The Orphan Scrivener: 2019

Sunday, December 15, 2019

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY -- 15 DECEMBER 2019

History records Sir Walter Scott as observing that we build snow statues and then weep when they melt. We suspect most hereabouts would cheer rather than weep, given we had our first major snowstorm a week or so ago, even though winter has hardly approached its starting blocks. If that isn't enough to chill your blood, read on...

ERIC'S BIT or BEE STINGS THEY WERE NOT

Recently I finished re-reading all twenty-one of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books. As a mystery reader, you probably already know that McGee lives on a houseboat in Florida and works as a "salvage consultant" who recovers others' property for a fifty percent fee. The novels appeared between 1964 and 1984 and the series was near the end before I discovered it. When I did, John D. MacDonald instantly became one of my favorite authors.

His work was so popular that I was easily able to locate the McGee novels I'd missed at library and garage sales and in used book stores. Then I started to hunt the numerous paperback originals he'd produced during the fifties and early sixties for publishers like Gold Medal. I must have accumulated a hundred old MacDonald paperbacks in various states of decay, many of the covers featuring young women whose relationship to the story within was as scanty as their clothing.

How popular the McGee books remain with the general public I can't say. Not very, would be my guess. He doesn't fit the modern detective mold. He isn't a loner or an alcoholic. He isn't the product of a dark past nor is he plagued by personal demons. His speech isn't terse, tough and full of wisecracks. Quite the contrary. He is prone to ramble on philosophically, for pages at a time. And he's more likely to deliver a lecture on environmental conservation than on the muzzle velocities of assault rifles. All of which probably precludes any new Travis McGee movie ever being made, more's the pity. (Amazingly there is only a 1970 film starring Rod Taylor and a television movie that, absurdly, moved the setting from Florida to California)

In one of Lee Child's books, Jack Reacher, breaking into a building, slits the throat of an unsuspecting night watchman. Not a villain. Just an anonymous night watchman. This is the sort of casual violence Travis McGee never engaged in. McGee was not a human killing machine. He used physical force when necessary but it troubled him. He didn't revel in violence, he regretted it.

John D. MacDonald's violence is real, not the cartoon violence we so often read these days. It hurts. It has lasting effects. A MacDonald protagonist does not get shot twice and keep fighting as if he'd suffered a couple of bee stings. McGee needs time to heal. Perhaps in our increasingly brutal era people don't like to be reminded about the reality of violence.

Don't get me wrong, I love modern action and comic book films, but I want something more true to life from time to time, especially from books.

Like his depictions of violence, MacDonald's bad guys are real. Disturbingly so. And horribly human. Not cartoons, so overblown as to be laughable. In more than one book a MacDonald character advances an idea that I believe. That there are human beings who are just plain bad. Without redeeming characteristics. Born bad. Not the result of twisted childhoods. Maybe this utter blackness of the soul is what makes MacDonald's villains so frightening.

Although I was introduced to MacDonald by his most famous creation, his non-Travis McGee books are equally good. Sharply written noir crime novels for the most part, they often had sociological undertones. For one thing he was a sharp observer of the corporate cancer that has metastasized in today's society. In A Key to the Suite, MacDonald describes the corporate gamesmanship and backstabbing leading to murder at a trade convention without ever identifying what the particular corporation produces -- because it doesn't matter, corporate environments being so similar.

Although Travis McGee has received only two movie treatments, MacDonald's 1957 novel The Executioners was filmed twice, as Cape Fear, in 1962 starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum and in 1991 with Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte. I haven't seen either movie and I just finished reading the book for the first time last week. The plot concerns a lawyer and his family being threatened by a criminal he helped put in prison.

What distinguishes the book from modern thrillers I have read is, as with the Travis McGee series, its realism. The family does defend itself by reluctantly resorting to tactics they would never have imagined themselves capable of. However, they do not put on war paint and turn into superhuman ace marksmen and martial arts experts overnight, as seems to be the norm these days.

Though this is a recommendation of John D. MacDonald's writings, and his Travis McGee series in particular, I admit that today's readers might find the pace of the McGee books too slow and his ruminations could well try their patience. And, yes, from a modern perspective McGee may appear to be a male chauvinist. I prefer to think of him, as he tries to think of himself, as chivalrous.

Who knows, my perspective on MacDonald might say more about me than the actual books. But then that's the beauty of books. We make them so personal.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

TWO DEGREES FROM STEPHEN KING or DID WE REALLY SEE THAT?

We live about as far from the world of cinematic extravagancies as it is possible be, so it was especially strange to find ourselves suddenly appearing in a film starring Johnny Depp.

A few nights ago we watched Secret Window, the Depp vehicle based on a novella by Stephen King. At one point his character, a writer, is looking through the June 1995 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine to locate a story he needed to prove he had not plagiarized a fellow writer. As he flicks through the magazine, to our astonishment we caught a brief glimpse of our names at the head of a page and while we were still boggling, he consulted the index of contents. And there we were with The Obo Mystery, our first short story about Inspector Dorj of Mongolia. So the answer to our headline is yes, we did. Here's the content list for that issue:

http://www.philsp.com/homeville/CFI/t353.htm#BOT

RED-FACED or GET IT RIGHT!

Apologies are due to Gary Hogg, presenter of The Geordie Hour on Radio Tyneside. Last time around we declared it was repeated on Wednesdays at 9 pm, following initial broadcasts at 5 pm Sundays (their time, adjust as necessary for your time zone!). Well, we wuz wrong. Mind, Sunday at 5 pm was right, but the programme is now repeated at 7 pm Wednesday. As we observed at the time (no pun intended) we listen courtesy of the intertubez but several other options are listed here:

https://www.radiotyneside.co.uk/f18/main/pages/howtolisten.php

AN EXCITING THANKSGIVING WEEK or IT ALL MAKES WORK FOR THE WORKING MAN TO DO

Our holiday week could well be described as real life imitating art, for it followed a pattern similar to the story related in the old Flanders and Swann favourite The Gasman Cometh.*

Monday began with smoke and soot on the water heater. Obviously an emergency replacement was needed, but the plumber could not oblige until the chimney had been checked for blockages. Fortuna smiled, for the appropriate expert was able to came on Tuesday. He discovered the outside length of flue was almost choked with rust and had a couple of holes in it. In fact, when he shook it, it came off in his hand! His opinion was it was made of inferior material compared to the inside portion, which he judged to be of excellent quality.

Once the outside part of the chimney was replaced, raised, and strapped securely in place, the plumber was able to out next day to look over the situation, measure the niche where water heater lives, and give us a quote. He was of the opinion it dated from the eighties, when things were built to last. Unfortunately he could not return on Thursday due to the holiday, but arrived on Friday. As it happened, he was already booked to do a local water heater replacement that morning so would already be in the area. He arrived about an hour early as the first job was much easier to accomplish than expected. The householder had not pressed the reset button -- how embarrassing!

His arrival kicked off a series of events reminiscent of the Flanders and Swann classic, except compressed into one afternoon rather than a week. To begin with, he had difficulty emptying the water heater via the usual method of hooking a hosepipe to the heater drain. This meant having to turn off the water to the whole house and draining the water lines. This took 45 minutes to get the task done because the heater had so much sediment in it, one of the disadvantages of living in an area with hard water. As the work continued, it was discovered the gas valve needed replacement, so gas was cut off. Thus no heat and a cold house.

Even so, appliance replacement was now under way!

Onward he forged, detaching a tangle of old copper piping from the heater. Having done that, he realised he could not get it out of its niche. The solution: the vanity sink had to be taken off the little cupboard it perches on in order for both of them to be moved a few feet so the old heater could be hauled away. By which we deduced the vanity was installed after the heater.

The replacement water heater was brought in and it was discovered that although it featured the same 40 gallon capacity as the old one it was wider than its predecessor. At this point we began to wonder if knocking down part of a wall might be in the near future. But we were fortunate, as the new arrival only just fitted into its niche with a couple of inches to spare. Almost done now, no? No! The brand new gas valve proved to have a part missing but the plumber had the right type in his van. So with a new valve and replacement lines attached and gas and water restored, the heater fired up.

As Flanders and Swann observed all those years ago, household matters of this nature all make work for the working man to do. Once a certain amount of time has passed after dealing with this sort of difficult situation, we're generally able to laugh about all the mess and chaos involved -- but right now a feeble smile is really about all we can raise.

We are now taking predictions on which appliance will conk out next...

* https://genius.com/Flanders-and-swann-the-gas-man-cometh-lyrics

AND FINALLY

We are fast approaching the gate of the year. Before it creaks open to allow 2020 to come down the pike, we'll close with all good wishes for whatever holiday our subscribers celebrate and the same for the endeavours of those who don't. The next Orphan Scrivener will show up in your in-box on February 15th, the twentieth anniversary of its first issue. It hardly seems possible!

See you then!
Mary R & Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. It also hosts the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, our joint blog, largely devoted to reviews of Golden Age of Mystery fiction, lurks about at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in some time!

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN -- 15 OCTOBER 2019

Here we are in the season Keats famously described as one of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The mists we've woken to mornings of late and the mellow fruitfulness are here in displays resembling multi-coloured quilts adorning supermarkets and roadside stands. But a pair of recent light frosts also remind us winter is peering over the horizon, and if that's not enough to chill your blood, try reading on...

MARY'S BIT or GEORDIE REGGAE? AYE, IT'S A THING!

I've been known to declare I speak three languages -- English English, American English, and Geordie, the dialect of Newcastle on Tyne and, some say, Gateshead across the river. Ruined Stones, our second Grace Baxter novel, being set during Second World War Newcastle necessarily used the local terms in various characters' conversations. Ever helpful, we provided a brief glossary of terms used, and I was reminded of this when a friend in England asked me if Mr Maywrite was learning to speak Geordie.

But it didn't end there! Dear me, no. Not long afterwards the same friend wrote to say she had asked Gary Hogg, presenter of The Geordie Hour, to play something for Eric and I and that it would be broadcast the following week. And what is the The Geordie Hour you may ask? Well, it's an hour-long broadcast on Radio Tyneside's hospital radio network, and it's devoted to music by local musicians or those who are not from the area but have some connection to it. They also occasionally broadcast area stand-up comics or recitations after the fashion of Stanley Holloway, but with a local flavour.

Speaking of flavour, a couple of Sundays ago the programme played a Geordie reggae rendition of The Banana Boat Song, in which the chorus advises the singer he would get wrong if he divint gan eeyem (translation: he'll get in trouble if he doesn't go home).

Artists played includes not just the famous but also names unfamiliar to me, including Holy Moly & The Crackers, Pons Aelius (a nice nod to the city's Roman roots), and the Toy Dolls, whose James Bond Lives Down Our Street really ought to be nominated for the Rock Song Title Hall of Fame, if such there be. Mean to say, can programme listeners really see 007 catching the number 32 bus, though doubtless he would do it in style.

Adding to the fun for me is hearing the familiar accent again. Some experts reckon its roots are in the Scandinavian and Germanic languages spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, and others opine there was a strong Celtic and Norse influence on its development. Which may well be so but alas, for the fleeing sands of time! My family in England have been known to observe I am losing my accent. True, at times it's been thought to be Scottish or (oddly to my ear at least, no pun intended) even Australian, when it isn't being guessed as demonstrating New England origins. However, if any subscribers have an interest not only in the programme content but also in hearing purer Geordie than mine -- and why not, given those accents were voted the most appealing in the country a decade or so back? -- the Hour is broadcast at 5 pm on Sundays their time and repeated on the following Wednesdays at 9 pm. We listen courtesy of the intertubez but there are several others options as listed here:

https://www.radiotyneside.co.uk/f18/main/pages/howtolisten.php

On that particular Sunday we were surprised to hear not one but three call-outs to us during the course of the programme. And the recording Gary played for us as the Hour ended? A brass band performing Tyneside songs. Their selection included the city's unofficial anthem Blaydon Races, which relates the eventful journey of a crowded omnibus gannen (going) along Scotswood Road to visit the titular races. At one point the fast-moving bus loses a wheel, resulting in an accident causing some riders to have broken noses and ribs. Local landmarks are noted as the bus belts past them, including the Armstrong factory as it was known in 1862, the year in which the song is set and thus well before its merger with Vickers.

It was a particularly appropriate choice, because the street in which the Reed family lived ran down to that very road, debouching opposite the Vickers-Armstrong canteen. So the lyrics and that particular recording of Blaydon Races also evoke memories of Sunday mornings, when four or five Salvation Army members playing brass instruments would come around regularly to play on street corners, including ours.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

That faint clicking you hear is either death watch beetles at work in the antique timbering of Maywrite Towers or the sound of the BSP ticker idling, for there is but one item of news this time.

We have been experiencing some bother getting the August Orphan Scrivener distributed, and even now we are not certain it was actually transmitted. So if any subscriber did not receive that issue, they may like to point their clickers to our website, where it can now be read at

http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/tos118.htm

ERIC'S BIT or I LICKED THE STAMP HABIT

A few days ago I picked up a sheet of the new postage stamps commemorating the first moon landing. I asked for them because I liked the way they looked and the milestone they depicted, not because I am a collector.

In my wild youth I did have a brief fling with philately but nothing came of it. Yes, I licked my stamp habit. I couldn't tell you what became of my album, or even whether it was a Harris or a Scott. Collecting has never appealed to me, especially when it mostly entails looking through catalogs and spending as much as you can afford to accumulate things. But that may be because I could never afford to spend much.

My dad collected stamps and succeeded in getting me interested for a while. Those old bits of printed paper commemorating ancient events and personages long dead were fascinating and educational. As a child I had never heard of the Italian freedom fighter Garibaldi, or the Columbian Exposition or Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. Also, the commonest stamps could be had very cheaply.

To be honest though what fascinated me most were the eccentric varieties of postage. I liked the stamps which were relegated to the back of album, stamps I'd never have reason to see, like registered and certified delivery postage.

Foreign countries produced the most exotic stamps. Tonga's banana shaped stamp for example, or the rose scented stamps issued by Bhutan years after my interest had waned. Bhutan also put out a stamp which, when placed on the phonograph, played the country's national anthem. Serious collectors abhorred this sort of thing and for good reason. They weren't real stamps in the sense that they were intended to be used for postage. They were printed outside the issuing countries to be sold to collectors and probably never graced an envelope in Bhutan or Tonga.

One set of stamps was issued by the American owners of Kaulbach Island in Canada. They were only to be used to prepay the cost of a carriage service that operated between Kaulbach Island and Chester, Nova Scotia. The bottom of each sheet of Kaulbach Island stamps provides the following instruction: "Not valid for the carriage of mail by the Canada Post Office. To be used only in the Kaulbach Island Local Carriage Service and may be placed only on the back of envelopes. Use Canadian postal stamps on all mail for posting in Canada."

I guess Mary and I could issue stamps to be used only for the transport of mail from our local post office to Casa Maywrite.

AND FINALLY

Thus ends this All Banana Issue, so we'll close by reminding subscribers that, courtesy of the seemingly magical and invisible machinery we know as the intertubez, we shall reappear in subscribers' in-boxes on December 15th.

See you then!
Mary R & Eric

Thursday, August 15, 2019

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN -- 15 AUGUST 2019

Having consulted experts, we should like to remind our subscribers that August 15th is officially National Lemon Meringue Pie Day. Hopefully this edition of Orphan Scrivener will not turn out to be a lemon...

ERIC'S BIT or CAPTAIN AT THE SWITCHBOARD

In his later years my grandfather worked as a custodian at the local phone company. I'd pass the big brick building every day on my way home from grade school. He used to let me in after closing time. I followed him down the deserted hallways to the closet by the dark stairwell where he put away his mop and bucket. I felt like an adventurer journeying through forbidden regions.

We'd stop by the echoing cafeteria for a soda from the machine, and then visit Mabel, the switchboard operator. This black, light-studded panel wasn't the switchboard for the building, but for the whole town. How many local dialers had been privileged to glimpse the jolly gray- haired lady who sat at the secret heart of their every phone conversation, calmly plugging and unplugging connections as green and yellow cats-eyes flashed amid the crossed cords?

More amazing still, Mabel allowed me to sit in her big soft leather swivel chair, don the headset, take plugs in hand, and assume her duties for a few minutes. It was like sitting in front of the control panel of a spaceship.

And just as if I really were a spaceship captain, I could perform futuristic feats, like placing three-way calls. They were unheard of back then, at least by me and my friends. Imagine their shock and delight when they realized the three of us really were speaking to each other, all at once, from different places. Telephones just couldn't do that, any more than they could transmit pictures or send you backwards in time, at least not twentieth century phones. It was incredible, impossible, downright science fictional!

But before I did anything, my grandfather always pointed out a large red light that glowed steadily beside a socket near the bottom of the board. "Just make sure you don't put the plug in there. That goes straight to the owner. If you ring up the owner at home, we'll be in a powerful lot of trouble."

Of course, there's nothing like a hint of danger to make a task more exciting. I worked around that red light pretty carefully.

Years later, after my grandfather was gone, when I realized he'd had a dry sense of humor, I figured he must have been kidding. But I never plugged in there so I'll never know.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER This time around the ticker is taking a bit of a rest while undergoing maintenance, but it has still produced an item to print out on its paper tape...and here it is.

How are plot ideas inspired? On July 3rd we revealed what sparked five of our works in an essay for Lois Winston's Anastasia Pollock blog.

https://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2019/07/mary-reed-and-eric-mayer-dig-into-past.html

Our thanks to Lois for the opportunity to do something we don't do often: talking about the mechanics of writing.

MARY'S BIT or CREATING ILLUSIONS WITHOUT TURTLES

It has been said much of what the unlearned regard as magical involves secrets of art and nature. Of late we've been watching Penn and Teller's Fool Us series, in which magician guests attempt hoodwink the duo. Being among the unlearned, we marvel at the prestidigitation thus presented, turning to each other in amazement, exclaiming how did they *do* that?

Just as fascinating are Penn's coded comments, conveying to guests the methods by which their tricks were accomplished. Occasionally they are indeed fooled and a trophy is awarded. To the layperson these comments are as mysterious as the tricks, so we also routinely ask each other a second question: what does he *mean* by that?

We assume this speaking in code is to keep the secret of the execution of the trick as a professional courtesy to a fellow illusionist. A prime example of this technical jargon cropped up a couple of evenings ago and nagged me for an explanation ever since: Penn mentioned turtles more than once. So I've consulted that universal know-it-all Mr Google for the answer.

Before revealing what I learned, I shall proceed to astonish subscribers by reading their minds, using my own newly invented magic trick. And yes, I really did just think it up.

Ready? Think of a turtle, a nice little turtle. Focus your thoughts hard on your turtle. Handsome little devil, isn't he, as he crawls along carrying his abode on his back? And what is your turtle doing now? Think your reply but say nothing for I shall tell you: your turtle is drawing its head inside its shell!

If I was wrong and subscribers feel they have reason to express dissatisfaction, please direct all grievances to Mr Maywrite, currently wearing the Orphan Scrivener Complaints Manager hat.

Back to the magical turtles. They're hollow coins, which is to say the shells of same, and thus a most useful accessory for performing any number of tricks.

If we may be so bold, as writers we're akin to our diminutive Egyptian magician Dedi who played a major role in Six For Gold and Ten For Dying inasmuch as we're in the business of creating illusions -- only we employ words instead of turtles.

AND FINALLY

As usual we close by reminding subscribers that, courtesy of the seemingly magical system we know as the intertubez, we shall reappear in subscribers' in-boxes on October 15th.

See you then!
Mary R & Eric

Saturday, June 15, 2019

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN -- 15 JUNE 2019

Since we last appeared in subscribers' in-boxes, torrential rain and high winds have processed in wet and wild majesty across Maywrite Towers. Today it's our turn in the wind tunnel yet again, but provided the power stays work on this latest newsletter goes on and the fruit of our labour is before you. Take a bite of it by reading on...

MARY'S BIT or WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

Picture this. We invent what we consider a wonderful scene and dive into the writing of it, tapping away like all get out. Then suddenly faces turns pale and keyboard rattling screeches to a halt in the middle of it. The inevitable ghastly questions have materialised and hang unspoken in the air: but how do you know that is even possible -- and not only that, but was it also possible in the sixth century?

So then it's on with the apprentice researcher hats and a dive into the intertubes.

It has been our experience the search for answers will often take us down unusually overgrown by-ways so interesting in themselves it's harder than usual to drag ourselves away from Looking Things Up and make our way back to the main road.

For example, when we set the Bosphorus on fire an article in an 1864 issue of the United States Service Magazine proved extremely helpful in its speculation upon, and conclusions about, materials required to manufacture Greek fire and other inflammables. Information gleaned from it allowed us to accomplish this feat, not to mention a couple of spontaneous combustions, as described in Two For Joy.

The two men who survived hanging in the opening chapter of Eight For Eternity, thereby contributing to the causes of the Nika Riots, were based on an event described in John Malalas' Chronographia.

In finding a source to confirm such unlikely survivals could happen, we discovered a number of such escapes are known to history. Gould and Pyle's Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine mentions several, including what they describe as "...a most curious case, in which cerebral congestion from the asphyxiation of strangling was accidentally relieved by an additional cut across the throat. The patient was a man who was set upon by a band of Thugs in India."

What about the mechanical whale playing an important part in Three For A Letter? We invented it and its workings based on scrutiny of, and extrapolation from, diagrams in Hero of Alexandria's Pneumatics. We also featured a handful of Hero's own automatons now and then onstage in various roles, in this particular novel the country estate of Anatolius' eccentric uncle Zeno.

Hippolytus' Refutation of All Heresies was a particularly fruitful resource when the vexed question of how magick tricks were worked in John's time had to be tackled, for we always explain these details in due course. Such apparent demonstrations of the occult have occurred in more than one of his adventures. Hippolytus revealed the method by which sheep could be made to kill themselves, used for the suicidal sheep affair taking John and his companions to Egypt in Six For Gold, as well as instructions useful in showing how The Gourd -- a man mentioned by Procopius in his Secret History as accused of being a poisoner and magician and one of the main characters in Four For A Boy -- could perform the "do not try this at home" trick of plunging his hand into boiling pitch without injury, not to mention the method by which the diminutive magician Dedi was able to make his talking skull disappear before the very eyes of his audience in Seven For A Secret.

Speaking of which, I shall now do my own disappearing act so readers may continue to the next section...

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Only one item on the ticker today but it's an important one. Our website is finally listed on Google and today resides at the foot of the second page of search results:

http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/

It took some time to get there but all is well now!

ERIC'S BIT or THAT TIME I SET FIRE TO A CASTLE

Stop me if you've heard this one. A scientist drummed out of the establishment because of his crackpot theories, his former love interest, a jealous rival scientist, and a power mad government official walk into an apocalypse....

Okay, Mary and I have been watching too many low budget end-of-the-world films. Why I can't say considering how many good books there are to read, how much good music there is to listen to and, for that matter, how many much better movies we could watch. Even staring at the wall would be less irritating and only marginally less interesting. All I can say is that these lame attempts to depict Armageddon on a shoestring exercise a sort of...well...horrible fascination. It's impossible to show something as big as an apocalypse on a tiny budget. When you try the results are disastrous. You need a nuclear holocaust, you get what looks like Missile Command for Atari 2600 circa 1981. Earthquake? Actors scream and lean side to side. Panic in the streets? (Mary's favorite) How about one overturned car and six people running back and forth? More like a picnic in the streets.

Why do the filmmakers bother with their el cheapo disasters? Aside from the fact that people like me will watch them? There are endless small, quiet stories that could be told without special effects. Maybe they would have preferred to do horror films but couldn't afford enough ketchup.

I understand the urge to reach for an artistic vision that's beyond your grasp. In the early sixties my parent saved up Green Stamps to buy a Super-8 movie camera. It didn't take me long to grasp the basics of stop motion animation. And when I say "basics" I mean very basic indeed. Granted, it was rather expensive for a youngster. Colored Plasticine was not cheap. Still it was manageable. No need for big financial backers. Back in those days you could get a nickel refund for empty soda bottles people left lying around.

There was no CGI to worry about. No blue screens. No computer programs. The most difficult technical issue was that the clay figures I was animating quickly melted under the hot floodlight. If I wasn't careful they would appear to deteriorate as they walked around, or hit each other, or fought with swords. So whether I was shooting Zorro or First Man on the Moon the stories all threatened to end up being versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Then there was the time I wanted the hero to escape through the burning castle. You can't have an action film where the hero doesn't escape flames. But how the heck do you create flames using stop action? My solution was elegantly simple. Since the castle was drawn on cardboard I set it on fire, shot a frame, blew the fire out, repositioned my Plasticine hero, lit the fire again, shot another frame, and so forth. The effect in the finished film was interesting....

Writers are luckier than filmmakers. Mary and I filled the streets of Constantinople with thousands of rioters for about $1.35, the approximate cost of the pots of coffee we consumed at the keyboard. A writer can do anything he or she can think of. Expense be damned! Set the Bosphorus on fire? As Mary mentioned, been there, done that. Chariot races at the Hippodrome? A few lines of description and the reader will visualize the scene more perfectly than any amount of CGI. Filmmakers depend on computers to create their special effects. Writers work with the human imagination, which is far more powerful than any computer.

AND FINALLY

By now, even Methuselah would be complaining this issue of Orphan Scrivener has gone on long enough. So we'll close by reminding readers we shall appear in their in-boxes via Internet magick on August 15th. See you then!
Mary R and Eric

Monday, April 15, 2019

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN -- 15 APRIL 2019

Here at the moated grange we call Casa Maywrite there are few signs of spring. In fact, that sure sign of the change in season known as the Form 1040 has yet to appear, although we have been assured it and its six new supporting schedules will be sent when they are available. At that time we shall doubtless need our cogitative faculties immersed In cogibundity of cogitation, as Henry Carey noted about another matter entirely. And speaking of other matters, read on...

ERIC'S BIT or COGITATING ON A TOUCH OF DEATH

Charles Williams was one of the those brilliant and often underrated authors who wrote hard-boiled crime fiction for Gold Medal back in the Fifties. His 1951 debut novel Hill Girl had been turned down by hardback publishers but sold over a million as an original paperback. You might remember the 1989 movie Dead Calm, one of several film adaptations of his books. I've yet to read a bad book by Williams. My favorite thus far is River Girl, but A Touch of Death, first published in 1954 and available currently from Hardcase Crime, is plenty good.

The narrator, Lee Scarborough, used to be a college football star, now he's got a mailbox full of overdue bills and $170 in the bank. He runs into a woman who says her name is Diana James. She knows how she can get her hands on a lot of money and Lee's the perfect guy to help. It'll be easy. A simple break-in while the owner's away. And it is easy, for about fifteen minutes....

"Housebreaking, I thought. Auto theft. Abduction. What was next? Blackmail? Extortion? But I had it all figured now, I was still within jumping distance of solid ground in every direction, and I wasn't in much danger if I played it right. Somebody was going to come home first in that $120,000 sweepstakes, and as of now I looked like the favorite."

What's next, for Lee, it turns out, is a second woman, Madelon Butler: "chromium-plated and solid ice both ways from the middle."

And he's never going to figure her out.

Yes, it all ends in tears. If you've ever read a single noir crime novel from the Fifties I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't already know. Even if you've never read one, it's obvious right from the beginning, even to Lee, when he stops to think straight. Which isn't often with Madelon pulling his strings. With books like this the question isn't whether it's all going to go wrong but exactly how.

Why do I enjoy reading about guys who are in over their heads? Because it's the story of my life?

Embarrassing psychological questions aside, I love the style. The Fifties hard-boiled and noir authors could really write. Mickey Spillane, James Cain, David Goodis, Ed Lacy....you name him. They each knew that a short straight punch packs more wallop than a flashy roundhouse. If only more modern authors would dare to write with such energy and economy.

NOTE: Beware, this is not the literary author Charles Williams, who belonged to the Inklings writers group which included J.R.R.Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I've read his All Hallows Eve, a novel involving ghosts and sorcery in wartime London which is wonderful, weird, and atmospheric but written ironically in an impenetrably turgid and awkward style, pretty much the exact opposite of the style employed by the pulp author Charles Williams.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

It is but coincidence Eric would write about hard-boiled fiction given the news on today's ticker resembles the proverbial curate's egg: part is good and part is not. As believers of requesting to hear the less good first so there's better news to cheer us up after receiving it, we'll do the same for our subscribers. Onward!

DIFFULTIES TO BE OVERCOME or SUDDENLY IT WAS GONE

It has been over a month since our website just up and disappeared without warning overnight. Despite free and frank discussions multiple times with our server, we're now at the point of moving our website. By the time this newsletter arrives Orphan Scrivener will be residing at

http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/

There'll also be a change in email address and we'll announce that most useful info in due course. For the nonce, however, the current email address is still operating.

ONE FOR SORROW RETURNS or A SPECIAL OFFER FROM POISONED PEN PRESS

And now for the good news!

Poisoned Pen Press is currently offering special pricing on paperbacks of the first books in a number of the series they publish, including ours. So grab your opportunity to purchase the paperback One For Sorrow for $9.99 from

Barnes and Noble

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-for-sorrow-mary-reed/1101752428

Amazon

https://tinyurl.com/OFSoffer

Or from an independent book store of your choice.

MARY'S BIT or AVOID STEPPING ON FROGS

We recently saw The Illusionist, the story of a magician working in late 1880s Vienna, whose childhood love is a woman of a much higher social class. Its production values are excellent and it's an interesting if occasionally predictable film. However, there is a wonderful twist at the end which neither of us saw coming until it was nearly at the door, although it was quite plain it would when we reflected on earlier dialogue.

Seeing the film reminded me that some years ago we attended a charity fete. While wandering about the garden there we noticed a young man with a small table of the type from which TV viewers ate their dinners. He was not in fact lunching but rather just standing there, casually performing the most amazing display of card magick.

We stood on the other side of the table, his only watchers at the time and close enough to touch the velvet tablecloth. Despite staring hard enough at his hands to verge on rudeness we just could not see how he managed to accomplish what he was doing. When he took a break we got into conversation and discovered he had begun learning card tricks to help increase the flexibility of his hands, which had been affected by illness. It certainly worked well, since there was no sign of hesitation, fumbling, or stiffness while we were standing right there boggling at his skill.

There is something compelling about watching magick of any kind, isn't there? Thus it was inevitable that sooner or later it would show up in John's adventures. And indeed it did with the introduction of Dedi, a diminutive Egyptian magician, in Six For Gold. That entry in the series relates how John, accompanied by Cornelia and Peter, is sent to Egypt to investigate the curious case of sheep committing suicide -- a matter for which Dedi claims responsibility, intending it as a warning to a local dignitary attempting to appropriate his land.

During the course of the trio's visit other puzzling events occur, including a fiery apparition in the sky terrifying the locals, who take it to be a visit from Hecate. John and his companions also witness a performance by Dedi in which a coin leaps from a bowl, three stone scarabs are produced from the ear of an onlooker, and Dedi's talking oracular human-faced snake makes an appearance. Of course Dedi is an audacious fraud, and we explain the workings of such apparently supernatural happenings, although one or two are simple enough for it to be obvious to the reader how they were accomplished.

Since I am talking about Six For Gold, let me mention one of my favourite scenes though I realise I say it as should not. However, our newsletter is after all located in Liberty Hall, so, then, at one point John, Peter, and Cornelia are stranded in Alexandria and forced to go in for a bit of street theatre to get enough money to continue on their journey to reach Dedi's stamping grounds. In this most unlikely endeavour Cornelia does a turn as Empress Theodora, Peter plays her servant, and John reluctantly appears as himself. Oh, and a counterfeit mummy of one of those most magickal of creatures -- that is to say a cat -- is also on hand to provide assistance in the riotous proceedings.

As had been the case with Peter, Dedi turned out to be a character who kept knocking on the authorial door demanding to appear in more novels. As indeed has happened. He is at his most audacious in Ten For Dying, to the extent of attempting to return Theodora to life. His ritual involves a number of frogs but to his horror he accidentally steps on one while performing the ceremony. While he truly believes he has succeeded in his dreadful endeavour, he also knows that, having croaked a croaker, the wrath of the frog goddess Heqt will fall on his head, and that it will be just the start of his troubles.

AND FINALLY

Speaking of riotous proceedings, we'll close with a reminder the next Orphan Scrivener will return to grace our subscribers' in-boxes on 15th June.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

Friday, February 15, 2019

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN -- 15 FEBRUARY 2019

This issue of Orphan Scrivener is being composed to a soundtrack of howling and gusty winds punctuated by occasional loud rattles and scrapes as flying branches attempt to force an entry. Wordsworth compared this sort of weather to a sightless labourer whistling at his task, a wonderful word picture of the ill winds so many have suffered of late. And while we won't claim they are necessarily wonderful, read on for more words from storm-battered Casa Maywrite...

MARY'S BIT or THAT WAS A CLOSE ONE!

Last newsletter we mentioned three of our household appliances conked out within a month or so of each other. Now our nerves have recovered somewhat this is the saga.

To begin with, there was the Curious Case of the Conked-Out Cooker. The poor thing had been ailing for a while and was the first of the trio of appliances to be replaced. The oven had begun over-heating no matter how we tried to fool it by setting it lower than required, and the oven door had taken to falling open without warning. Until its replacement arrived we effected a temporary fix by taping the door shut as needed. Hands up those who knew heat melts the glue on package tape?

Regular readers of Orphan Scrivener may recall we related in 2003 * how, using only two hammers and a pair of semi-stripped screwdrivers, we took apart a washer to get it out of the bathroom without having to remove the door or part of a wall. Going by still visible scars, one or the other or both were needed to get the full-sized machine in there, Casa Maywrite having narrower doors than most houses. Including those leading outside. It's an architectural feature giving a new twist on Ogden Nash's observation that doors were things dogs were always on the wrong side of. At least the canines could enter or exit when their door was open.

Our replacement apartment sized washer did sterling work for over a decade and with only two knobs to set was beautifully simple to run. Until it downed tools and refused to work. Alas, it turned out few top loader models were still available and those that were all too wide to fit through our doors. The new front-loader took about three weeks to arrive so when delivered it had a good initial work-out catching up on laundry. It took a few run-throughs to wrassle its fancy electronic controls into submission and there's still a lingering impression that when the back is turned the LCD display lights up and forms the shape of an evil eye. Had he been alive today M. R. James (he roolz!) could do a lot with that possibility and I don't mean his laundry.

By then much colder weather was coming in fast and in solidarity with its fellow appliances the heating went on strike two days after it was turned on. And why not? It brought a litany of complaints to the table: both zone valves were useless but for different reasons -- one had a bad end switch and the other was stuck. Also the thermostat was not doing its job properly, and the air scoop had become blocked by the high mineral content in our water. It took another couple of weeks to obtain the needed parts and then on his visit to install them the plumber realised the safety relief valve had also quietly silted up, so he replaced that while he was at it. Fortunately he had the right part in his van. Phew! That was a close one!

Now we are considering taking wagers on which appliance will malfunction next and the odds on finding a replacement that can pass through the doors.

* For newer subscribers that account appeared in Orphan Scrivener 21 at

http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/tos21.htm#washer

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

And onward to the news...

A NEW DEVELOPMENT or CHANGES AHEAD

The start of a new year is traditionally the time when resolutions are made and new ventures kick off. So it was at the start of January, when Poisoned Pen Press announced it was now Sourcebooks' mystery imprint. Having been with PPP man and boy we await developments with keen interest. Meantime PW gives more details about the move at

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/78863-poisoned-pen-press-will-become-sourcebooks-mystery-imprint.html

TRINITY KAUFMAN, AZAAN RANGEL, AND REED TILLY or STRUGGLING WITH NAMES

Sometimes it's difficult to come up with names for characters. Patti Nunn's Bookbrowsing blog on 13th February featured an essay on this very topic, wherein Mary offered some less obvious resources for digging up just the right nomenclature. From whence did Trinity Kaufman, Azaan Rangel, and Reed Tilly spring and what's the connection with Isis O'Reilly? All is revealed at

https://bookbrowsing.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/naming-your-characters-by-mary-reed/

ERIC'S BIT or IS IT OUT TO GET US?

It's 6:30 in the morning. Having stayed awake all night, I'm relieved to see the world outside the windows reappear in the pewter colored light before dawn. Sitting alone in the silence through the dark hours I begin to feel as if there's nothing left but me and the glowing screen of my laptop.

During the worst winter weather Mary and I take turns making sure the well pump runs periodically to keep the water line under the house from freezing. I'm on the night shift.

It's not so bad compared to squeezing into the crawlspace under the house to thaw the water line. Otherwise I'd surely have been forced to venture under there with temperatures falling to eleven below zero two nights in a row. And that's Fahrenheit below zero, not your wimpy Celsius below zero.

The last time the pipes froze -- and I do hope it's the last time -- we went to bed with running water and got up to find the drip we'd left on in the sinks had stopped. I turned on the taps but only a death rattle came out.

To get at the line, I had to dig frozen snow away from the panel covering the crawlspace entrance in the cinderblock foundation. Peering in I could see the orange lights on the trusty heat tapes coiled around most of the plumbing glowing softly through layers of dust and cobwebs. The tapes couldn't be extended to reach the full length of the water line where it emerges from the ground and through a hole in the outer wall towards the front of the house. Don't ask me why. I'm not a plumber or an electrician.

I got down on my hands and knees and squeezed into the tight space under the house, only a couple cinder blocks high, too narrow for me to roll over on my shoulder in some spots. It's a bit like being inside a sub-zero MRI machine, filled with dirt, hanging insulation, and criss-crossed by wires and pipes. At least the monstrous spiders that lurk under there were all frozen solid.

I managed to push and pull myself over to where I guessed the problem was and directed the heat gun into the rubble-filled mouth of the line's den. At that point the doubts arrive. What if it won't thaw this time, or the plastic pipe bursts? Water and electricity don't play well together, do they? It felt like hours before I heard loosened ice rattling up the line and Mary called down from above that the water was back. Probably it didn't take more than fifteen minutes before I was able to return from the underworld.

So as the sun rises I've avoided that adventure this time. Mary insists this house isn't out to get us, but sometimes I wonder.

AND FINALLY

We'll close with belated but sincere good wishes to our subscribers for this new year, and a reminder the next Orphan Scrivener will roll into their in-boxes on April 15th, a date unfortunately easy to remember.

See you then! Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, 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! Our joint blog is at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales Drop in some time!