David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "minnesota"
STOLEN PREY
STOLEN PREY is one of those books you can read in one sitting; it's so focused, only minimally interruptedby an ATM stick-up in which Lucas Davenport is robbed of $500. He has no time to go after the crooks himself because he's involved in a family slaying, similar to what was happening in one of my favorite books, Thomas Harris's RED DRAGON. Virgil Flowers gets the job and he comes out smelling like manure.
Like most of the Prey novels, we know from the outset who is responsible and we're inside their heads just as we are with Davenport and his team. A Mexican drug cartel killed the family because they're missing 22 million dollars that was being laundered through the father's bank. Another bank executive is killed in similar fashion before we find out it's really a bunch of computer geeks who stumbled across the Mexican ploy. One of them just happens to be a Serb who knows a woman who's expert at turning money into untraceable lucre.
This one is also interesting in that Lucas's adopted daughter Letty seems to be moving away from her television career. She's recently become accomplished in handling a gun. At one point Lucas says that most of us are crazy in some way or another but not in a way that we can not function in civilized society. "Letty's like me," he says. Lucas has been piling up bodies for twenty some Prey novels now, and he can't shoot first and ask questions later if he doesn't want the press and his BCA boss on his tail. John Sandford handles that conundrum rather well in this one.
The Mexican assassins are rather interesting. They're named Uno, Dos, and Tre because all their first names are Juan. One of them is actually religious. Sandford has him attend the St. Paul Cathedral after killing someone. They also have a partner who shall go unnamed for spoiler reasons. As a matter of fact, Lucas is a little clueless here, because I had this person pegged almost immediately if only peripherally. I also guessed the ending, which makes me believe we may be seeing one of the crooks again in a future Prey novel. I also had a bit of a problem with the way the Mexican cartel is behaving at the end of the story. We know these people are brutal, vicious killers who never give up and let's just say they're acting out of character. That's called author intrusion, when an author does something to move the story that his characters wouldn't do.
Like most of the Prey novels, we know from the outset who is responsible and we're inside their heads just as we are with Davenport and his team. A Mexican drug cartel killed the family because they're missing 22 million dollars that was being laundered through the father's bank. Another bank executive is killed in similar fashion before we find out it's really a bunch of computer geeks who stumbled across the Mexican ploy. One of them just happens to be a Serb who knows a woman who's expert at turning money into untraceable lucre.
This one is also interesting in that Lucas's adopted daughter Letty seems to be moving away from her television career. She's recently become accomplished in handling a gun. At one point Lucas says that most of us are crazy in some way or another but not in a way that we can not function in civilized society. "Letty's like me," he says. Lucas has been piling up bodies for twenty some Prey novels now, and he can't shoot first and ask questions later if he doesn't want the press and his BCA boss on his tail. John Sandford handles that conundrum rather well in this one.
The Mexican assassins are rather interesting. They're named Uno, Dos, and Tre because all their first names are Juan. One of them is actually religious. Sandford has him attend the St. Paul Cathedral after killing someone. They also have a partner who shall go unnamed for spoiler reasons. As a matter of fact, Lucas is a little clueless here, because I had this person pegged almost immediately if only peripherally. I also guessed the ending, which makes me believe we may be seeing one of the crooks again in a future Prey novel. I also had a bit of a problem with the way the Mexican cartel is behaving at the end of the story. We know these people are brutal, vicious killers who never give up and let's just say they're acting out of character. That's called author intrusion, when an author does something to move the story that his characters wouldn't do.
What to Look for in a Humorous Novel
Certainly each person’s sense of humor is different. Some prefer slapstick, some prefer raunch while others cringe, some prefer something a little bit more cerebral like satire. Despite individual preference, I think there are a few guidelines the budding writer might consider before beginning a comic novel.
1. Characterization. It helps to have a likable main character. Hawkeye Pierce in M.A.S.H. is somewhat sarcastic and disrespectful of authority, and he’s a drunk and a skirt chaser, but we like him anyway because he’s high on the “cool” thermometer. Two such dissimilar actors as Donald Sutherland and Alan Alda played the man and we like them both. In my novel, SOLDIER’S GAP, I set out to find a character similar to Hawkeye, and I think I found him in Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins.
2. Dialogue. Snappy dialogue goes a long way as you can see in the Janet Evanovich numbers. Dialogue also reveals personality if you can get your characters to sound different.
3. Straight men and sidekicks. It always helps to have somebody to play off of. In SOLDIER’S GAP, it’s Mingo Jones. Mingo Jones is a Mescalero Apache and night deputy who is investigating his native American heritage, which includes belief in ghosts and the Land of Ever Summer.
4. Don’t try to be funny on every page. Maybe that’s why I don’t like Jerry Lewis. In everyday life, the funniest people aren’t trying to be funny half the time. They also have to live their lives and if they fool around too much they’re out of work. Also, as you can see from your Leno jokes, not everything is funny. Besides, you need to keep your story moving and that’s pretty hard to do if you’re always going for the yucks. Read the Dortmunder novels. Donald Westlake is one of the funniest humor writers working today, but most of the time he’s more interested in the caper.
5. Weird is not necessarily funny. If you’re reading a vampire novel, you need to overcome suspension of disbelief before you can appreciate the humor. That’s not to say it doesn’t work. Everybody loves Abby on NCIS and she’s certainly weird. In SOLDIER’S GAP there’s Mo Pleasiac, a teenage genius, who has latched onto Dave Jenkins as a father substitute.
6. It’s okay to be serious and humorous, especially when writing satire, but you need to know the tricks of the trade, primarily hyperbole. Jonathan Swift exaggerated the problems with English politics, using outsized (and undersized) characters. Try to be topical. Christopher Buckley, the premier American satirist writes about smoking and government assisted suicide. Lately he’s been writing about his father, who thought urinating in public was only wrong if other people did it.
7. Minor characters. People are people watchers. Funny little characters can liven up your novel. Grandma Mazur isn’t in the Evanovich books very much, but we recognize her from our own experience, if only from TV sitcoms. The woman who discovers Principal Egge’s body in SOLDIER’S GAP is a special education teacher who also does palm reading. A cast of characters is almost as important as the main character. Part of the reason Stuart Kaminsky’s Porfiry Rostnikov novels are so popular is because readers like to hang out with these people.
8. Setting. Brooklyn is funny for some reason, maybe because of the accent.
Brainerd, Minnesota, was funny in “Fargo,” once again because of the way the characters talked. Texas is funny because of Texans’ outsized egos.
9. Your main character can’t be too competent. Dave Jenkins of SOLDIER’S GAP can’t see the forest for the trees in respect to his romantic relationships. He’s also a lone eagle, unwilling to take advantage of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s expertise. He just assumes they’re incompetent because they’re bureaucrats. It helps to have a minor character who’s smarter than your lead. “MO” Pleasiac, in SOLDIER’S GAP is Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother Mycroft to Dave Jenkins’ Sherlock.
10. The Battle of the sexes. This can be a great opportunity for some funny dialogue. Men and women are always trying to one-up each other. Perhaps you can create a situation where two characters have a brother/sister relationship, but one of them is romantically interested in the other or maybe they both are and they don’t know it. See “Bones.” Annie Kline is one of the love interests in SOLDIER’S GAP, but Dave Jenkins doesn’t realize how much he cares for her because she does guy things like work for the volunteer fire department and play shortstop on his softball team.
SOLDIER'S GAP can be purchased at goodreads or Amazon.com, new and used.
1. Characterization. It helps to have a likable main character. Hawkeye Pierce in M.A.S.H. is somewhat sarcastic and disrespectful of authority, and he’s a drunk and a skirt chaser, but we like him anyway because he’s high on the “cool” thermometer. Two such dissimilar actors as Donald Sutherland and Alan Alda played the man and we like them both. In my novel, SOLDIER’S GAP, I set out to find a character similar to Hawkeye, and I think I found him in Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins.
2. Dialogue. Snappy dialogue goes a long way as you can see in the Janet Evanovich numbers. Dialogue also reveals personality if you can get your characters to sound different.
3. Straight men and sidekicks. It always helps to have somebody to play off of. In SOLDIER’S GAP, it’s Mingo Jones. Mingo Jones is a Mescalero Apache and night deputy who is investigating his native American heritage, which includes belief in ghosts and the Land of Ever Summer.
4. Don’t try to be funny on every page. Maybe that’s why I don’t like Jerry Lewis. In everyday life, the funniest people aren’t trying to be funny half the time. They also have to live their lives and if they fool around too much they’re out of work. Also, as you can see from your Leno jokes, not everything is funny. Besides, you need to keep your story moving and that’s pretty hard to do if you’re always going for the yucks. Read the Dortmunder novels. Donald Westlake is one of the funniest humor writers working today, but most of the time he’s more interested in the caper.
5. Weird is not necessarily funny. If you’re reading a vampire novel, you need to overcome suspension of disbelief before you can appreciate the humor. That’s not to say it doesn’t work. Everybody loves Abby on NCIS and she’s certainly weird. In SOLDIER’S GAP there’s Mo Pleasiac, a teenage genius, who has latched onto Dave Jenkins as a father substitute.
6. It’s okay to be serious and humorous, especially when writing satire, but you need to know the tricks of the trade, primarily hyperbole. Jonathan Swift exaggerated the problems with English politics, using outsized (and undersized) characters. Try to be topical. Christopher Buckley, the premier American satirist writes about smoking and government assisted suicide. Lately he’s been writing about his father, who thought urinating in public was only wrong if other people did it.
7. Minor characters. People are people watchers. Funny little characters can liven up your novel. Grandma Mazur isn’t in the Evanovich books very much, but we recognize her from our own experience, if only from TV sitcoms. The woman who discovers Principal Egge’s body in SOLDIER’S GAP is a special education teacher who also does palm reading. A cast of characters is almost as important as the main character. Part of the reason Stuart Kaminsky’s Porfiry Rostnikov novels are so popular is because readers like to hang out with these people.
8. Setting. Brooklyn is funny for some reason, maybe because of the accent.
Brainerd, Minnesota, was funny in “Fargo,” once again because of the way the characters talked. Texas is funny because of Texans’ outsized egos.
9. Your main character can’t be too competent. Dave Jenkins of SOLDIER’S GAP can’t see the forest for the trees in respect to his romantic relationships. He’s also a lone eagle, unwilling to take advantage of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s expertise. He just assumes they’re incompetent because they’re bureaucrats. It helps to have a minor character who’s smarter than your lead. “MO” Pleasiac, in SOLDIER’S GAP is Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother Mycroft to Dave Jenkins’ Sherlock.
10. The Battle of the sexes. This can be a great opportunity for some funny dialogue. Men and women are always trying to one-up each other. Perhaps you can create a situation where two characters have a brother/sister relationship, but one of them is romantically interested in the other or maybe they both are and they don’t know it. See “Bones.” Annie Kline is one of the love interests in SOLDIER’S GAP, but Dave Jenkins doesn’t realize how much he cares for her because she does guy things like work for the volunteer fire department and play shortstop on his softball team.
SOLDIER'S GAP can be purchased at goodreads or Amazon.com, new and used.
Snow-a-holic
Why snow is holy
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It’s snowing out today. It’s hard to imagine there are people in the South who have never seen snow. Snowflakes are tiny, marvelous, crystals full of snowmen with coal eyes and carrot noses; tiny clusters that make angel wings; tiny frozen rain drops that ball up into clumps and then well up into snow forts where children imagine themselves Caesars and Napoleons.
Thank God for snow.
Yes, thank God for snow. Some people say that God is dead. The remarkable aspect about such a statement is that God leaves clues that he’s still with us. He shows himself in the sunset, in the night when the heavens are full of millions of stars, in the huge, rolling moon which sails through the sky with a grin for one and all.
In this hustle bustle world of ours we overlook the miraculous; a tree is just a tree; grass is just grass which has to be cut; flowers are something we sent to our wives and girlfriends when they’re displeased with us. But have you ever taken a good look at an orchid? How can you contain yourself?
Snow is that squishy stuff we are forever shoveling or getting stuck in, especially if we live in Buffalo or Minnesnowta. Kids know about snow. The first flake they see they run outside with their tongues pointing toward the sky, trying to taste it. They look for the highest hill and come pellmelling down like tiny Mario Andrettis. The most astute put snowballs in their freezers so they’ll have some for the humid summer months.
You may be wondering why I’m such a snow-a-holic. It’s just that I saw a show the other night on one of those news magazines where a mother gave her son a bus ticket, fifty dollars and a phony address in Nevada. When he tried to call, she wouldn’t answer the phone. He had to sleep in the trees in a
Park. The woman just never got enough snow.
The most worrisome part is that some people seem to get the same satisfaction out of pharmaceuticals that I get out of the white stuff. I’ll admit I have had a few beers in my lifetime, but I’ve never tried marijuana or cocaine. Whatever for, when you’ve got snow?
Some say certain drugs illuminate the mind. LSD, peyote, methamphetamine (There’s a good one). I know meth rots your teeth and there's such a thing as a bad LSD trip (Whatever happened to Ken Kesey?) Indians use peyote in some of their ceremonies so I guess that’s okay; Christians use wine. But there’s just nothing like a good snow ball fight. There’s a reason why Eskimos live in igloos, and they seem a lot more laid back than we do.
Dave Schwinghammer's novel, SOLDIER'S GAP,is available at Amazon.com, new and used. Please check the revies. Give a snow-a-holic a break.
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It’s snowing out today. It’s hard to imagine there are people in the South who have never seen snow. Snowflakes are tiny, marvelous, crystals full of snowmen with coal eyes and carrot noses; tiny clusters that make angel wings; tiny frozen rain drops that ball up into clumps and then well up into snow forts where children imagine themselves Caesars and Napoleons.
Thank God for snow.
Yes, thank God for snow. Some people say that God is dead. The remarkable aspect about such a statement is that God leaves clues that he’s still with us. He shows himself in the sunset, in the night when the heavens are full of millions of stars, in the huge, rolling moon which sails through the sky with a grin for one and all.
In this hustle bustle world of ours we overlook the miraculous; a tree is just a tree; grass is just grass which has to be cut; flowers are something we sent to our wives and girlfriends when they’re displeased with us. But have you ever taken a good look at an orchid? How can you contain yourself?
Snow is that squishy stuff we are forever shoveling or getting stuck in, especially if we live in Buffalo or Minnesnowta. Kids know about snow. The first flake they see they run outside with their tongues pointing toward the sky, trying to taste it. They look for the highest hill and come pellmelling down like tiny Mario Andrettis. The most astute put snowballs in their freezers so they’ll have some for the humid summer months.
You may be wondering why I’m such a snow-a-holic. It’s just that I saw a show the other night on one of those news magazines where a mother gave her son a bus ticket, fifty dollars and a phony address in Nevada. When he tried to call, she wouldn’t answer the phone. He had to sleep in the trees in a
Park. The woman just never got enough snow.
The most worrisome part is that some people seem to get the same satisfaction out of pharmaceuticals that I get out of the white stuff. I’ll admit I have had a few beers in my lifetime, but I’ve never tried marijuana or cocaine. Whatever for, when you’ve got snow?
Some say certain drugs illuminate the mind. LSD, peyote, methamphetamine (There’s a good one). I know meth rots your teeth and there's such a thing as a bad LSD trip (Whatever happened to Ken Kesey?) Indians use peyote in some of their ceremonies so I guess that’s okay; Christians use wine. But there’s just nothing like a good snow ball fight. There’s a reason why Eskimos live in igloos, and they seem a lot more laid back than we do.
Dave Schwinghammer's novel, SOLDIER'S GAP,is available at Amazon.com, new and used. Please check the revies. Give a snow-a-holic a break.
Laurentian Divide
Sarah Stonich is from Minnesota. Hence, the Laurentian Divide, the setting of this novel, must be The Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a wilderness area in northern Minnesota where motor vehicles are not allowed and Hatchet Inlet, the town featured in the story would probably be Ely, Minnesota, the Gateway to the Boundary Waters.
The novel is a frame story. Rauri Paar, the only remaining private owner in the Laurentian Divide, has not shown up after ice out on the lakes; he's usually a herald of spring. He spends the winter in his cabin on one of his islands, all by his lonesome. The residents of Hatchet Inlet think he's a victim of foul play or a heart attack or whatever. Only one of them, Pete Lahti is worried enough to try to find out what happened to him, and it almost gets him killed.
We don't find out what happened to Rauri until the end of the book, hence the frame. There are two other stories to keep us occupied: Pete's alcoholism (he's recovering) and his father, Alpo (No he wasn't named after the dogfood; he's Finnish) is getting married for the second time to Sissy who runs the local diner with her sister. Alpo is like sixty; Sissy is around forty.
So . . . this novel is really about the people of Hatchet Inlet. Stonich will occasionally throw in a long scene such as the one where she describes Alpo's
favorite fishing hole; the tourists haven't found it yet. Alpo draws a map for his new Kiwi friends from New Zealand. He trusts them to keep it secret. The scene doesn't drive the story, and it doesn't do much to give us a picture of the Laurentian Divide.
There's also a sort of sub plot about Sissy's mother who has Alzheimer's. She has her lucid moments when she can be kind of funny; they take her to Sissy's wedding, which she almost ruins, but she does strike up some surprisingly good harmony with the band at the reception.
I'm also from Minnesota, but I've never been up Nort (that's an intentional mistake) except for Duluth, which is a beautiful city if you've never been. It's the largest fresh water port in America, if not the world. Lake Superior will take your breath away. I was looking forward to a more detailed description of the BWCA; I guess I'll need to look for a non-fiction account.
The novel is a frame story. Rauri Paar, the only remaining private owner in the Laurentian Divide, has not shown up after ice out on the lakes; he's usually a herald of spring. He spends the winter in his cabin on one of his islands, all by his lonesome. The residents of Hatchet Inlet think he's a victim of foul play or a heart attack or whatever. Only one of them, Pete Lahti is worried enough to try to find out what happened to him, and it almost gets him killed.
We don't find out what happened to Rauri until the end of the book, hence the frame. There are two other stories to keep us occupied: Pete's alcoholism (he's recovering) and his father, Alpo (No he wasn't named after the dogfood; he's Finnish) is getting married for the second time to Sissy who runs the local diner with her sister. Alpo is like sixty; Sissy is around forty.
So . . . this novel is really about the people of Hatchet Inlet. Stonich will occasionally throw in a long scene such as the one where she describes Alpo's
favorite fishing hole; the tourists haven't found it yet. Alpo draws a map for his new Kiwi friends from New Zealand. He trusts them to keep it secret. The scene doesn't drive the story, and it doesn't do much to give us a picture of the Laurentian Divide.
There's also a sort of sub plot about Sissy's mother who has Alzheimer's. She has her lucid moments when she can be kind of funny; they take her to Sissy's wedding, which she almost ruins, but she does strike up some surprisingly good harmony with the band at the reception.
I'm also from Minnesota, but I've never been up Nort (that's an intentional mistake) except for Duluth, which is a beautiful city if you've never been. It's the largest fresh water port in America, if not the world. Lake Superior will take your breath away. I was looking forward to a more detailed description of the BWCA; I guess I'll need to look for a non-fiction account.
