The Orphan Scrivener: 2011

Thursday, December 15, 2011

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SEVENTY-TWO -- 15 DECEMBER 2011

The holiday period is fast approaching, bringing with it much bustle and making of lists. By now our subscribers probably need a bit of a break from festive activity, a quiet sit down with a cup of tea and something interesting to read. Unfortunately all we've got to offer is this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener. However, in the spirit of the season, we hope they'll read on....

ERIC'S BIT or EVIDENCE SANTA EXISTS

This is the time year when I wonder how in the world I could ever have believed in such an outlandish idea as Santa Claus. Even a five-year old should have had enough common sense to realize that reindeer don't fly, all the toys for all the kids in the world won't fit into one sack, and a fat man in a red suit couldn't squeeze into our fireplace let alone come down the flue, especially with a sack holding all the toys for all the kids in the world over his shoulder.

If I didn't actually remember believing in Santa, I wouldn't think it was possible.

Not that I can recapture how it felt to believe. I can no longer put myself into the state of mind where reality has not quite coalesced and magic can still co-exist with day-to-day experience. Is the child's mind not fully formed or simply not fully programmed? Whatever the reason, it seems that the very young inhabit a wilder world than adults do, a place full of mystery and wonder and possibilities their elders can no longer see.

We naturally assume that kids' perceptions are wrong, a result of their immaturity. But when you consider the universe's size, age and complexity, you have to wonder how much our tiny, ephemeral brains are filtering out.

I don't think they are filtering out Santa, of course. Where are the hoof prints on the snowy roof? The satellite photos of the North Pole workshop? How would Santa get through Homeland Security? Besides, I've played Santa. I know how the scam works. I've lied to my kids.

When exactly did I discover the awful truth? Strangely, I can't recall, nor do I have any recollection of being shocked or horrified that my parents -- who I trusted more than anyone -- had foisted off on me this dreadful embarrassing hoax. It must have just dawned on me as the golden haze of early childhood gradually dissipated to reveal the cold, hard outlines of real life.

There was a period when I pretended to believe because I figured it was expected of me. How soon did my parent's realize the jig was up? For how long did they pretend to believe that they thought I still believed when they knew I didn't? None of us wanted to disappoint each other.

Christmas is a great holiday for the suspension of disbelief.

My parents didn't just prevaricate about Santa either. They also acted as if they liked the tree ornaments I brought home from school. Enormous, lop-sided snowflakes cut from thick construction paper, encrusted with glitter and white school paste, thick as icing on a cookie. Exactly what my dad wanted on the tree he tastefully decorated with subdued blue lights.

Almost as aesthetically pleasing were the jar lids wrapped in ribbons. Sometimes we would insert a crayon drawing into the center of the lid, forming a sort of cameo. In those days everyone canned. Kids were asked to bring spare lids to school. What do they use today? Hardly anyone cans and you can get a plastic angel to top your tree for the price of a jar lid.

For that matter, what do kids make these days rather than ash trays? We were always making ashtrays, not only at Christmas. Everyone needed ashtrays when I was growing up. In the unlikely event your parents didn't smoke, their friends did. They needed a misshapen lump of hardened clay painted red and green to stub out their cigarettes.

My parents put it out in the middle of the coffee table, hideous as it was, neither round nor oval, higher on one side than the other, not quite flat on the bottom. There were two large indentations in the rim, where cigarettes could sit, and so you could distinguish it from a candy dish. The workmanship was not the best. It looked like something made by a cow.

But my parents pretended it was a work of art.

Who knows, maybe they were blinded by the holiday season. Maybe they believed the ornaments and ashtray were beautiful like I believed in Santa.

I did have some scientific basis for my gullibility. I wasn't completely stupid. Santa brought me science books, after all. Christmas Eve I set a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on the coffee table and sure enough, on Christmas morning, the edibles had vanished, except for a few tell tale crumbs. Certain proof that Santa had visited.

That and the fresh cigarette butt in the ashtray.

I'm always happy to see sundials popping up in my reading, especially in those occasional cases where they play important roles. Maurice Leblanc's The Sign of the Shadow revolves around a painting of a sundial, in which a hidden clue points to the location of a fortune in diamonds. Then there's Mr Pottermack's Oversight, wherein R. Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke admires the titular character's sundial motto -- 'Hope in the Morning, Peace at Eventide' -- having realized just how darkly appropriate it was. On the supernatural side, in The Sundial R. H. Malden relates some very strange goings-on beginning after a sundial is erected in a country garden.

Strange that these pleasantly ornamental yet useful features so intimately connected with sunshine would accrue such dark shadows!

And not just by way of this method of telling time. No doubt subscribers have noticed the mottos carved on sundials are often melancholy in nature. Perhaps this is not so surprising when we consider the fleeting nature of time telling by the dial, but I confess such inscriptions inevitably remind me of the Rubaiyat verse describing humanity as shadow-shapes moving around the lantern held by the Master of the Show.

Examples of these inscriptions include 'Short is the Life of Man', 'Swiftly It Passes', 'From The Last Hour Begins Eternity', 'Rising Portends Setting', and 'Every Hour Shortens Life', all of them likely to depress the reader even on the sunniest of days.

For all that, sundials have appeared in a couple of John's adventures. They made a brief cameo appearance in One For Sorrow, which made passing mention of a sundial in the centre of the Patriarch's garden. The Patriarch, who is examining a flower bed displaying only a few green shoots, remarks to John that "The dial reveals the hour, the flowers reveal the season."

Sundials received a lot more ink in Seven For A Secret, given one of its prominent characters is Helias, a maker of sundials. When John first meets Helias, the craftsman shows him a silver sunburst of the ornamental medallion type used to fasten a cloak at the shoulder. Helias is still working on it but demonstrates how the sunburst opens up to reveal a folding sundial. Commissioned by a silversmith, the artefact was to be inscribed 'All My Silver Will Not Purchase Another Hour'.

Despite the nature of his profession, Helias' workshop is located underground because his heartless creators afflicted him with a hatred of sunlight. This means that, while as has been engraved on sundials, 'The Sun Shines For All', for Helias sunshine is a constant source of torment. As he puts it, he works with shadows every day and regards his creations as shadow- or time-traps. Thus he cannot help noticing the sun crossing the sky, pulling shadows behind it, and as a result he is unable to stop calculating the hour by the position of his shadow.

Readers might think Helias would find it easier to be out and about at night, but unfortunately for him, shadows swarm when the moon is up....

AND FINALLY

Speaking of sundial mottos and Josephine Tey notwithstanding, a particularly appropriate example with which to close is 'Time, Father of Truth', for it's certainly true to say in two months' time the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will cast its shadow into subscribers' in-boxes.

Well, not unless the Web suddenly fails.

Otherwise, 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, the Doom Cat interactive game written by Eric, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the 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/ and/or visit the Poisoned Pen Press blog at http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/blog/

Saturday, October 15, 2011

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SEVENTY-ONE -- 15 OCTOBER 2011

The English poet Thomas Hood wrote of autumn: Boughs are daily rifled/ By the gusty thieves,/ And the book of Nature/ Getteth short of leaves.

As this issue is written, the days are inexorably and noticeably advancing ever more early into twilight. And speaking of advancing, a further sign of autumn was spotted a day or so ago in the form of a woolly bear caterpillar inching down a boulder and off into a patch of long grass.

Woolly bear caterpillars abroad there may be, but the yellowing of the landscape only got into stride this week. Colour is arriving late this year, so as this edition of Orphan Scrivener appears, Thomas Hood's book of nature is not yet as short of leaves as it might be, and while night falls quicker each day, it's not quite time for autumnal winds to make wild music in faded woods as Wordsworth gloomily wrote.

Speaking of music, screeching violins will now begin to play as a warning readers of a nervous disposition should not read on...

MARY'S BIT or DEADLIER THAN A POKER

A while ago I saw a Craigslist advertisement for what the seller termed an Old Brass Long Fork with Bird.

I had the impression the poster, who stated they had purchased the Long Fork With Bird at an estate sale, did not realise the item offered was a toasting fork, and a deluxe version at that. It was fitted with a hanging ring and what was described as a bird head handle, which going by the photos I took to be intended to represent either a swan or a peacock with a cropped tail.

I was immediately reminded of the Reed family's utilitarian and unfortunately long gone toasting fork, a simpler, home-made artefact in the form of a trident, its points flattened and hammered into diamond shapes the better to prevent bread falling in the fire. Constructed of sturdy, thick wire of some kind welded at appropriate points, despite its lack of glamour the fork was in constant use and did a bang-up job of making toast.

The toasting fork was as much part of our fireplace furniture as the hearth companion on which hung a poker, a small shovel for removing coal ashes from below the grate, and a brush to keep the hearth neatly swept, doing double duty for sweeping up toast crumbs from the hearth rug.

One of the simpler joys most of today's youth misses out on is smashing walnuts with a poker, though I confess I found a flat iron much better for the task as presenting a broader whacking surface than the poker. Attempting to open a walnut with a poker was not very effective, given quite often the poker bounced off the nut and the unsmashed walnut rolled under the table or behind a chair. For we never began the task without placing the walnut on the floor and preferably on the mat in case we damaged the floor. It was remarkable how, depending on the power in the swing of the poker and the proximity of ornaments or pans, the attempt was accompanied by the merry jingle of the latter. Of course, we also had a pair of nut crackers, but when you have two children fairly close in age and argumentative most of the time, the pokerless one is going to get impatient to start eating walnuts and haul out the flat iron.

As it happens, while Casa Maywrite does not have a fender or a hearth companion we do have a pair of flat irons. At various times we've used them for door stops or book ends, and also on occasion have found them useful for smashing the shells of coconuts after the milk has been drained out. It's that or the hammer. Perhaps, in line with personality tests appearing in certain popular publications, the methods we use to access coconut innards tells us something about ourselves.

Speaking of flat irons, observe if you will scenes in films and on TV where a housewife is using one. I have yet to see any of them hold a flat iron with a pan holder or thick cloth to protect their fingers from transmitted heat in the handle or quickly dab a wet finger on the flat surface to judge if the iron has heated enough to do its job properly.

But I digress.

I was talking about fireplace furniture. Consider the humble fender. The three-sides-of-a-square curb several inches high, often made of brass, is probably the most familiar type to readers. If fenders happen to be mentioned in passing talk -- and stranger conversations take place every day at Casa Maywrite -- I think of literary references to this useful item of furniture in parlours wherein fresh-faced heroinnes perch on them while drinking tea or conversing with local nobs. Obviously such fenders must be of the knee-high padded sort for the sake of the heroine's modesty.

But because I am a mystery reader, I also recall that often, even in such civilized settings, the fender can be deadly -- how many times have we read about characters falling and striking their heads on the sharp corner of one (or even impaled on protruding ornamentation as in a novel read within the past couple of months) thus suffering grave injuries or accidental death -- or possibly an attempt to disguise murder as an accident?

A poker makes a deadly weapon too, and come to think of it a toasting fork with or without a representation of a bird head would do a fair bit of damage as well. In fact, with its sharp points it's even deadlier than a poker given its greater capacity for quickly inflicting multiple wounds. Indeed, it seems to me if such a fork was wielded by a determined assailant, it wouldn't be just the bread that ended up toast.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A shortish section this time around -- who shouted hurrah? -- but nonetheless we hope of interest to subscribers.

SPOILERS PERMITTED or A CHANCE TO CHINWAG

Recently started by Jan Burke, author of Irene Kelly series, Spoilerville http://www.spoilerville.com is a new experiment in bringing readers and authors together to talk about books. What you'll find there are over 125 books (more being added all the time!) by authors who wish to give those who've already read a book a place to ask questions, make comments, and discuss their books with others who've read them.

It isn't a selling site but rather a place for reader conversations, for talking about books and contacting authors about their work. Set up so you won't accidentally see discussion without choosing to do so, there are search functions set up for titles, links to authors websites, and a way to see which of the books of a particular author are on the site.

Jan says she hopes you visit soon and return often -- and so do we!

AN UNUSUAL TRIO or MURDER, MYSTERY AND MITHRAISM

As readers know, our protagonist John is a practicing Mithran holding the high religious rank of Runner of the Sun. Mary contributed a blog about Mithraism, shedding light on John's beliefs, to Jessica Williams' Novel Reaction website in mid September, as part of Jessica's month of Murder and Mayhem. Interested parties may view it here: http://novelreaction.com/2011/09/mary- reed-and-eric-mayer-guest-post-mithras-religion/

THE PPP BLOG-O-RAMA or HIST-MYSTERY AUTHORS APLENTY

In our last issue we mentioned Poisoned Pen Press now hosts a blog for its authors. In September Mary's contribution was (I've Got A Little List of) Pestiferous Posters, inspired by Gilbert & Sullivan's wickedly pointed patter song. Current contributors to the PPP blog include fellow historical mystery writers: Vicki Delany, Bernadette Pajer, Larry Karp, Ann Parker, Ken Kuhlken, Martin Edwards, Aileen Baron, J. M. Hayes, and Donis Casey, not to mention a number of other PPP authors writing in various sub-genres in the field, so there's likely to be something of interest to just about any reader. Point your clicker at http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/blog/ for the latest blog and archived entries.

ERIC'S BIT or WHITHER HISTORICAL WEATHER

It seems as if it hasn't stopped raining here since last spring. Coming into September we were far above the historic precipitation average for the year and then the remnants of Hurricane Irene drenched us with three inches or so and Tropical Storm Lee drowned us with over nine inches. And it is still raining, even as I type.

By contrast, during the period between June 12 and June 21, 1941 in the southwest part of Shropshire in the UK there was no precipitation at all, according to the Met Office. That was a relief because Mary and I have spent a lot of time writing there, working on a new book. I know....you don't usually go to the UK -- even in your imagination -- to avoid rain.

The lack of rain back then does pose a challenge to me since I am from the dark and stormy night school. As far as I'm concerned, nothing says drama like a good frog strangler, as Mary calls it. I have to be careful or I find my fictional clouds opening up every time trouble looms. With this book I'll have to try and create atmosphere more subtly rather than simply pouring it on.

Mary and I decided that since weather records were available for the era we might as well be accurate. But is it really necessary to take historical accuracy in fiction to such lengths? Does the historical backdrop against which the fictional characters act out their imaginary story need to take account of every passing shower or lack thereof?

Certainly the writer of non-historicals, of novels set in the present, more or less gets to make up suitable weather. How many houses in which a murder was committed, or is about to committed if a lurking maniac has his way, have found themselves isolated by snowstorms?

Or so I believed, as I read David Goodis' Black Friday, a contemporary, at the time, crime novel published in 1954. It starts out with a man on the run in the snow-covered streets of Philadelphia finding shelter, of a sort, with a gang of professional thieves.

You'll notice the snow. On the day of the big burglary at book's end it is also snowing and so cold the getaway car nearly refuses to start.

Nothing remarkable there, but since I had weather accuracy in mind I immediately noticed when the protagonist read a newspaper headline about a British airliner crashing in the Mediterranean. Googling quickly revealed to me that such a crash had indeed occurred on January 11, 1954. Having put an exact date to the narrative, my next impulse was to check the weather. Yes, it had indeed snowed in Philadelphia on the day the book began and it snowed again and was bitterly cold the day of the burglary. Exactly as depicted.

I was startled, to say the least. Are authors really that picky about the weather in contemporary books? Or, I wondered hopefully, had Goodis perhaps begun the book during the January snow and having committed himself that far, decided to maintain the accuracy? Or had he pulled a Georges Simenon and written the whole short novel during a few days-- the same days on which it took place -- and simply used the weather outside his window?

Such were my thoughts when I began reading A Time to Murder and Create, a 1976 mystery by Lawrence Block. Aside from a mention that it was spring, the action wasn't dated. Until PI Matt Scudder sits in a bar, drinking and watching the Knicks lose the fourth game of an NBA playoff series to the Celtics. The next day he survives a knife attack mostly because it has been raining. Uh oh.

I couldn't resist, even though I didn't really want to know. It wasn't hard to discover that the Knicks had been eliminated from the playoffs by the Celtics on April 24, 1974. It was with a sense of dread that I looked to see what the weather had been like April 25, 1974 in New York City, when Scudder's assailant slipped on the wet pavement, his knife missing its mark. I always knew good writers like to get their facts correct but is there no limit? Would I have to abandon forever my penchant for tossing in dark and stormy skies to meet my atmospheric needs?

I clicked to the right historical weather chart and looked down the rows of statistics. Precipitation...

Zero!

And it hadn't rained on April 24th, or the 26th either. Despite what the book said, it had been dry all week.

And all I could say was thank goodness! And thank you Lawrence Block!

AND FINALLY

While we've no desire to rain on anyone's parade, in closing we'll reveal the caterpillar mentioned at the beginning of this newsletter appeared to have no striping. Given folk wisdom has it the width of such stripes predicts the severity of winter weather, their absence is suggestive, but whatever the temperature turns out to be two months hence we trust subscribers won't give the cold shoulder to the next issue of Orphan Scrivener, which will hotfoot it into their inboxes on December 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, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the 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/ and/or the Poisoned Pen Press blog at http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/blog/

Monday, August 15, 2011

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SEVENTY -- 15 AUGUST 2011

How hot has it been at Casa Maywrite since our last newsletter? Believe it or not, during the recent heat wave no coffee has been consumed for stretches up to as much as three days!

Now, however, the long period of energy-sapping temperatures has moderated enough that the coffee pot has just resumed its usual day-long sojourns on the stove and we are once again enjoying our no-milk-no-sugar dark beverage.

It is said coffee tends to make you nervous. Orphan Scrivener may well do the same. To find out, read on....

ERIC'S BIT or THE TALKING FISH AND THE REMARKABLE RUTABAGA

At the start of the month we sent off the corrected galleys of NINE FOR THE DEVIL to Poisoned Pen Press.

We heaved a huge sigh of relief and intoned, in unison, "our work here is done." Well, okay, I admit that my work was done before Mary mercifully proofread the galleys by herself! All the rest -- the formatting, the printing, the distribution -- is up to the press. Thank goodness!

Maybe you've been hearing about authors who swear that self-publishing for Kindle and its electronic kin is the way to go. Thriller writer Barry Eisler turned down a big contract with a major publisher to do it himself. Amanda Hocking is a millionaire. Mystery author Joe Konrath sells billions and billions of ebooks.

But so far as I can see, the evidence that self-publishing is the best route for authors to take is based on isolated success stories. You could make just as good a case that playing the lottery is a reasonable career choice. In fact, I have actually met one big lottery winner and the parent of another, and I can't say that of any self-publishing millionaires.

So we are not eager to self-publish. Partly it is because of the unlikelihood that a do-it-yourself book from little known authors would find an audience. Personally I am also reluctant because I have self-published. And let me tell you, while it wasn't exactly hell it wasn't any picnic either. Maybe a picnic just outside the gates of hell.

For example, Mary and I aren't best selling authors but Poisoned Pen Press has found thousands of reader for us. In grade school my audience was two buddies who sat on either side of me in the back of the room during arithmetic class. And when the teacher spotted us giggling over the cartoons I'd drawn, she'd confiscate my tablet. There went my whole inventory.

We also make more money than I ever made self-publishing comics. Back in those days, a full color "Elmo the Talking Fish" comic went for a dime on the playground. You could buy a whole bag of jaw breakers, licorice whips, and Bazooka bubblegum for a dime. Unfortunately, there's a limit to the money to be made, even at 100% royalties, when your print run is one. I tried renting out my "King Cotton vs. Boll Weevil Giant Annual" but it got tedious having to keep erasing the crossword puzzle answers. Luckily my parents paid for my big box of 128 Crayola colors -- with gold, silver and copper -- or I would have been operating at a loss.

Twenty-five years later I did a bit better selling mini-comics. Uh...yeah...I admit, I was still turning out comics in my thirties. A mini-comic is made by photo-copying the pages you've drawn onto both sides of a sheet or paper, cutting the sheet down the middle, folding the two halves together, and stapling the spine. I did manage to sell maybe 75 copies of titles like "Bad Cat" and "The Remarkable Rutabaga" at a quarter each, which almost defrayed the cost of postage and supplies. And advertising those comics and mailing them was a lot more difficult than approaching a friend on the playground and embarrassing him into handing me a dime for a comic. Can you imagine having to cut and fold and staple and mail every mystery book? No thanks.

And that wasn't the worst of my self-publishing nightmares either. I once printed several issues of a magazine on a pan of gelatin. No, I am not making this up. I used what's called a hectograph because I couldn't afford a mimeograph or a spirit duplicator. My first hectograph was a kit from Sears but it was the last one in stock, I guess, having probably gathered dust in the warehouse since 1939. It was probably the same model used by H.P. Lovecraft. No wonder he saw lurking horrors in corners that did not quite seem to fit into any dimension known to the human mind.

The original kit was dreadful enough to print on but when the hecto gel ran out I had to cook up my own by heating glycerin and plain gelatin over a low flame. Then I poured the viscous concoction into a shallow pan and let it harden. If you take one of the ditto masters that you might recall from your school days and place one face down on the hectograph, the gel absorbs the ink. Press a sheet of paper down on the gel and you get an impression like that produced by a spirit duplicator. And one that doesn't have the terrifying odor of pop quizzes and arithmetic tests.

Hecto refers to the hundred prints you're supposed to be able to get but I was lucky to get fifty. The surface of the gel deteriorates quickly as you pull sheets off. It begins to bubble and tear. Sometimes the whole mass would come slurping out of the pan, clinging to the paper I pulled off, like some boneless alien parasite. Well, I was publishing a science fiction fanzine.

By the way, have you ever tried to get purple hectograph stains off? Every time I recall those faint smudges on my fingers, all these years later, I swear I will never again self-publish.

Well, okay, I guess formatting a book for Kindle won't leave purple stains. And Mary and I are not ruling out self-publishing a book. We have so many utterly non-commercial ideas that some of our work may be destined for self-publishing, provided we ever find time to write them.

However, our first choice is a quality publisher, and that we have in Poisoned Pen Press.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

There's a fair bit of news on the ticker this time around, so let's get right to it....

NEWS OF NINEFER or JUSTINIAN PROVIDES COVERAGE

In the last Orphan Scrivener we announced that Nine For The Devil will be published by Poisoned Pen Press in March 2012 in hardback, paperback, large print, and ebook editions, adding we would provide more details as they became available. We are now happy to reveal the cover for Ninefer features the famous Ravenna mosaic of Justinian. Point your clickers here for a preview http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/nine-for-the-devil/

A NEW BLOG or WHAT DID SHE KNOW?

Poisoned Pen Press now hosts a blog for its authors. Mary's regular spot is the l8th of the month and in July she revealed what happens When Umbrellas Attack http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/when-umbrellas-attack/ Her next blog offers thoughts on the trial of Dr Crippen under the title Ethel Le Neve: What Did She Know? Plus subscribers can peruse a number of other blogs by PPP authors by visiting http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/blog/

MORE DARK DOINGS or THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION

The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction, edited by master anthologist Mike Ashley, makes its debut this very month. http://tinyurl.com/453vzb5 Featuring a dozen novellas spanning four thousand years of criminal history, contributors include Peter Tremayne, Charles Todd, Steven Saylor, Anne Perry, and Maan Meyers. The ink-stained wretches at Casa Maywrite also lurk within, with the dark tale of a Byzantine icon painter, suddenly out of work when icons are banned, who becomes embroiled in a case of deception.

THICKENING THE PLOT or A FREE OFFER

Mary contributed a few thoughts to Chris Eboch's Advanced Plotting, now available in print and for Kindle at Amazon http://tinyurl.com/4xfl7dp and as an e-book in various formats at Smashwords. For a limited time Chris is generously offering a free download via Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/75078 Use Coupon Code PS76M. This offer expires at the beginning of September, so subscribers have but a short time to take advantage of it. May we suggest if you do you leave a comment in appropriate venues?

CRAFTY LISTS or ONE AND ONE MAKE CLUE

Anastasia Pollack, craft editor and reluctant sleuth protagonist of Lois Winston's Crafting Mystery series, runs the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog on Lois' behalf. On July 22nd Mary wrote about clues hidden in lists in mystery fiction, with examples from Doyle, Sayers, and Christie. Point your clicker here http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2011/07/book-club-friday-guest-authors-mary.html

MARY'S BIT or A (H)ARROWING CRIME

Visitors to our website will recall our Golden Age Library page, which hosts an ever-expanding list of links to free etexts of tales of detection from the period, often defined as the years between the two world wars although we also include a number of works from earlier eras going as far back as the Victorian.

As I've remarked elsewhere, one of the most noticeable and attractive aspects of these novels is they do not revel in gratuitous gore. Murders are usually off the page or lightly touched upon, the focus being on solving the crime rather than dwelling on its sanguinary details, as indeed is the case with our own series. Yet many of these novels cannot be described as cosies, given the crimes investigated are sometimes shocking even by present day standards -- throwing acid into someone's face or relentless blackmail driving its unfortunate victims to suicide, for example.

Another reason I enjoy these novels is because a number include reproductions of scraps of paper with mysterious messages or codes and, best of all, floor plans of rooms, houses, and other places. Unfortunately for subscribers, contemplating this feature leads me to close with a shorter version of my review of The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow by Anna Katharine Green. The novel was published in 1917 and features a trio of such floor plans.

Set in l9l3, the novel opens with the death of a young girl on an upper floor of a New York museum. She's been killed by an arrow and even stranger, while the museum has arrows aplenty, no bow is anywhere to be seen.

Detective Ebenezer Gryce, now 85, and his assistant Sweetwater arrive to investigate. Was the death an accident or murder? But who would be foolish enough to loose an arrow in a museum? On the other hand, what motive could there be for doing away with a girl barely in her mid teens?

After Gryce arrives everyone in the building is sent to stand in the same spot as they were at the time of the incident. Suddenly an extra man appears. Where has he sprung from?

The plot immediately begins to thicken. How does an English visitor, a stranger to the victim, know her name? Why has the girl's travelling companion hastily left their hotel without leaving a forwarding address? For that matter what was this well-bred young lady doing going about without a chaperone? Where is the bow? How could the arrow have been shot without someone in the open galleries noticing?

Readers will need to refer to the floor plans more than once, because the plot is very dense and the movements of those in the museum at the relevant time are vital in solving the mystery. Time and again the investigation comes to a screeching halt, only to be picked up again after a bit of cogitation and/or legwork by Gryce, Sweetwater, and others. The real problem is linking the various prime movers to each other and particularly finding the motive. Sweetwater's use of carpentry skills aids the investigation in an unexpected way!

Since it's not my intention to torment subscribers by mentioning books that are hard to find, interested parties will find a free etext of this novel on Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17763/17763-h/17763-h.htm and it also appears among twenty of Anna's titles in our Golden Age Library at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/golden.htm

AND FINALLY

Victorian poet Philip James Bailey lamented that we cannot see beyond the sable shroud of the future. However, in the case of Orphan Scrivener this much at least is already known: the next issue will darken subscribers' in-boxes on October 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SIXTY-NINE -- 15 JUNE 2011

William Makepeace Thackeray once opined that we learn useful lessons from calamities. The proof of the pudding being in the eating, we invite subscribers to pick up their spoons and dig into this June edition of Orphan Scrivener.

MARY'S BIT (n)or ANY DROP TO DRINK

During May strong storms passed across the state and as a result for a day or two we acquired two run-off waterfalls in the back garden plus a small pond and longer-lingering miniature marshlands in front of the house.

The lawn was still squelchy when we found ourselves in much the same situation as the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge's poem, that is to say surrounded by water -- in this case soggy ground -- but with not a drop to drink.

Our well had up and died.

We discovered the situation late one evening when the kitchen tap was turned on and produced not so much as a drop, a tittle, or even a suggestion of moisture.

The well driller turned up next morning with expeditious despatch and looked over the interior components of the water system but the culprit turned out to be the well pump. He would have replaced it that day but it would be a two-man job and a smaller rig would be needed, since the usual vehicle needed 30 feet clearance room and the phone lines to the house were below that point.

So we carried on until next morning with bottled water and jugs of same to flush the loo, when the driller and his assistant arrived with a lower slung rig, which only just cleared both the phone lines and Scylla and Charybdis, represented by the narrow space available to pass between a tree on the lawn and the front of the house, where the well is situated.

The question was given the still soggy ground and the weight of the rig could they inch it over to the area of operations without getting bogged down?

With a bit of maneouvering they managed to navigate the heavy vehicle between the twin perils and back up to the well head, which for the benefit of British readers resembles a capped section of narrow drainage pipe several inches tall sticking up from the ground.

The next problem was the tree near the well. It was probably a sapling when the well was drilled but it had obviously grown mightily since then and its branches were positioned to foul the rig's boom, which had to be vertical to pull out the old pump and line. Fortunately, after a bit of back and forth the driller managed to position it to reel out the old line and pump, although ultimately the folded-back-down boom carried away a few souvenir twigs and leaves.

The start of replacement work was delayed however because the rig could not be got back up to the road, having become mired in the, er, mire, but tyre chains dealt with that problem.

Since the entire water line -- which turned out to measure about a hundred and forty feet and was brittle to boot -- and its associated wiring were also to be replaced, parallel lengths of both were unreeled across the lawn, up the slope to the road, past the drill rig parked there, and a little way along the road itself. Once these were ready the installation of line and pump began, using a hand-operated tripod arrangement over the well head.

The new wiring was attached to the control box and then we had the nod to turn on a faucet. A spurt of dirty water and then the flow cleared and we had water on tap once again.

Even better, due to the new installation arrangements, if problems arise and the driller must be called back, it will not be necessary to inch the rig under the lines and between Scylla and Charybdis in order to retrieve the line or pump for examination.

A translation of the coding on the nameplate of the kaput pump established it had been installed a remarkable 34 years ago. Needless to say, if its replacement lasts that long we will be well satisfied.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A big budget of news this time, so let's get to it...

JOHN'S NEXT OUTING or NINE FOR THE DEVIL

The year is 548 and Empress Theodora is dead, the victim of cancer. Or so everyone in Constantinople believes. Everyone, that is, except Justinian, who orders John to find the murderer or suffer the consequences.

There is no shortage of suspects, including General Artabanes, forced to occupy a house with an unloved wife; Justinian's cousin Germanus, whose career was blocked by the late empress; and Antonina and her husband General Belisarius, both enraged by Theodora's attempt to marry their daughter to her grandson by compelling the young couple to live together. Could the exiled and much hated former tax collector John the Cappadocian have played a role? Might palace physician Gaius have tampered with Theodora's medication? Pope Vigilius, detained in the city due to a religious controversy, is not above suspicion. Even John's friends, the lawyer Anatolius and Felix, captain of the place guards, are acting strangely.

Nine For The Devil will be published by Poisoned Pen Press in March 2012 in hardback, paperback, large print, and ebook editions. More details as they become available!

TALKING TO MANIC READERS or THE CHALLENGES OF TIMES AND TOGETHERNESS

The mission of the Manic Readers website is to provide readers with a wide variety of information on the industry’s books, authors, and publishers. Ivy Truitt, bookseller, reviewer, and manager of the Manic Readers guest author blog, put on her interviewer's hat on 4th May to chat with us. About other matters we talked about whether as married co-authors we found so much togetherness difficult, the challenges of writing fiction set during the 6th century, and how it was John came to be born. Point your clickers here for the skinny: http://manicreaders.com/blog/index.php/2011/05/mary-reed-eric-mayer-and-john-the-eunuch-lord-chamberlain/#respond

TOEING AND HEELING or UNDERHANDED MACHINATIONS

Amy Corwin is a charter member of the Romance Writers of America and has written not only Regency romantic mysteries but also cosy and historical tales of detection. She admits most of her books have included a bit of murder and mayhem since she discovered killing off at least one character is a highly effective way to make the remaining ones toe the plot line. On 6th May Mary contributed to Amy's blog by toeing and heeling round the topic of misleading readers by utilising their expectations of a particular type of character. Talk about underhanded authorial machinations! All is revealed here http://amycorwin.blogspot.com/2011/05/guest-writer-mary-reed-on-misleading.html

SPONTANEOUS PUBLICITY -- AN UNLIKELY TALE

Jeff Marks, biographer of mystery writer Craig Rice and author of works including Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s/1950s and Criminal Appetites (an anthology of cooking related mysteries) also wears the moderator hat for Murder Must Advertise, an e-list devoted to book marketing and public relations. On 23rd May Mary contributed a post to the recently launched MMA blog, her topic being spontaneous publicity or promotion occurring in a completely unexpected fashion without any effort by the writer. Fellow authors Larry Karp and Robin Burcell provide examples and Mary reveals the unlikely tale of how One For Sorrow's dedication brought about the reunion of old friends who had lost touch. Here's the post: http://murdermustadvertise.blogspot.com/2011/05/spontaneous-publicity-by-mary-reed.html

ERIC'S BIT or THE BUSTED KNUCKLEBONES

Sixth century Constantinople is a great setting for mystery novels.

It's the largest city of its era, the center of government, populated by people from all over the world, some climbing towards wealth and power, others simply trying to survive. The rich and poor find themselves in dangerous proximity. The city presents endless opportunities and motivations for crime.

Unfortunately, unlike New York or Los Angeles, sixth century Constantinople is not well-served by detectives. John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, is an historically plausible sleuth, but the city would be a good fit for a lot more detectives.

Mike Hammer would feel right at home in Constantinople's dark and twisting alleys. The tunic he'd have to wear might make him smile. But not a nice smile.

There were plenty of taverns for Maigret to sit in, having melancholy ruminations, and plenty in that day and age to be melancholy about.

Philip Marlowe might enjoy visiting palaces instead of mansions. The rich and powerful were just as corrupt and secretive as they are today.

Constantinople is surrounded by water on three sides, just like Florida. Travis McGee could moor The Busted Knucklebones, named after a popular game in those pre-playing card days, on the Golden Horn or the Sea of Marmara and sail to wherever his salvage operations took him. His sidekick Meyer might need to be left out. I don't think they had economists in those days. Just tax collectors.

Travis might be asked by a bishop to retrieve a saint's mummified nose, because the bishop didn't dare let it be known that the relic had been lost in the first place. Although I don't know what Travis' customary half of what he retrieves would be. What was the going rate on saint's noses?

The Hippodrome race track was right next to the Great Palace and when it came to winning, members of the racing factions were not averse to skullduggery and partisan violence. Imagine charioteer Sid Halley investigating a curse tablet found buried under the far turn of the track. I'm sure Dick Francis would have been certain to have Sid hauled off to Justinian's dungeons at some point to be roughed up. A desperate gallop through the crowded, colonnaded streets of the city would have made a fitting climax. How about a short cut through the Baths of Zeuxippos?

Not all detectives get out and about. Nero Wolfe, who solved crimes from his armchair, makes me think of the pillar saints -- stylites -- who lived on top of columns for years, never coming down. An acolyte could easily fill Archie's role and do the legwork. But I'm not sure Nero would be cut out for an ascetic life on top of a column, unprotected in blazing sun and freezing rain. Plus it would need to be a particularly wide column with a reinforced railing.

Miss Marple would be even less at home. Justinian's court was filled with gossip, with everyone knowing something about everyone else, but Constantinople was not by any means a small, English village. And as for Poirot...well, Belgium hadn't even been invented.

AND FINALLY

Summer continues to fly by although not quite in the sense of Ralph Waldo Emerson's comment that no matter what we do, summer will have flies. A reminder to subscribers while on this vexed topic that the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will fly into your inbox on August 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

Friday, April 15, 2011

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SIXTY-EIGHT -- 15 APRIL 2011

A Latin proverb points out that spring isn't always green, and it's certainly been the case up to about a fortnight ago. Now little pointy fingers of tulip leaves -- or in the case of hyacinths, crowns -- are at last starting to poke up into daylight, and the monochrome landscape of the past three months is getting close to the time when a green mist will spread across it as trees burst into leaf.

However, as Longfellow pointed out in An April Day, some days must be dreary and dark, and arrival of this latest issue of our newsletter serves to underline the wisdom of his words...

ERIC'S BIT or A FUNNY HAT NEVER HURTS

Mary and I recently finished the first draft of Nine For The Devil, the next John the Lord Chamberlain mystery. There are always some bumps along the way and at one point, as I struggled to come up with a description for a minor character, I suddenly remembered how much easier it was to create unforgettable characters with Mr. Potato Head.

I'm old enough to recall when he was a real potato. Now he's just a plastic fraud. Calls himself a potato but he's got no starch. At some point whoever decides such things came to the conclusion that those vicious plastic spikes on the backs of the assorted facial features posed an unacceptable risk. To whom I'm not sure. Amazing as it may seem, even very young children have the ability to stick bulbous noses and floppy ears onto a potato without killing themselves. They might hurt their sides laughing. I reckon kids have more chance getting injured falling down on the playground than they did while playing with Mr. Potato Head.

Besides, the whole point of Mr. Potato Head was not simply that you were creating a funny face, but creating a funny face on a potato.

If you're supplying minor characters with physical descriptions, it isn't good to have a Mr. Potato Head flashback. Let's see, shall I stick on some big lips or small ones? Round eyes or squinty? How about glasses? Now, what kind of hat? They're all funny hats, of course.

Unfortunately I probably do have a mental box of features to stick on characters and maybe it isn't big enough. I tend to think of the same features and in the same varieties. Noses: big, small, straight, bulbous. Hair color: black, brown, blonde, red. Chin: weak, strong, pointed. Eyes: brown, blue, green. Ears:... Well, okay, I can't find any ears in my box.

That might be due to the fact that when I read I don't pay a lot of attention to physical descriptions, even for major characters, unless they are very exaggerated (i.e. Nero Wolf or Blind Pew) and/or play some important role in the story (i.e. the Man in the Iron Mask or the Hunchback of Notre Dame).

In real life I do not analyze people's appearance. I think most of us tend to see others based on our whole conception of them derived from their actions and our feelings toward them.

When I read exquisite descriptions of the angle of a character's cheekbones and the shape of the chin and lips and the type of ears, not to mention the precise shade of the eyes and estimated number of hairs in the eyebrows, I immediately forget every detail and picture the character as looking like I'd expect a person to look who does whatever the character does and thinks the way the character thinks.

Although I can't say for sure whether it is true, it's generally said that Erle Stanley Gardner never gave a good description of Perry Mason. Which I suppose is a bad example since everyone knows he looks like Raymond Burr.

In the end it is probably more important to give minor characters some life, let them say or do a little something, rather than depending on physical descriptions. Give them some juice, like a real potato, in other words, instead of a soulless lump of plastic.

Then again, a funny hat never hurts.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker reports a mixed bag this time....

A FOG BLOG or A TOUCH OF THE TROLLENBERG TERROR

The Dames of Dialogue offer author interviews and host guest bloggers on topics such as travel, food, shoes, pets, and friends. Also fog, about which Mary contributed a blog on 7th March. Check out her thoughts on, among other things, the literary use of fog in Doyle and Dickens http://damesofdialogue.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/fog-by-mary-reed/#comment-3679

A VILLAINOUS GOURD or THURSDAY'S THUG HAD FAR TO GO

Gwen Mayo blogs about writing, writers, characters, and books, with an occasional side trip into history and two regular features: Thursday's Thugs and The Weekend Writer. On March 17th Mary contributed a Thug blog about The Gourd, a real villain with a remarkably thuggish nature who plays an important part in Four For A Boy. Unlike some historical persons in John's time, his ultimate fate is known and so you might say Thursday's thug had far to go. Point your clicker here for the skinny:

http://gwenmayo.blogspot.com/2011/03/thursdays-thugs-guest-blog-by-mary-reed.html

DELUDED AND DEFRAUDED or DEADLY BY THE DOZEN

Our e-anthology debut was in late February in Deadly By The Dozen: 12 Short Stories of Murder and Mayhem, edited by Mark Terry. Currently available on Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/DEADLY-BY-THE-DOZEN-ebook/dp/B004OA6KFQ

Nook

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/DEADLY-BY-THE-DOZEN/Mark-Terry/e/2940012258199

Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52393

with other formats and a print edition to follow. Contributors are Jude Hardin, Natasha Fondren, Robert Weibezahl, Betsy Dornbusch, Lise McClendon, Keith Snyder, Merry Monteleone, Erica Orloff, Travis Erwin, Simon Wood, and Mark himself.

The table of contents includes the sinister line Whereby Ignorant People Are Frequently Deluded and Defrauded by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer. Naturally we're denying everything!

LITERARY RAGBAG or AT LEAST YOU MIGHT LIKE THE COVER

Eric put on his apprentice webmaster's hat and created a downloadable pdf of The Literary Ragbag, a collection of favourite Orphan Scrivener essays we contributed to the electronic goodie bag for the PPP Webcon a while back. Now the Webcon site is offline we thought subscribers who missed the Webcon might enjoy the Ragbag -- or if not the prose, then the cover may appeal, featuring as it does a dear little cat mosaic. Point your clickers here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ragbag.pdf

MARY'S BIT or STRIKING THOUGHTS

As a long-time lover of classic tales of the supernatural (M. R. James rules!) I'm certain I'm not the first to notice how often inclement weather plays a strong role in creating the appropriate atmosphere for the genre.

Consider the raging thunderstorms so often featured in ghost stories, wherein brilliant flashes of lightning reveal things the hapless protagonist would much rather not see. You know, those sinister movements by dark figures in ancestral oil portraits or oddly mottled, claw-like hands scratching at ivy-framed diamond-paned windows. Rolls of thunder shaking the walls drown out the screams of the doomed innocent locked in the attic, yet never seem to mask the grim sound of the wheels of an approaching coach and four driven by the dissolute and long dead fourth earl, inevitably arriving at the front door on the stroke of midnight, though not with the intention of delivering pizza.

Lately I've been rereading E. F. Benson's fiction and find myself admiring his use of thunderstorms, no doubt because Ninefer is set during the historic heat wave under which Constantinople sweltered in June 548, during which a statue of Emperor Arkadios was struck by lightning.

Never mind about that, let's see an example from Benson, you say?

Happy to oblige.

Consider the familiar sticky heat and strange hush heralding an imminent thunderstorm. As described in The Man Who Went Too Far, before the god Pan pays what readers can only regard as a highly regrettable visit, the pending arrival of a storm is depicted so vividly as to almost cause a headache. His prose is as rolling and menacing as, well, distant rumbles on the thunder kettledrums:

"Then, as is the habit of the English weather, one evening clouds began to bank themselves up in the west, the sun went down in a glare of coppery thunder-rack, and the whole earth broiling under an unspeakable oppression and sultriness paused and panted for the storm."

We've only twice been directly affected by the chief representative of the thunderstorm's unspeakable oppression, which is to say lightning strikes, and sincerely hope we'll never collect the third of the traditional trio of any given event.

On the first occasion lightning hit a tree towering near Casa Maywrite. The bolt split the tree's crown, travelled down its trunk peeling off pieces of bark, and continued on its nasty way underground, throwing stones up along its path. Since the tree began leaning towards the house, it had to come down. To our surprise, the task was accomplished, sawn-up logs loaded into a truck, branches and twigs chipped for garden use, and the workmen gone within three or four hours.

The second time we heard a huge metallic crash and glimpsed a split second flash of purple light. The bolt had hit our neighbour's well and then, having done it injury, travelled far enough under the intervening ground to destroy the control panel of our well.

However, an acquaintance has a more personal, if not as expensive, lightning story. He was in a cabin in the Colorado woods, watching a thunderstorm while listening to music on headphones. His player was plugged into a ceiling socket along with a light bulb, powered by a line passing about ten feet away. A bolt struck the line, there was a flash and a crash, the light bulb exploded, and his hands and feet jerked spontaneously into the air. His feet tingled afterwards for about a quarter of an hour, but he otherwise escaped with only burns on his ears.

His anecdote reminded me of another Benson story. Spinach relates how a pair of fraudulent mediums rent a holiday cottage, only to discover there is a genuine uneasy spirit lurking in the vicinity. The ghost rejoices in the name of Mr Spinach, although he does not rejoice about his situation, given he is earthbound because he can't recall where he buried his uncle after murdering him. Having been killed by lightning as he went about the grisly business, he has lost his memory -- apparently a not uncommon occurrence among those who, unlike Mr Spinach, survive a strike -- and he cannot depart in peace until he regains it.

AND FINALLY

The first torrents of April stotted down like stair rods as this issue was written, and yesterday came the first staccato sounds this year of a pair of dueling woodpeckers giving themselves headaches. And speaking of headaches, a lightning quick reminder to subscribers that the next Orphan Scrivener will thunder into email inboxes on 15th June.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # SIXTY-SEVEN -- 15 FEBRUARY 2011

In writing about his round the world lecture tour, Mark Twain related how a ship's captain told the story of an arctic voyage he had undertaken, during which the weather was so cold the mate's shadow froze to the deck and had to be freed by brute force -- and even then he still lost about a third of it.

With much of the country still snow-covered and shivering it was encouraging to see most of the groundhogs dragged out of their nests on 2nd February forecast an early spring, including a stuffed specimen prognosticating in Pennsylvania. Apart from the fact they are too savage to drag out of dens and sleep too late to be of assistance in forecasting spring, Ambrose Bierce's claim that hibernating bears emerging then are so thin they need two efforts to cast a shadow has never been confirmed so far as we know.

What we do know is the winter-weary look forward to seeing the last of the snow and in the meantime, this latest bone-chilling issue of Orphan Scrivener may make readers wish we had hibernated. Since we didn't, feel free to urn up the heat a bit and read on...

MARY'S BIT or SWEETS, BY GUM!

Glancing out at the expanse of sparkling ice-covered snow lying deep and crisp and relatively even around Casa Maywrite, I observed to Eric the vista reminded me of Kendal mint cake.

Then I explained the nature of Kendal mint cake.

It's been years since I ate any and it has occurred to me it's the sort of reference that could be used to unmask undercover agents. You know, like being able to sing more than the first verse of the British national anthem or the fashion in which they wield knife and fork. For it is not a cake in the sense of the much despised Yuletide fruitcake but rather a small chocolate bar sized smooth slab coloured white with a sparkly look to it and a strong mint taste.

It is not however a sweet we could afford to buy with our shilling pocket money because it was not sold in our part of Newcastle, if indeed anywhere in the city. To make up for the omission, the shelf positioned just inside the door of the corner grocery shop two streets away tempted passing urchins with other sweet delights at a manageable costs, sometimes as low as an old halfpenny at a time when twelve pennies made a shilling.

One of my favourites was, and indeed remains, anything compounded of licorice. Thus my choice might well be a licorice whip, several inches long and bootlace thin, or a catherine wheel formed of a wider strip wound around a flat coin of licorice, or perhaps a piece of licorice root, good to chew on and lasting longer than any other offerings made from that part of Glycyrrhiza glabra.

There were long-lasting gobstoppers that bulged out the cheek and magically changed colour the longer the purchaser resisted the temptation to crunch them and bull's eyes, a brown globular sweet somewhat like clear candy. Flying saucers were fun even though they didn't last long, being made of thin wafer enclosing sherbet. Being a licorice hound I preferred sherbet dips, cyclindrical containers of yellow powder equipped with a licorice stick to lick and dip out the contents. And then there were bright yellow lemon drops whose pucker power was so strong that even thinking about them brings back their powerful sourness, and aniseed balls, shiny and reddish-brown.

Later on, with improved economic fortunes, we could buy all manner of toffees. When in funds we sometimes purchased slab toffee in an oblong foil container accompanied by a small, light metal hammer used for smashing it into chunks and thereafter useful for similar domestic tasks.

Toffee cakes were popular at school. They were made in paper cup cake liners and sold by playground entrepreneurs. A bit of experimentation when mum was out revealed heating a quantity of sugar produced something approaching toffee but the evidence was hard to conceal because it was difficult getting hardened sugar-toffee off the pan.

We never tried recreating fruit gums, still a great favourite, and it's Rowntrees for me rather than Maynards', which have a chewier aspect somewhat similar to jelly babies rather than the harder fruit gums of their competitor.

And let's not forget Mars bars, which I hear are now sold fried in certain places, setting civilization back a few years. Turkish Delight, the rose-scented dark pink jelly (gelatin, not jam) confection covered in chocolate, was advertised as from the fabulous east. I wonder what John would have made of it? With his austere tastes he would probably find it as I do, almost too sweet to eat, a complaint that never applied so far as I am concerned to butterscotch, smooth and yellow brown, or dark chocolate.

Many of these sweet delights are available online at British import shops but it's not the same as going into a corner shop where the brown-coated proprietor would deft sliced cheese on the ghastly whirly thing also used to cut thin wafers from a ham or a few slices of bacon or corned beef while chatting away to his customers and miraculously never losing a finger. You could buy two ounces of loose tea or sugar or cheese when money got short towards the end of the work week but you couldn't buy Kendal mint cake or Turkish Delight at the long gone corner shop on Greenhow Place. It was not stocked and even had it appeared on the shelves of stock rising behind the counter it would have been just too expensive for a child clutching a shillings-worth of pocket money.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Just one bit of news on the ticker this time around, but it's particularly appropriate in view of the current frigid weather and Mary's scribble above.

NO SKILLET NEEDED or DISSIPATED SPIRITS, DECAYED STRENGTH?

In a guest essay published on January 21st on Leila Taylor's blog Mary posed the question are your spirits dissipated and your strength decayed? Being a helpful sort she went on to reveal if so, hot chocolate is what you need to feel better, or at least according to The Natural History of Chocolate: being A Distinct and Particular Account of the Cocoa-tree, its Growth and Culture, and the Preparation, Excellent Properties, and Medicinal Vertues of its Fruit (1719). There's also practical assistance, since her blog includes historical recipes for hot chocolate, that wonderful cold weather indulgence, and all but one do not call for a skillet. Find out more by pointing your clicker at URL

http://www.cncbooks.com/blog/2011/01/21/chocolate-the-ageless-necessity-of-life/

ERIC'S BIT or WRITING ABOUT WRITING

One of the problems with co-authoring books is that sometimes I feel obliged to write about writing. It is, after all, a favorite pastime of authors, judging by the endless blogs and websites and instructional books devoted to writing advice. And surely all this verbiage would not exist if readers did not want to read about how to construct a novel or how to get published.

Unfortunately I've never cared for writing about writing. It is quite possibly because I have no idea what I'm doing at the keyboard -- I've just been winging it -- and thus have nothing useful to impart. But it strikes me that most of what authors say about their art is either self obvious or pure b.s..

To me, writing is not a mechanical process. Ideas are far more important than techniques. Everything you need to know about technique you can find in Strunk and White's Elements of Style, and you probably know most of what's in that little book already.

Picasso once famously remarked that when artists got together they talked about turpentine. But writing, unlike painting, is not a physical medium. Writers don't even have turpentine to discuss. Writers are dealing purely with communication, mind to mind by way of symbols which can be as insubstantial as pixels on a computer screen. Printers might debate inks but it has nothing to do with writing.

Writers can of course describe how they go about their own writing and their personal tastes but how helpful is that? After I read Elmore Leonard laying down his law that books could not ever begin with the weather I glanced at a dozen classic novels at random and noticed that half of them began with the weather.

What is important in writing, in my opinion, is the writer's idiosyncratic imagination. If you are employing someone else's ideas rather than your own ideas, you are not doing anything worthwhile and what are the chances that your original ideas can be conveyed by the techniques someone else uses to convey his or her quite different ideas?

Yes, copying ideas does seem to work so far as publication is concerned. Did so many writers really all decide, practically at once, to start writing about vampires? (Mary and I have joked that we are going to kill off Theodora and then continue the series as She Vampire of Byzantium!) But even there, I would argue, the successful writers are those who bring their own vision to the general concept.

True, if writing is mainly ideas then it can't be taught, because you can't teach anyone to have ideas. But most of us do have ideas and reading too much about writing and the publishing industry can prevent us from noticing that! I believe it is dangerous to pay too much attention to what other writers say about techniques and marketing. It is too easy to obscure one's own ideas -- or to lose track of them entirely -- in fretting over or trying to employ techniques and marketing schemes of others.

What is the basic appeal of writing? We all like to hear stories, don't we? It's a human trait. Even people who don't enjoy reading want to see stories via television or movies. We are also interested in those other people with whom we share the world, who are so much like us but not exactly, who see the world in their own way, and whose stories reflect that.

You can describe techniques, and how to get published, or how to please the critics or this group of readers or that group. There is so much to write about writing. But to me, the only advice that ultimately counts is this.

Tell your own story.

AND FINALLY

Ambrose Bierce reckoned cursing someone was the equivalent of energetically belaboring them with a verbal stick. Invective does not have to be spoken, and our own inscrutable (we hope, or else readers are ahead of the plot) reasons we've featured curse tablets, those wonderfully inventive linguistic creations, more than once in our fiction, both in the short or long forms.

We mention this because the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will grace subscribers' in-boxes on April 15th -- a day on which many US residents are usually found hunched over their yellow legal tablets racing to finish last-minute calculations for their tax return forms both long and short. This year, due to a federal holiday intervening, the IRS has pushed the evil day back to 18th April, so whereas we'll take it as read even the most genteel may feel compelled to utter a curse or two as the due date approaches, if we hear any ripe language on the 15th we'll try not to assume it's directed at the editors of Orphan Scrivener.

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, December 15, 2011

ERIC'S BIT or EVIDENCE SANTA EXISTS

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A BISHOP'S EYE VIEW OF THE DEVIL or THE FIRST REVIEW IS OUT!

THE ICON PAINTER or APPEARANCES ARE DECEPTIVE

JUST A REMINDER or A CHRISTIE FOR CHRISTMAS

MARY'S BIT or DIALING UP A MOTTO

AND FINALLY

Saturday, October 15, 2011

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

SPOILERS PERMITTED or A CHANCE TO CHINWAG

AN UNUSUAL TRIO or MURDER, MYSTERY AND MITHRAISM

THE PPP BLOG-O-RAMA or HIST-MYSTERY AUTHORS APLENTY

AND FINALLY

Monday, August 15, 2011

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

NEWS OF NINEFER or JUSTINIAN PROVIDES COVERAGE

A NEW BLOG or WHAT DID SHE KNOW?

MORE DARK DOINGS or THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION

THICKENING THE PLOT or A FREE OFFER

CRAFTY LISTS or ONE AND ONE MAKE CLUE

AND FINALLY

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

JOHN'S NEXT OUTING or NINE FOR THE DEVIL

TALKING TO MANIC READERS or THE CHALLENGES OF TIMES AND TOGETHERNESS

TOEING AND HEELING or UNDERHANDED MACHINATIONS

SPONTANEOUS PUBLICITY -- AN UNLIKELY TALE

AND FINALLY

Friday, April 15, 2011

ERIC'S BIT or A FUNNY HAT NEVER HURTS

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A FOG BLOG or A TOUCH OF THE TROLLENBERG TERROR

A VILLAINOUS GOURD or THURSDAY'S THUG HAD FAR TO GO

DELUDED AND DEFRAUDED or DEADLY BY THE DOZEN

LITERARY RAGBAG or AT LEAST YOU MIGHT LIKE THE COVER

MARY'S BIT or STRIKING THOUGHTS

AND FINALLY

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

NO SKILLET NEEDED or DISSIPATED SPIRITS, DECAYED STRENGTH?

AND FINALLY