Orphan Scrivener pinned together. Let us assure those reading this newsletter that what sounds like distant maddening piping on a loathsome flute is merely the plumbing playing up, so they should just read on.....

MARY'S BIT or BREAD AND CHEESE AND MONEY, OH MY

I've often thought it's a pity so many old customs are dying out, though my family are doing their bit to stem the tide by keeping up those common to our home area, including here in the New World.

The majority of customs world wide revolve around the major milestones of life, once described as hatching, matching, and despatching, all events accompanied by various superstitions and customs. Yet even in a country as small as the UK, they are not familiar to all counties.

Take weddings, for example. In Newcastle it was the custom to throw pennies from the taxi taking the wedding party to church. This was possibly the only time people in our street rode in a such a vehicle, except perhaps for a funeral. Scattering pennies was said to bring good luck. It certainly brought it to us guttersnipes, since we scoured nearby streets for wedding parties on Saturdays, the most popular day for nuptials, and often picked up as much as sixpence or so that way. Wedding parties could be spotted at fifty paces because the taxis, unlike those transporting a family to a funeral, inevitably had white ribbons stretched from the top corners of the windshield down to the centre of the bonnet. Yet when we moved south and my younger sister married, scattering pennies from the taxi was greeted with amazed stares.

Then there are the pranks played where families had access to the couple's flat or house. Newlyweds arriving at their future home could expect to find such harmless silliness as sugar in the salt cellar and vice versa, pennies fusing the lights, butter beans or similar bumpy objects scattered under the bottom sheet of the nuptial bed, usually also short sheeted, and so on, all to be met with good humour and a shrug of the shoulders.

Similarly various customs attend births. The first thing a new mother was expected to do after her baby was born, be it after returning from hospital, or in the case of a home birth leaving the house, was to be churched. It was considered to bring bad luck to any house visited by the new mother until this was done, and although there was something of the sense of the Victorian idea of cleansing after birth, it was also a thanksgiving for the child and for a safe birth. The service in the Anglican prayer book emphasises this aspect. I was once in conversation with an American Anglican vicar about this custom and he mentioned in all his years of ministry he had only been asked to conduct the service twice, and both requests were from working class mothers.

The first time we met a new baby, we did not look at it unless we had a silver coin to put in its grasping little fist for good luck -- a sixpence or for the better off a shilling served the purpose.

When the family set off to the christening, it was customary to present a bag containing bread and cheese and a coin to the first child met on the way to church. Nowadays this would be viewed with great suspicion and I have no doubt it is in the process of dying out, if it's not already dead. One layer of a tiered wedding cake was sometimes kept towards a possible christening, though I have no idea if it lasted well enough to be edible and although the same type of rich, dark fruitcake made for Christmas, in retrospect it seems a dangerous practice. On the other hand, after hearing jokes about the longevity of the American Christmas fruitcake....

Then there was the welcome accorded to a new year. Ships on the Tyne greeted the death of the old year with cacophonous hooting and peals of church bells were not uncommon, though I confess even so I was not prepared for the sound of gunfire at midnight on December 31st in this country! The celebration up north for most families featured the arrival of the first foot, meaning the first person across the threshold after midnight tolled. The first footer had to be a dark-haired man and so for years my brother did not see the new year in indoors, being thrust out into the night a few minutes to midnight to wait for the year to turn. As was traditional, he came back in carrying a small chunk of coal, a coin, and a piece of cake or bread, thus bringing with him the promise of warmth, food, and wealth for the household in the coming twelve months. Being dark-haired, Eric's resume now includes the job of first footer at Casa Maywrite.

A woman's foot first across the threshold was anathema and a red-haired man's was considered unlucky too. Indeed, families with no dark-haired man reportedly refused to open their doors after midnight to anyone but a dark-haired male in order to ensure the right sort of person crossed the threshold first. However, since many neighbourly visits back and forth took place on New Year's Day, such families would not be long without their first footer.

When a family member died, mirrors were often covered or turned to the wall, and before the funeral party departed from the home, the neighbours drew their curtains, generally explained to be as a mark of respect to the deceased. In tandem with mirror shrouding, though, it is certainly suggestive.

So, in the end of a life, this essay ends.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A farrago of news items this time round, so let's get to it.

JOHN RETURNS or ETERNITY FOLLOWS

Despite our header John's not going to take the ferry with Charon in his next adventure, but rather its title is Eight For Eternity. Readers may recall we always said we would make up our own lines when the counting rhyme providing titles ran out, and since it ran out screaming at Seven For A Secret, we've boldly done just that. And yes, the reason for the title is given in the novel. Poisoned Pen Press will be publishing Eightfer in April next year and we'll say more about John's approaching outing as the time nears.

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE or WRITING DUOS SPEAK

We had the honour of being quoted in a feature by Susan Higginbotham about historical fiction writing duos in the May 2009 issue of the Historical Novels Review, a print publication of the Historical Novel Society (http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/). We were in sterling company as other contributors to her article included Charles and Caroline Todd, the Clare sisters, and Judith Miller and Tracie Peterson. Our thanks to Susan (http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/), the author of Traitor's Wife: A Novel of the Reign of Edward II and Hugh and Bess, both set in fourteenth-century England.

SEEKING KNOWLEDGE or WHEN RESEARCH IS (K)NOBBLED

Gayle Trent's Virtual Writers' Conference http://virtualwritersconference.blogspot.com/ was held May 19th to 22nd. Authors, publishers, marketers, and publicists provided expert advice -- there were even two agents seeking submissions in attendance. Mary contributed thoughts on our search for info on Roman doorknobs http://virtualwritersconference.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-historical-mysteries-by-mary.html) and if you don't fancy learning about ancient entrance hardware, you might enjoy her closing link to a contemporary carving of a dear little kitty peering out from a (knobless) Roman door. Gayle tells us she hopes to use the site to host another writers' conference in the future. Stay tuned!

MYSTERIOUS THOUGHTS or IF WE DID NOT WRITE

Jean Henry Mead is the author of the senior sleuth novels A Village Shattered and Diary of Murder. Currently in the middle of moving house, she is offering past interviews on her Mysterious People blog http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com Our January chat will be run on June 22nd and among other topics we talk about what we'd do if we were not writing and real people who appear in our works. It was more fun than a trunk full of monkeys! We'll also be serving as guest blog hosts the same day at http://advicefromeditors.blogspot.com/. Our thanks to Jean for our summer rerun!

ERIC'S BIT or BURN-OUT OF ANOTHER SORT

Thinking about some of the books I've read recently, I'm shocked -- shocked I tell you! -- by how badly so many of them are written. Talk about inept:

John O'Hara pretty much gives away the ending to Appointment in Samarra in the introductory matter, before he even gets to the first chapter.

Herman Melville keeps interrupting Captain Ahab's action-packed hunt for the great white whale with Moby Dick size info-dumps about whales and whaling.

In Silas Marner George Eliot blatantly relies on coincidences repeatedly, particularly having Marner just happen to leave the cottage door open at exactly the right time.

Albert Camus' The Stranger lacks sufficient motivation for his actions.

At no point in her rather slow moving To the Lighthouse does Virginia Woolf have a man enter with a gun.

Kafka's The Trial doesn't make a lick of sense.

These poor souls obviously paid no attention to the advice of editors, agents, and the legions of authors who endlessly explain how it has to be done. I guess they didn't care about being rejected by publishers.

Well, okay, maybe Virginia Woolf didn't have to care since she and her husband published To the Lighthouse through their own Hogarth Press. But you can tell the book was never professionally edited, the way she switches willy-nilly from one point of view to another.

Still, you have to admit, they all did pretty well for themselves. I'm sure I could think of a lot of other classic novels which violate all of today's requirements for publishable books. It could make a good parlor game.

In my opinion, today's writing "rules" probably result in more bad writing than good. Do we really need still more cookie-cutter books?

On the other hand, I am not one of those writers who is convinced that his creative muse is being smothered, kicked, drowned, beaten, etc. (poor thing!) by the publishing industry. I'm no literary genius -- even in my own mind -- who would awe the world if only he were allowed to do so.

That being the case, I am perfectly happy to have available a mystery genre framework, on whose sturdy artificial limbs I can hang what little oddments I keep on my skills shelf: slightly cracked insights, shabby descriptions, bright, twinkly little strings of ideas with half their bulbs burned out, and sparkling, paper-thin philosophy tinsel.

Of course the framework itself comes with some assembly required. But luckily Mary is able to insert Clue A into Red Herring B and so forth better than I can.

If I had to start from scratch and design and build my own framework -- not a mystery, or some other genre -- I'd be lost, just like so many wannabe genius writers who break all the rules. So I'm about as likely to write a non-genre novel as I am to construct a computer from assorted parts.

Still, even working within a genre, it is probably acceptable, and actually a good idea, to ignore the dictates of publishing professionals from time to time.

So how do we know when and whether we should break the rules? Alas, there's no rule about that.

AND FINALLY

Frank Lloyd Wright declared in favour of keeping dangerous weapons away from fools. At the time he was thinking about beginning with typewriters. Nowadays he would probably start with computer keyboards. And while Lord Byron had harsh words for monthly scribblers of low lampoons, he couldn't apply them to we Orphan Scriveners, given we only darken your inbox every two months. The next issue will therefore wing its way to you on August 15th.

See you then!

Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing pages of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # FIFTY-SIX -- l5 APRIL 2009

Harbingers of the new season sprung upon us over the course of late March. Admittedly Puxatawney Phil was up earlier than the mid-sized groundhog observed a couple of weeks back grazing its salad bar, otherwise known as the front lawn, but we've also had an occasional wood roach, apparently attracted by lights, flying in from the surrounding sylvan glades to share the shower. Any minute the annual invasion of the ants will begin, and we've already seen -- and heard -- woodpeckers at work in the pinewoods.

Speaking of birds, Richard Lawson Gales mentioned a proverb to the effect that March arrives with a snake's head and departs with a peacock tail. Now this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener has slithered into your inbox, we hope you'll continue reading for tales of a different sort....

ERIC'S BIT or CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Maybe the reason I’ve always been fascinated by games is because they allow us to make up their own stories while keeping us in suspense about the final outcome. When we used to play Clue as kids what I enjoyed most wasn’t solving the whodunnit puzzle but choosing the directions my quest would take as I wandered at will, going from the billiard room to the conservatory or the study or any other route I pleased. The story of how I conducted my investigation was more interesting to me than whether it was Mrs Peacock with the candlestick in the library

The first games I played, like Chutes and Ladders and Uncle Wiggly were simple races to the end. We threw dice, drew cards, or flicked a spinner and advanced space by space along a track. We experienced the story as it unrolled and it could become pretty intense if we ran afoul of the Skeezicks who lurked near to the end. But, as with a book, we weren’t allowed to influence events.

Monopoly was more sophisticated. Our journey around a preset route was still governed by chance, but we could make strategic decisions about property acquisition. In essence each Monopoly player makes up a different sort of story. Mine was always the same: Turn nose up at low and medium priced rental properties. Dream big instead. Accumulate $500 dollar bills surreptitiously under the board. Aspire to build hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk. Go bankrupt. It was a suitable story for the fifties, not unlike those Gold Medal style crime paperbacks about scheming losers with big ambitions who invariably come to a bad end. Not that I was reading those back then. Detective Comics was about as noir as I got.

The more flexible the game, the more it allowed players to do their own thing, the more I liked it. Park and Shop offered a map of streets and stores and let players plan their own itinerary as they tried to see who could complete their chores first. Careers went even further, letting players choose what goals they wanted to achieve by selecting some combination of love, money, and fame and then pursuing the appropriate professions.

I loved Stratego also, where each player tried to hide his or her flag piece from the opponent. Usually the flag would be protected by bombs deep in one’s own territory, which left open intriguing possibilities, putting the flag practically on top of your opponent’s front lines, for example, or placing it far away from where the bombs were clustered. Like particularly outrageous murder mystery solutions these ideas didn’t always work well but were too intriguing to pass up. We could admire ingenuity as much as winning.

War games demanded players write their own histories by pursuing strategies which resulted in victory or defeat, not unlike what occurs in the real world, sad to say. When abstract games of conquest such as Risk were joined by simulations of actual conflicts and battles, players could write alternative history. What if Germany had invaded Britain? Could the Confederacy have won the Civil War if it had fought differently?

By the time Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games came along I had become too busy playing life -- that game about getting an education and a job and a family -- to pay much attention. I guess today’s computer games give players a nearly endless range of story options. One can fight, go on quests, create worlds, or live a fabricated life. I would’ve loved those computer games when I was a kid, probably too much.

I did make a foray into games ten years ago. On the Internet I ran across text adventures which were briefly popular back in the eighties before computers got powerful enough to support decent graphics. In a text game the player types in commands to direct the actions of the protagonist and reads the results off the monitor. Text games are really interactive books, potentially a perfect melding of game and story. I even tried to write a few myself, with less than inspiring results given my lack of programming skills.

Books and games have a lot in common, not the least of which is they allow us to forget for a bit the not always perfect and all too real game of life. Which, come to think of it, was not a bad game itself. I especially liked the three dimensional plastic mountains the board’s track ran over. The Game of Life wasn’t a favorite of mine, however, because I usually ended up in the Poor House rather than Millionaire Acres. It was much too realistic. I prefer escapist fare.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

This time around Eric gets most of the glory! Read on....

THE BYZANTINE BLOG or DARTING ABOUT THE WEB

Eric's blog recently received a Dardos Award from Beverle Graves Myers, author of the Baroque Mystery series involving singer-sleuth Tito Amato. The Dardos Award recognises creative writing, and its name come from Premio Dardos, meaning prize darts in Italian. Thanks to Beverle, who blogs about Venice, 18th-century oddities, and Tito's backstory at Cruel Music http://CruelMusic.blogspot.com

A NOD FOR SEVENFER or LINING UP FIRST LINES

Chris Verstrate, http://cverstraete.com, author of Searching For A Starry Night, asks what grabs you in a book? The cover, the blurbs? Likely it's the first paragraph, and more importantly, the first line. Read a few first lines and what the mystery/suspense authors responsible for them had to say about them in the spring Author Snapshot column in Mysterical-e, http://www.mystericale.com Click Author Snapshot under columns on table of contents page. Our thanks to Chris for the nod to Sevenfer's opening line!

ANOTHER AWARD or ERIC JOINS THE SISTERHOOD

Eric's boasting shelf was also recently augmented by a Sisterhood Blog Award from Julia Buckley. Currently pursuing a Masters Degree in English Literature, Julia is the author of two standalone novels, details of which can be found on her website http://www.juliabuckley.com/index.html The SBA is an award from bloggers, to bloggers, in recognition of a blog spot which shows great attitude and/or gratitude. We're certainly grateful for the news, and as for attitude, we hope ours is suitably humble!

MARY'S BIT or GAMES FOR THE BORED

After dinner was over, the dishes washed, homework done, and the table covered with the best tablecloth -- it was thick and red with an arabesque design and sported a long fringe -- my younger sister and I sometimes played games, particularly while staying up as shockingly late as 9 pm to hear The Goon Show or Journey Into Space on the wireless.

Sometimes we got out what some call the devil's picture book, a deck of cards. Since I whapped 'em down faster than my sister I won most rounds of Snap, though sometimes she would win the entire pile with a swifter shout of "Snap!" at the last slapdown. Then there was Twenty-One or Pontoon, which even a player averse to arithmetic like me could handle, though we never graduated to its bolder cousin, blackjack, or as some fancy players termed it vingt-et-un.

Sometimes we'd go in a few rounds of dominoes, that favourite played by patrons of the local working mens' clubs. Whoever drew the tile Timmy, our Heinz 57 mongrel, had chewed up -- it was the three/two spot if memory serves -- was at an instant disadvantage.

However, board games were my favourite time-passers. We'd long outgrown ludo, with its simple throw-the-die-and-move-that-number-of-spaces rules, as well as snakes and ladders with its retreats and advances for those moving round the board. It was, I now realise, a perfect template for life, with its unexpected ups and downs, though in life not all are beyond the control of the player, and this innocent game is recalled in John Ramsey Campbell's chilling Snakes and Ladders, which involves a man pursued by, well, beings we'd all prefer not to meet.

I had and indeed still have two favourite board games. The first is Monopoly. Like Eric, whose essay I just read, I inevitably spent all my money acquiring properties right, left, and in the Whitechapel and Old Kent Roads as well as upscale Mayfair and Park Lane and was therefore usually bankrupted due to rampant real estate speculation. This was exacerbated because we played a simplified version of our own invention whereby the person owning real estate charged the amount it cost to the player landing on the site, so it did not take long to burn through even the secret hoard of cash tucked under the board. Still, it was great fun and as close as we'll ever come to owning property in London or going to jail.

On the other hand, with Cluedo, I was quite good at guessing the culprit, the weapon used, and the location of the crime, though the latter part of the puzzle was hardest to pin down. But consider too that the creator of the game overlooked a vital component to any crime: the motive. Tut tut! What exciting scandals could be built up around and between Professor Plum, Mrs White, Miss Scarlett, Colonel Mustard, the Revd Green, and Mrs Peacock -- truly a colourful cast of characters, all of whom sound perfectly respectable but apparently have been guilty of multiple murders for decades!

Consider the murder weapon. A country mansion would certainly have at least one gun under its roof and a dagger could well feature in those collections of tulwars, sabres, krises, yataghans, and similar sharp-bladed instruments of destruction so commonly displayed on the walls of their entrance halls. It might even be kept on the study desk to do duty as a letter opener, while candlesticks are commonplace even in the best run households even unto this present time.

However, it's the presence of rope, a length of lead piping, and a spanner that leads me to speculate what on earth they could be doing in this elegant house. Admittedly the kitchen might be having its sink or plumbing replaced or repaired, explaining the lead piping, so we can eliminate that from our suspicions, but what of the spanner and rope?

As I see it, the master of the house would certainly employ a chauffeur, whose tool kit would doubtless include a spanner. Possibly the chauffeur absentmindedly left his spanner in the kitchen when he came in for a cuppa after tinkering with the motor engine. So a spanner would be fairly easy for anyone to obtain.

But the rope also intrigues. Is it a length cut from a skippy rope belonging to the children of servants living in estate housing? A washing line stolen from the back garden of the lodge? A towing rope carried in the boot of the family's limousine? All possibilities which again stress the criminal is someone familiar with the workings of the estate and one who also has access to the house.

I must say all in all things do look bad for the chauffeur!

I hasten to add this apparent familiarity with criminal enterprises and mayhem is due to reading as many Golden Age mysteries set in country houses as I could find as a youngster, a habit that ultimately led to my arrival in the mystery world and your reading this newsletter.

There's a moral in there somewhere.

AND FINALLY

Speaking of morals, Oscar Wilde was of the opinion books were neither moral nor immoral but rather were written well or badly. We make no claims for the quality of Orphan Scrivener scribblings, leaving it to subscribers to judge for themselves today and when the next issue wings into their in-boxes on June l5th.

See you then!

Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the web at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing pages of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Sunday, February 15, 2009

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # FIFTY-FIVE -- l5 FEBRUARY 2009

We began writing this issue to the mournful accompaniment of wailing high winds, bringing to mind Wallace Stevens' description of tempests as worse than the revenge bassoons take on music. Had there been wind harps hanging in the surrounding woods they would have long since soared over the horizon and far away. With the arrival of this latest newsletter some subscribers might well wish the same would happen to this issue, but those made of sterner stuff may like to face the music and read on....

MARY'S BIT or A BIT OF A MISTERY

The winds of fortune brought the two of us to Pennsylvania, but they couldn't dispel the heavy fog that morning.

We'd not long arrived in the state and after several days of rain we awoke to the sort of really thick fog from which patrons of horror films would expect a mummy to suddenly lurch through the French windows, intent on strangling those who desecrated its tomb with its spicy-scented bandages, assuming its parchment-skinned hands were not up to the task.

A quick glance outside revealed that much was concealed by the thick, coiled miasma draping the landscape with swirling wedding veils of white silk. When we went out for our morning walk, we found ourselves in an eerie world, one where sounds were muffled and the light had a strange quality to it. As we ambled along the narrow road up to the ridge overlooking the valley, what little could be seen faded from view as we moved forward in a world of clinging mist. If we glanced back, the tall grass verges and trees marking field boundaries soon disappeared behind a pale wall of vapour, and looking ahead we found ourselves advancing into a curtain of white that seemed to move with us, as if it was subtly shepherding us along the stony road.

We walked onwards and upwards. Numerous spider webs, little parachutes in the wet grass or decorating vines hanging in garlands from telephone lines, were heavy with droplets. Oddly suggestive rustlings came from the undergrowth along both sides of us, where tangles of blackberry bushes grew and rabbits could be counted by the dozen towards sunset most evenings. It was as if something was pacing us. A fox? We'd once seen one cutting through a half-mown field. Perhaps it was a bobcat on its way back to its den, possibly the handsome specimen seen crossing the track up there one time.

We finally reached the crest, where the oil-and-chipped road poises to take a breath before plunging dizzily down towards civilization. In better weather we could have observed six or seven mountains playing footsie with each other on the other side of the valley, but that morning we could hardly see into the nearest field. We stood for a while listening as the clammy quiet thought about departing. Birds began to tune up for their morning concert and somewhere close by a crow with a sore throat started to engage in his usual morning croaking duel with his rival across the way. We looked a little longer into milky nothingness, and then turned back along the foggy way, leaving the hidden heights to honeysuckle and dark aisles of firs and whatever creatures were moving in them. Our little pocket of visibility moved with us. We never reached the barrier of fog hanging across the road ahead, no matter how far we walked towards it.

The philosophical will, no doubt, find this odd effect a perfect metaphor for life.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

It's been a quiet couple of months but the ticker still has a little news to report, and here it is.

CHIPPING IN or IT'S ABOUT PLACE, NOT PLAICE

Michelle Moran, author of Nefertiti and The Heretic Queen, wrote the cover story for the November 2008 issue of Solander, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/solander2.htm Her topic was The Power of Place and she interviewed a number of historical novelists about visiting the places in which their works are set. We are honoured to report we were included among them, and thank Michelle for her interest in our thoughts.

FORGOTTEN BOOKS or TAKING TIME TO REED

Patricia Abbott's blog features Forgotten Books each Friday, and a day or so ago Mary contributed a few lines about J. B. Bell's 1917 novel 'Till The Clock Stops. http://pattinase.blogspot.com As Mary said, the book could well have been subtitled The Wandering Green Box, for said receptacle appears and disappears more than once in mysterious fashion. Then there are the peculiar instructions left by a man now dead concerning the titular timepiece and that's not the half of it. Although written at a gentler pace than modern mysteries this and the other forgotten books reviewed on Patricia's blog are well worth a look.

MYSTERIOUS THOUGHTS or IF WE DID NOT WRITE

Jean Henry Mead is the author of A Village Shattered, a senior sleuth novel. In the middle of moving house, she found time to interview us for her January 30th Mysterious People blog http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/ Among other topics we talked about what we'd do if we were not writing and real people who appear in our works. It was more fun than a trunk full of monkeys, so Mary returned to the scene of the crime next day to pass along comments on the genre from six historical mystery authors -- in a 500 or so word blog! It was a struggle to stay within the allotted space -- talk about writing lean! Our thanks to Jean for her interest and for allowing us all to air our thoughts.

ERIC'S BIT or TEA AT THE PALACE

I recently caught a taxi into town in order to empty our Post Office box.

We get snowed in out here in the countryside, at the end of a steep private right-of-way beyond which lies the top of another drop and a narrow strip of decayed macadam that plunges down to the state road through two hairpin curves. The macadam drive catches the run-off from the mountain. In the summer it's a creek, in the winter a glacier.

So we stock up in the autumn. A huge harvest of tinned goods. Most importantly we make sure there's plenty of coffee. By spring we may be very thin but at least we will be awake.

And, oh yes, cat treats. We mustn't forget those either.

But we can't stock up on mail or even forgo it for months on end. We would just as soon conduct all our business electronically. Alas, there are those who will insist on paper checks and contracts and even a few who refuse to bill except the old-fashioned way. Then there are the junk mailers, the purveyors of fliers for local stores, who take advantage of the box we maintain out of necessity. (No, I do not need three tins of vegetables for the price of two. We still have five dozen in stock.) When we reckon the box must be stuffed to overflowing I call the taxi service.

Until recently, the last time I took a taxi was my last visit to New York City more than fifteen years ago. During the years I lived in the city, when I was going to school, I rarely used taxis. Subway fares matched my budget better. I did, however, learn how to flag down a ride if I really needed one.

My single visit to New York since then only lasted a few hours. A magazine aimed at high school English students for which I'd done some freelance work sent me to interview Nicole St. John, the author of numerous young adult books ranging from mystery novels to histories. While Jane Yolen and Jeannie Moos had been happy to do phone interviews (this being before the age of email) Ms. St. John stood on her right to be interviewed in person, during high tea at the Helmsley Palace.

The train pulled into Penn Station late. Taking the subway was out of the question. I am not normally a very assertive sort of person, but it is amazing what a whiff of those heady Manhattan exhaust fumes will do. My city skills momentarily came back to me. I strode out of the station, barged straight through tourists milling timidly on the sidewalk, stepped into the street, grabbed the side mirror of the first Yellow Cab I saw, and wrestled it to the curb.

The cabby obligingly made an illegal U-turn against eight lanes of onrushing traffic and delivered me to the Palace dining room in plenty of time to juggle tape recorder, pen, notebook, and cucumber sandwiches. Such small sandwiches and biscuits for such a large room! The ceiling must have been three stories high. The place was filled with the sound of unseen violins and the loud conversation of diners whose clothes were obviously worth more than my automobile. Should I have worn something other than jeans, running shoes, and a leather jacket? Ms St. John fit in perfectly, dressed all in black, including a black hat, black cape, and black cane with a gilded handle. There was gilt everywhere. On the walls, ceiling and chairs, and the epaulettes of the waiters who were dressed like the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz.

I thought about all that as I waited for the taxi down by the road and watched a big red rooster peck at the frozen gravel a foot from where I stood.

AND FINALLY

In the second scene of Act III of King Lear, Shakespeare had the titular character declare he did not tax the elements with unkindness. We hope our subscribers feel the same way about the scribblers of this newsletter when they are reminded the next Orphan Scrivener will flap into their in-boxes on April 15th, the very day when American tax returns are due.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the web at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing pages of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

MYSTERY SPORTS or YOU CAN'T PARK THAT CHARIOTEER

ACORNS TO OAKS or SHORT STORIES TO SERIES

EBOOK EDITIONS or YOU CAN ALWAYS ADMIRE THE ARTWORK

ANOTHER VOYAGE or THE PPP VIRTUAL WEBCON TO RETURN

AND FINALLY

Thursday, October 15, 2009

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

THE WEBCON HOVES INTO VIEW or OCTOBER EXCITEMENT ON THE HORIZON

MYSTERY HINTS FOR LIBRARIANS or A NEW RESOURCE

RUNNING RIOT or NOT YOUR USUAL NIKAS

STOP PRESS

AND FINALLY

Saturday, August 15, 2009

ERIC'S BIT or RETURNING TO READING (NOT THE TOWN IN BERKSHIRE)

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A DOG BLOG or GRAPHIC WRITING

A WOO WOO WOOHOO or CZECH THIS OUT

FREE SAMPLE or SEVENFER TO THE FORE

MORE ON THE PP WEBCON or GET OUT YOUR BUNNY SLIPPERS

YET MORE REVELATIONS or TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

AND FINALLY

Monday, June 15, 2009

MARY'S BIT or BREAD AND CHEESE AND MONEY, OH MY

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

JOHN RETURNS or ETERNITY FOLLOWS

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE or WRITING DUOS SPEAK

SEEKING KNOWLEDGE or WHEN RESEARCH IS (K)NOBBLED

MYSTERIOUS THOUGHTS or IF WE DID NOT WRITE

AND FINALLY

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

THE BYZANTINE BLOG or DARTING ABOUT THE WEB

A NOD FOR SEVENFER or LINING UP FIRST LINES

ANOTHER AWARD or ERIC JOINS THE SISTERHOOD

AND FINALLY

Sunday, February 15, 2009

MARY'S BIT or A BIT OF A MISTERY

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

CHIPPING IN or IT'S ABOUT PLACE, NOT PLAICE

FORGOTTEN BOOKS or TAKING TIME TO REED

MYSTERIOUS THOUGHTS or IF WE DID NOT WRITE

AND FINALLY