Scott William Carter's Blog, page 3

News & Muse (September 2022): A Summer of Hiking, a Writing Retreat, and a Daughter Back to College

That’s a shot off the deck from the house I rented in Lincoln City, Oregon last week, up on the bluff in the Nelscott area—a gorgeous four days spent writing, recalibrating, setting goals, and, for three consecutive nights, discussing the business of publishing with a dozen smart professional writers, most of whom were from Oregon, but several who came from as far away as Canada. Some stayed in a house together. Others rented their own individual hotel rooms. The beauty of this “parallel play” approach was that the days were spent however people wanted. With the exception of the nightly discussions, it was up to each person to turn their stay on the Oregon coast into a worthwhile one. No stories were critiqued. No fees were charged. These were all professionals doing amazing things in the business, all there to learn and share. I came away with a notebook full of topics to research further.

After years of pandemic-enforced isolation, it was great to talk face to face with savvy creative people again.

I set a goal to try to get one hike in a week over the course of the summer, and while I didn’t quite get that, I came close, ranging over much of the state. Sometimes family or friends accompanied me, but usually it was just me and Rosie, my intrepid Irish Setter. Silver Creek Falls, Mt. Jefferson, Smith Rock, Thunder Cove … There were a few busted hikes along the way (one because of multiple flat tires, another because an out-of-shape friend found he’d overextended himself), but there were many, many highlights. I was reminded again and again why I love Oregon so much. A couple favorite photos:

Horse Rock RidgeIron MountainSmith RockRosie at Thunder Cove

The temperature topped out at a very pleasant 80F the last few days, but Fall is definitely coming. While the leaves haven’t begun to turn yet, I can feel it in the air. We got our daughter moved back into OSU over the weekend, so the house is a bit quieter. Now with an apartment with a 12-month lease, and a new job near campus that offers year-round employment (a dream job for her), she probably won’t be home for long stretches quite so much in the future, but who knows, life being what it is. In the thick of a new Karen Pantelli novel, so looking forward to getting in some long writing days. That was actually my biggest takeaway from the writing retreat, how important is for me to stay off the Internet the vast majority of the day and just staying in that creative space. It does wonders both for my productivity and my peace of mind.

New Book Published: LOOKING FOR LITTLE RED

I hope you’re all doing well as the summer winds down. With my son back in high school (his junior year), and my daughter soon returning to OSU, the house should be a bit quieter heading into the autumn months. Well, except for Rosie barking at our mail carrier, but everyone has a job to do, right? Hate to deprive her of her sense of purpose. Most of the time, she’s content to curl up in my office as I work. The perfect writing companion!

Speaking of writing, I’ve got a new book out! While Looking for Little Red doesn’t neatly fit into any one particular genre, it’s the kind of story that combines a lot of the elements that I love as a reader – a mystery with a twist, a touching love story, and a new take on a time-honored fairy tale all rolled into one – so I’m hoping you enjoy it too. 

More information about the book, including links to where it can be purchased, is below. The ebook is available right now from all major retailers. The print version, a nice case laminate (a hard cover with a glossy cover instead of a separate jacket, which fits the fairy tale feel, I think) is currently only available from Amazon, but that will probably change soon. Global supply issues have slowed down the shipping of the print version, so keep that in mind if you’d prefer paper. It may take a few weeks to get to you.

What if all the old stories turned out to be true?

On a rainy night at a tiny Oregon college, a shadowy figure at the back of the hall interrupts Bullwick Farley’s mythology lecture: “Little Red Riding Hood has done something terrible,” he says, “and I desperately need your help before it’s too late.”

Just another story in a class all about stories? A myth, a fable, a tale told and retold? The students might think so. But ten years after leaving a life where even the strangest stories turn out to be true, Farley faces a choice. Stick with his comfortable, if lonely, life as a professor. Or risk it all to go looking for the woman who broke his heart.

A mystery with a twist, a touching love story, and a new take on a time-honored fairy tale, Looking for Little Red provides rare insights on the power of stories to shape our lives, and the importance of memories, even painful ones.

Ebook:
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks | Google Play

Hardcover:
Amazon 

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Brookings, Oregon

Just a quick post, since I’m barely getting this one in under the wire. Where did July go anyway? That’s a picture in the hills just outside Brookings, Oregon, on the most southern end of the Oregon coast. We decided to make a quick foray into the Oregon Redwoods Trail, the only forest in Oregon with any significant number of old growth redwood trees. It’s not the California Redwoods, to be sure, but it’s still worth a visit … if you don’t mind the four miles of narrow, windy gravel road into the hills at the end.

With temperatures bumping up against 100F in the Willamette Valley, Heidi, Rosie, and I escaped for a week to a fun Airbnb just north of Cape Sebastian, literally connected to the Pacific Coast Trail. The temperatures there hovered around 60F, with heavy fog that came and went, so it was a pretty stark difference. (When it’s that hot in the valley, it’s a good bet it’s going to be foggy on the coast.) Some days we were perfectly comfortable in shorts and T-shirts; others we dressed in multiple layers. In addition to just hanging out and reading, we also hiked Thunder Rock Cove down to Secret Beach (something I’ve wanted to do for a long time), saw Arch Rock, the Natural Bridge, Pistol River, Chetco Point, and even kayaked out of Brookings into some ocean coves near the bay, where we made friends with playful seals, black oystercatchers, pelagic cormorants, and plenty of other wildlife. A few other pictures are below, at the end of this post.

Right now, I’m working on the third Karen Pantelli book, as well as a few other projects. The second Pantelli book, Lethal Beauty, is now available in audio, once again narrated by the fantastic Jennifer Pickens. Speaking of audio books, I’m doing a few experiments with narrating some (and only some) of my own work. The good old WIBBOW test (an acronym I coined years ago that stands for Would I Be Better Off Writing?) has generally kept me from attempting this, since I used to manage a university digital media center and have no illusions about how much time it takes, but I finally decided I wanted to at least try it. If I enjoy it, and feel it also might help me become a better writer, then the trade off in time and effort might be worth it as long as I feel like I’m giving my readers (or in this case, listeners) a quality product. We’ll see how it goes. 

Stay cool out there!

News & Muse (July 2022): Brookings, Oregon

Just a quick post, since I’m barely getting this one in under the wire. Where did July go anyway? That’s a picture in the hills just outside Brookings, Oregon, on the most southern end of the Oregon coast. We decided to make a quick foray into the Oregon Redwoods Trail, the only forest in Oregon with any significant number of old growth redwood trees. It’s not the California Redwoods, to be sure, but it’s still worth a visit … if you don’t mind the four miles of narrow, windy gravel road into the hills at the end.

With temperatures bumping up against 100F in the Willamette Valley, Heidi, Rosie, and I escaped for a week to a fun Airbnb just north of Cape Sebastian, literally connected to the Pacific Coast Trail. The temperatures there hovered around 60F, with heavy fog that came and went, so it was a pretty stark difference. (When it’s that hot in the valley, it’s a good bet it’s going to be foggy on the coast.) Some days we were perfectly comfortable in shorts and T-shirts; others we dressed in multiple layers. In addition to just hanging out and reading, we also hiked Thunder Rock Cove down to Secret Beach (something I’ve wanted to do for a long time), saw Arch Rock, the Natural Bridge, Pistol River, Chetco Point, and even kayaked out of Brookings into some ocean coves near the bay, where we made friends with playful seals, black oystercatchers, pelagic cormorants, and plenty of other wildlife. A few other pictures are below, at the end of this post.

Right now, I’m working on the third Karen Pantelli book, as well as a few other projects. The second Pantelli book, Lethal Beauty, is now available in audio, once again narrated by the fantastic Jennifer Pickens. Speaking of audio books, I’m doing a few experiments with narrating some (and only some) of my own work. The good old WIBBOW test (an acronym I coined years ago that stands for Would I Be Better Off Writing?) has generally kept me from attempting this, since I used to manage a university digital media center and have no illusions about how much time it takes, but I finally decided I wanted to at least try it. If I enjoy it, and feel it also might help me become a better writer, then the trade off in time and effort might be worth it as long as I feel like I’m giving my readers (or in this case, listeners) a quality product. We’ll see how it goes. 

Stay cool out there!

Have We Reached the Era of Peak Entertainment?

A few nights ago, Heidi and I watched the new Downton Abbey movie, Downton Abbey: A New Era, on Peacock TV. A big Downton Abbey fan, I’ve been wanting to watch the movie for a while, but not quite enough to go see it in a movie theater. It only cost $10 to subscribe for a month to Peacock premium, the streaming service plan from NBCUniversal that’s free of commercials, which is less than the cost of one movie ticket. Plus I figured it would give us a chance to sample what else Peacock has to offer for a few weeks, something I doubt I would have done otherwise.

I loved Downton Abbey: A New Era in the way I love catching up with old friends. It really feels a fitting way for the show to end. Will it, though? With so many streaming services competing for a finite amount of viewer attention, everyone is desperate to build a catalog of “must see” shows or movies to keep their subscribers from bailing. But how many “must see” shows can there really be? Back in 2015, John Landgraf, the president of FX Networks, coined the term Peak TV, saying that with such a huge explosion in scripted content, we would begin to see a decline in quality in the following years because the talent needed to create them was spread too thin.

Did we? There’s definitely more bad stuff. There’s a huge sea of dreck, in fact. But there’s just more of everything — the good, the bad, and the vast, vast quantities of mediocre. I’ve always been fairly picky about what I watch (we dropped our cable years ago and just went with on demand entertainment, rotating through the various services depending on what’s available), but I find myself getting even pickier because of the huge selection of quality shows. When I was a kid, I would have thought The Book of Boba Fett, on Disney+, was amazing, but I still haven’t gotten around to watching the last episode. It was just . . . so-so. 

And for me, at least, so-so doesn’t cut it any more, not when I have so many choices. The same is true for books and everything else. Of course, taste is subjective, but it has got me thinking about what it means to be a fiction writer in what I’d call the age of Peak Entertainment. It’s not just TV that’s had an explosion of choice. It’s everything. My kids probably spend more time watching YouTube than they do Netflix. My son is a voracious reader, but he’s the exception among his friends; most of them spend their time playing video games online, or, when they get together, Magic the Gathering or D&D. My wife loves to unwind by watching a design show, which have proliferated in recent years. There used to be a couple of design shows and now it seems like there are fifty. That’s not an exaggeration. In fact, there are probably more than fifty. 

There’s really something for everyone. What does it mean for a fiction writer like me? Well, reading has always been a niche form of entertainment anyway. But so has everything else. It’s just more so now. When non-readers ask me if people still buy books, I usually reply by asking them if they know what the second most popular sport in the world is. (Most people know #1, which is football, or what we call soccer in the U.S.) It’s actually Cricket, which usually surprises Americans since the sport is not very popular here, but has more than 2.5 billion global fans.

My point? That it’s always been the case that something can be popular with a group of people, sometimes even a huge group of people, and barely be noticed by everyone else. In general, though, I do think that the big, bit hits are probably becoming more rare (a Game of Thrones or Spider-Man), don’t last as long (everyone was talking about Bridgerton only a few weeks ago and now . . . zilch), and usually don’t reach as many people. Publishing is a great example of this. If you include all books published (not just the ones from major conglomerates, but the small presses and independently published books), there are more books published, and, more importantly, more books sold than ever before. Backlist, whether it’s books, video, or music, is king. (All those linked articles are worth reading, by the way.) Ecommerce enabled a long tail of inventory, that term coined by Chris Anderson years ago, so that people have more choices. So far from publishing being in decline, the truth is actually the opposite. There are just more players and the money is spread around a bit more . . .  to a point. All forms of entertainment still follow a Power Law curve, with the bestsellers still taking a huge share of the sales. But going forward, just a bit less so.

Maybe. Predictions make fools out of all of us. Again, what does it mean for the individual fiction writer, though? Since backlist sells so well, it means a focus on the long game is critical. If you want to build an audience and possibly make a living, and you don’t get lucky and win the literary lottery, you’re going to need a substantial body of work. But being prolific is not enough. I’ve now seen plenty of examples of writers with huge backlists that just . . . don’t sell. Not much anyway. Even for the halfway competent writers, I used to be able to chock up the majority of these cases to bad covers or narrow niche appeal, but now I’m seeing even writers with quality presentation, decent writing, and smart promotion not selling much. 

Getting back to the Peacock service I mentioned at the start of this, I think a lot of this has to do with consumer choice. So-so doesn’t cut it any more. Even vast quantities of so-so. When I look at what’s available on Peacock, I see a lot of . . . sameness. The same thing is true in books. They all just become a blur. So my advice to the individual writer is to focus on getting really good and (hopefully) developing a compelling author voice along the way.  Read a lot and read broadly! I’m stunned how many writers don’t really read that much, even some very prolific writers. It’s usually pretty obvious in their work. They stop growing. Take some chances! Some of those chances won’t find an audience, but even if they don’t they’ll help you grow and get better. 

Beyond that? Patience, more than ever. Enjoy the work itself. You don’t have to enjoy it all the time, of course, but if you don’t enjoy the process overall, then maybe it’s time to explore whether a different mode of creative of expression is a better fit? Just a thought.

Or maybe there’s something to watch on Peacock. Somebody has to be watching those Melrose Place reruns.

News & Muse (June 2022): Have We Reached the Era of Peak Entertainment?

A few nights ago, Heidi and I watched the new Downton Abbey movie, Downton Abbey: A New Era, on Peacock TV. A big Downton Abbey fan, I’ve been wanting to watch the movie for a while, but not quite enough to go see it in a movie theater. It only cost $10 to subscribe for a month to Peacock premium, the streaming service plan from NBCUniversal that’s free of commercials, which is less than the cost of one movie ticket. Plus I figured it would give us a chance to sample what else Peacock has to offer for a few weeks, something I doubt I would have done otherwise.

I loved Downton Abbey: A New Era in the way I love catching up with old friends. It really feels a fitting way for the show to end. Will it, though? With so many streaming services competing for a finite amount of viewer attention, everyone is desperate to build a catalog of “must see” shows or movies to keep their subscribers from bailing. But how many “must see” shows can there really be? Back in 2015, John Landgraf, the president of FX Networks, coined the term Peak TV, saying that with such a huge explosion in scripted content, we would begin to see a decline in quality in the following years because the talent needed to create them was spread too thin.

Did we? There’s definitely more bad stuff. There’s a huge sea of dreck, in fact. But there’s just more of everything — the good, the bad, and the vast, vast quantities of mediocre. I’ve always been fairly picky about what I watch (we dropped our cable years ago and just went with on demand entertainment, rotating through the various services depending on what’s available), but I find myself getting even pickier because of the huge selection of quality shows. When I was a kid, I would have thought The Book of Boba Fett, on Disney+, was amazing, but I still haven’t gotten around to watching the last episode. It was just . . . so-so. 

And for me, at least, so-so doesn’t cut it any more, not when I have so many choices. The same is true for books and everything else. Of course, taste is subjective, but it has got me thinking about what it means to be a fiction writer in what I’d call the age of Peak Entertainment. It’s not just TV that’s had an explosion of choice. It’s everything. My kids probably spend more time watching YouTube than they do Netflix. My son is a voracious reader, but he’s the exception among his friends; most of them spend their time playing video games online, or, when they get together, Magic the Gathering or D&D. My wife loves to unwind by watching a design show, which have proliferated in recent years. There used to be a couple of design shows and now it seems like there are fifty. That’s not an exaggeration. In fact, there are probably more than fifty. 

There’s really something for everyone. What does it mean for a fiction writer like me? Well, reading has always been a niche form of entertainment anyway. But so has everything else. It’s just more so now. When non-readers ask me if people still buy books, I usually reply by asking them if they know what the second most popular sport in the world is. (Most people know #1, which is football, or what we call soccer in the U.S.) It’s actually Cricket, which usually surprises Americans since the sport is not very popular here, but has more than 2.5 billion global fans.

My point? That it’s always been the case that something can be popular with a group of people, sometimes even a huge group of people, and barely be noticed by everyone else. In general, though, I do think that the big, bit hits are probably becoming more rare (a Game of Thrones or Spider-Man), don’t last as long (everyone was talking about Bridgerton only a few weeks ago and now . . . zilch), and usually don’t reach as many people. Publishing is a great example of this. If you include all books published (not just the ones from major conglomerates, but the small presses and independently published books), there are more books published, and, more importantly, more books sold than ever before. Backlist, whether it’s books, video, or music, is king. (All those linked articles are worth reading, by the way.) Ecommerce enabled a long tail of inventory, that term coined by Chris Anderson years ago, so that people have more choices. So far from publishing being in decline, the truth is actually the opposite. There are just more players and the money is spread around a bit more . . .  to a point. All forms of entertainment still follow a Power Law curve, with the bestsellers still taking a huge share of the sales. But going forward, just a bit less so.

Maybe. Predictions make fools out of all of us. Again, what does it mean for the individual fiction writer, though? Since backlist sells so well, it means a focus on the long game is critical. If you want to build an audience and possibly make a living, and you don’t get lucky and win the literary lottery, you’re going to need a substantial body of work. But being prolific is not enough. I’ve now seen plenty of examples of writers with huge backlists that just . . . don’t sell. Not much anyway. Even for the halfway competent writers, I used to be able to chock up the majority of these cases to bad covers or narrow niche appeal, but now I’m seeing even writers with quality presentation, decent writing, and smart promotion not selling much. 

Getting back to the Peacock service I mentioned at the start of this, I think a lot of this has to do with consumer choice. So-so doesn’t cut it any more. Even vast quantities of so-so. When I look at what’s available on Peacock, I see a lot of . . . sameness. The same thing is true in books. They all just become a blur. So my advice to the individual writer is to focus on getting really good and (hopefully) developing a compelling author voice along the way.  Read a lot and read broadly! I’m stunned how many writers don’t really read that much, even some very prolific writers. It’s usually pretty obvious in their work. They stop growing. Take some chances! Some of those chances won’t find an audience, but even if they don’t they’ll help you grow and get better. 

Beyond that? Patience, more than ever. Enjoy the work itself. You don’t have to enjoy it all the time, of course, but if you don’t enjoy the process overall, then maybe it’s time to explore whether a different mode of creative of expression is a better fit? Just a thought.

Or maybe there’s something to watch on Peacock. Somebody has to be watching those Melrose Place reruns.

New Book: ASK HAGAN

I’ve got a new book out! ASK HAGAN is a collection of six short stories that originally appeared in such diverse places as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the Los Angeles Review, Pulphouse, and Fiction River. It’s a short read, but it also won’t set you back much, so if you’re looking for some twisty tales that pack an emotional wallop (my usual fare), please consider buying it. Sooner rather than later. I have a daughter in college, you know.

Just kidding. Kind of.

Oh, and one last thing you might find interesting. The lead story (about a struggling writer who hits it big when he invents an obnoxious Ann Landers-like advice columnist named Hagan T. Stone, hence the title Ask Hagan) actually did start out as column idea. I pitched it to an editor of an edgy, genre-crossing magazine, basically saying “What if someone like Hunter S. Thompson wrote a Dear Abby column?” Hagan T. Stone would be completely made up, of course, but nobody but me and the editor would know it was me. And while the editor liked the idea, he decided it wasn’t quite the right fit. Undaunted, I even toyed with the idea of starting a website myself, going so far as obtaining a domain name before sanity (or maybe it was my wife?) thankfully prevailed.

But the idea stayed with me. Then one day I wondered what would happen if the column not only became a huge hit, but one day an imposter showed up on the scene to reap all the rewards, and before you knew it I was writing. As usual, the story went in a completely unexpected direction, with a whiz bang ending readers will hopefully enjoy as much as I did. Janet Hutchings certainly thought so when I sent it to her, buying it for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, where it appeared last year. I hope you enjoy it too.

More info below, including where you can buy it. And thanks for reading!

Ask Hagan anything. Anything at all. Even how to outwit a madman …

Once a promising young novelist with big literary dreams, John Winsley wakes up on the other side of forty as a third-rate hack with a perpetual hangover. Fueled by bitterness, he creates an obnoxious online persona as something of a lark—a funhouse version of Ann Landers named Hagan T. Stone with mad eyes, a black beard shaped like a spade, and an irreverent wit. The Ask Hagan advice column becomes a surprising worldwide hit. And it makes Winsley a very rich man.

Wracked with guilt about the wife and daughter he abandoned, Winsley feels conflicted about his anonymous success … until an imposter claiming to be Hagan T. Stone shows up to reap all the rewards. Now Winsley only has to answer one question: How far will he go to get what he deserves?

This taut, suspenseful tale kicks off Carter’s latest collection. From a mysterious elevator in an Iowa cornfield to a crowded superstore where android spouses are bought like toasters, these six provocative forays into Carter’s wide-ranging imagination never fail to surprise.

Ebook:
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks | Google Play

Paperback:
Amazon 

Goodbye to an Old Friend, Writing Crime Fiction in a Violent World, and Why Arguments Against Reasonable Gun Control Are Bogus

Belle, our Boston Terrier, passed away on Monday.  She was fourteen. She was a faithful companion, especially to my daughter, for many years. With Rosie so much bigger and more energetic than Belle, and with my daughter away at college, Belle spent much of the past year with my in-laws, where she was heavily doted on and spent many wonderful months. As far as “lap dogs” go, she was about  perfect, since she seldom wanted to be anywhere other than on someone’s lap. Like most short-snouted dogs, she could be bit . . . stinky sometimes, but then, her “tootiness,” as my family liked to call it, was part of what made her who she was, just as the clicking of her nails on our hardwood floor was also distinctively her. She will be missed!

As far as writing news, the short book that became a long book that became a shorter book again is done, as much as I ever consider a book done, but I’m letting it sit for a bit. Sometimes I do that, especially when a particular work was more of a challenge. While whether a book was easy or hard to write for me seems to have little bearing on its eventual quality or its reception from readers (you’d think it would!), a little distance from it can sometimes help me see it a bit more clearly.

I’m well into the third Karen Pantelli book, and while I’m enjoying it, I have to say that recent events in Uvalde, Texas made it harder for me to feel as enthusiastic writing in the crime fiction genre. What helps me get over that is that I love this character, and for me, for all of my stories, it’s always about character. About people. Their hopes and dreams. Their failings. I don’t write to glorify violence. I write books that sometimes deal with violence because violence is part of the world. That doesn’t mean 19 children have to die because a lonely, desperate young man self-radicalized by wallowing in hate online and thought he could make himself  feel powerful by killing innocent people. That happened because the United States makes it incredibly easy for people in this country to not only own guns (far easier than almost any other modern nation), but also to own weapons of war (and an AR-15 assault rifle is a weapon of war). Countries that don’t do this, don’t have this problem, at least not even close to this magnitude.

So it’s not complicated. Better background checks and the requirement to take a class on gun safety and pass a test would help, of course, but not allowing average citizens to own weapons of war would make the biggest difference. Don’t think it will work here? It worked in Australia, and, to somewhat paraphrase The Princess Bride, that’s a country founded by criminals. And anyone who quotes the Second Amendment to me, I always say 1) it wasn’t intended the way you think it was and 2) even if it was, which it wasn’t, the Constitution was always designed to be an evolving document; otherwise black people would still be counted as 3/5th of a person, and 3) do you believe individual people should own thermonuclear weapons? To that last one, if they say no (and only a moron wouldn’t say no), then I say, “Then you already agree that while the right to bear arms should not be infringed, you do agree that there should be limits to the kind of weapons people can have. Now we’re just arguing about what those limits are.

That was bordering on a diatribe, so I’ll leave it at that, but it does illustrate how easy the arguments against sane, reasonable gun regulations are so easy to dispel with. I’m not anti-gun. Of course I’m not. But I’ll probably get a few emails now from readers telling me I should keep politics out of my writing. And to them I say this: When you tell a writer not to write anything that might be construed as political, what you’re really telling them is not to write about anything that matters, because things that matter sometimes upset people. If you’d rather only get updates on when my next book is out, avoid my blog and just subscribe to my newsletter, but I have to tell you, I’m the same kind of writer in my books as I am here. That doesn’t mean I have an ax to grind; it just means that my point of view, and my beliefs, do permeate my fiction. That is the kind of writer I want to be. It doesn’t mean I’m always right. It just means I’m at least trying to be true to myself, and if I can’t at least do that as a writer, then I’d rather not write at all.

News & Muse (May 2022): Goodbye to an Old Friend, Writing Crime Fiction in a Violent World, and Why Arguments Against Reasonable Gun Control Are Bogus

Belle, our Boston Terrier, passed away on Monday.  She was fourteen. She was a faithful companion, especially to my daughter, for many years. With Rosie so much bigger and more energetic than Belle, and with my daughter away at college, Belle spent much of the past year with my in-laws, where she was heavily doted on and spent many wonderful months. As far as “lap dogs” go, she was about  perfect, since she seldom wanted to be anywhere other than on someone’s lap. Like most short-snouted dogs, she could be bit . . . stinky sometimes, but then, her “tootiness,” as my family liked to call it, was part of what made her who she was, just as the clicking of her nails on our hardwood floor was also distinctively her. She will be missed!

As far as writing news, the short book that became a long book that became a shorter book again is done, as much as I ever consider a book done, but I’m letting it sit for a bit. Sometimes I do that, especially when a particular work was more of a challenge. While whether a book was easy or hard to write for me seems to have little bearing on its eventual quality or its reception from readers (you’d think it would!), a little distance from it can sometimes help me see it a bit more clearly.

I’m well into the third Karen Pantelli book, and while I’m enjoying it, I have to say that recent events in Uvalde, Texas made it harder for me to feel as enthusiastic writing in the crime fiction genre. What helps me get over that is that I love this character, and for me, for all of my stories, it’s always about character. About people. Their hopes and dreams. Their failings. I don’t write to glorify violence. I write books that sometimes deal with violence because violence is part of the world. That doesn’t mean 19 children have to die because a lonely, desperate young man self-radicalized by wallowing in hate online and thought he could make himself  feel powerful by killing innocent people. That happened because the United States makes it incredibly easy for people in this country to not only own guns (far easier than almost any other modern nation), but also to own weapons of war (and an AR-15 assault rifle is a weapon of war). Countries that don’t do this, don’t have this problem, at least not even close to this magnitude.

So it’s not complicated. Better background checks and the requirement to take a class on gun safety and pass a test would help, of course, but not allowing average citizens to own weapons of war would make the biggest difference. Don’t think it will work here? It worked in Australia, and, to somewhat paraphrase The Princess Bride, that’s a country founded by criminals. And anyone who quotes the Second Amendment to me, I always say 1) it wasn’t intended the way you think it was and 2) even if it was, which it wasn’t, the Constitution was always designed to be an evolving document; otherwise black people would still be counted as 3/5th of a person, and 3) do you believe individual people should own thermonuclear weapons? To that last one, if they say no (and only a moron wouldn’t say no), then I say, “Then you already agree that while the right to bear arms should not be infringed, you do agree that there should be limits to the kind of weapons people can have. Now we’re just arguing about what those limits are.

That was bordering on a diatribe, so I’ll leave it at that, but it does illustrate how easy the arguments against sane, reasonable gun regulations are so easy to dispel with. I’m not anti-gun. Of course I’m not. But I’ll probably get a few emails now from readers telling me I should keep politics out of my writing. And to them I say this: When you tell a writer not to write anything that might be construed as political, what you’re really telling them is not to write about anything that matters, because things that matter sometimes upset people. If you’d rather only get updates on when my next book is out, avoid my blog and just subscribe to my newsletter, but I have to tell you, I’m the same kind of writer in my books as I am here. That doesn’t mean I have an ax to grind; it just means that my point of view, and my beliefs, do permeate my fiction. That is the kind of writer I want to be. It doesn’t mean I’m always right. It just means I’m at least trying to be true to myself, and if I can’t at least do that as a writer, then I’d rather not write at all.

To Eat or Not To Eat the Cake

Heidi and I took a quick jaunt to the coast last weekend, partly to celebrate my 49th birthday, staying in a fun little Airbnb right next to Yaquina Bay State Park. Amazing weather in Newport, which of course can happen anytime of the year on the Oregon coast. A little below is a shot of Rosie on the sandbar that separates Yaquina Bay from the beach. My intrepid Irish Setter and I had a great time on those dunes.

A spectacular sunset dinner at Georgie’s, a visit to Cobblestone Beach at the Yaquina Head Lighthouse at extremely low tide, and a pleasant Sunday afternoon stop at Airlie Winery, a favorite of ours, capped off a great weekend.

Hard to believe I’m approaching half a century. Looking back, I think a lot of us have an age where we feel we’ve become the person we are mentally. I think for me it was around age 27. I feel pretty much the same inside as I did twenty-two years (!!) ago. I don’t think that was even the most significant year in my life (that would probably be 1994, the year I graduated from college, started working full-time, and met the love of my life), or the year that changed me the most as a person (that would probably be 2003, when I looked down into my newborn daughter’s eyes for the first time and was never the same person again), or even a year when I knew I was getting someplace as a writer (probably 2008, when I sold my first novel to Simon and Schuster). But it’s the year when, looking back, at least, I feel most like the person I am today.

That’s also when I started having to worry a little more about whether or not to eat the cake. Before that, I could eat as much cake as I wanted and never be concerned about my weight. Now I can’t so much as post a picture of cake on my website without gaining a few pounds. I wish I was joking.

On the writing front, the short book I was working on turned into a long book which is turning back into a short book. Alas, that’s sometimes how it goes. As I mentioned last month, these days I don’t have a lot of great advice for other writers, except to put in the time and enjoy the process, whatever your process is. You’ve got to find your own way. It might be a cliche to say the work should be its own reward, but it is true. You can’t control how the world responds to your work. You can only do your best, keep challenging yourself, and trust that with time, and a little luck, the results will come.

And if the results aren’t as great as you’d hoped, whether that’s the results of a particular piece of work, or how the world responds to it, well, you’ve still got the work. The process. The art itself. The thrilling, challenging, frustrating, teasing, agonizing, amazing art itself.

Most of us don’t like to talk about luck in the arts, but if you find yourself saying nonsense like “I don’t believe in luck,” then please tell that to the eight-year-old who just lost both her parents in Ukraine because a madman in Saint Petersburg sees threats where more sane and compassionate people see opportunities. Chance is part of life. Some people get lucky, some people don’t. Without chance, life couldn’t even be; randomness, chaos, call it what you will, is also what makes life so interesting. That doesn’t mean you can’t influence how your life goes. Of course you can! Get good at what you do and give yourself as many chances as you can to get lucky. You just don’t get to predetermine the outcome. Thank God, though! Because to paraphrase Alan Watts, if you were both omnipotent and all-knowing, eventually you’d get bored and want to be surprised . . .  which is life! And you can’t have meaningful surprise without real risk. To say otherwise is to engage in wishful thinking, and to talk only of the success stories is to engage in survivorship bias.

So for me these days, I just try to do my best, enjoying the process of creating — even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.  It’s hard because as much as I’d like to predetermine the outcome of my creative work, I can’t. Not if I want to be surprised, and sometimes through surprise great things happen. In all creative fields, I think it’s best to embrace that feeling of risk and just live in that present moment with the process as much as you can. Enjoy the fruits of your labor when they come, of course, but don’t blame yourself and beat yourself up all the time when material success proves elusive. That’s why accepting that luck does play a part can actually be very freeing. It doesn’t give license for laziness, however; you still have to do the work. But you can just do the work and surrender yourself to the outcome, knowing that you did your best in that moment in time.

Since I mentioned Alan Watts, one of the twentieth century’s great philosophers (or as he liked to think of himself, as a philosopher-entertainer), I’ll finish off this post with a quote from The Wisdom of Insecurity that encapsulates what I’m getting at. I think it’s one of the most profound things he’s written, and it’s probably no surprise that this book is still selling well (Amazon lists it as a bestseller in its category) some seventy years after it’s original publication.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can go find some cake . . .

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

The art of living … is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.

Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. 

— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity