Paul H. Raymer's Blog, page 4

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Do you ever experience vellichor — that strange wistfulness of used bookshops? Being surrounded by books that have lived other lives can cause a bit of melancholy. Or have you ever had a jouska — that hypothetical conversation that you play out in your head? The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows includes dozens of these spectacular words with equally spectacular definitions such as chrysalism: “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.”

Who thinks up these words? I pulled out my Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary to see if I could find where some of these words came from. I wasn’t successful with the few I tried. Maybe they’re too recent. But wherever they came from, these words would be difficult to throw into the middle of a conversation at a cocktail party. (Do people still have cocktail parties?) I’m experiencing exulansis so I am just going to give up trying to tell my story about swimming across the Atlantic Ocean. People just can’t relate to it!

One of my favorites is Nodus Tollens which is the realization that the plot of your life just doesn’t make sense to you anymore. I mean seriously! How often have you felt that way? In the dictionary there are clues to the derivation.

Directly from the dictionary:

aftersome

adj. astonished to think back on the bizarre sequence of accidents that brought you to where you are today—as if you’d spent years bouncing down a Plinko pegboard, passing through a million harmless decision points, any one of which might’ve changed everything—which makes your long and winding path feel fated from the start, yet so unlikely as to be virtually impossible.

From the Swedish ‘eftersom’ because.

agnosthesia

n. the state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your behavior, as if you were some other person—noticing a twist of acid in your voice, an obscene amount of effort put into something trifling, or an inexplicable weight on your shoulders that makes it difficult to get out of bed.

From Greek ‘agnostos’ unknown + ‘diathesis’ mood.

Words are amazing! There are so many of them that we’ll never get to know.

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Unfinished Business - J.A. Jance

Ali Reynolds Series #16

Genre Thrillers & Suspense

“In this heart-pounding and sharply written thriller from J.A. Jance, the ‘grand master of the genre’ (The Providence Journal), Ali Reynolds’s personal life is thrown into turmoil . . .” so the review promises. I mean, I’ve had a heart attack but this book didn’t quicken my pulse. “Sharply written”? I’m not sure what that means.

J.A. Jance has written forty-six contemporary novels in this genre. She is a professional. She travels a lot (at least she used to before the pandemic). I like professionals - professionals in any profession from cutting down trees to working behind the counter in a delicatessen. They know what they are doing, and they do it well.

But this book seems like it was written in a kind of a hurry. There is an interesting plot element of a guy in jail for a murder that he didn’t commit and unwilling to admit that he did it just to get out earlier on parole. All the while he is in prison he is studying computer science so that he can get a good job and turn his life around when he gets out.

Pasted on top of this is a nasty character who has killed a number of people — including his mother — who has settled into trying to make a living as a home inspector. But he doesn’t pay his rent and gets evicted by Ali Reynolds which causes him to develop a serious grudge and Ali and members of her staff to get in the way of a psychotic killer.

Meanwhile, Ali’s father is losing his mind and causes Ali other extenuating problems.

Ali is certainly the thread that ties all these pieces together, and I guess if you’ve read the other books in the series you could empathize with the character development. But this was my first experience with J.A. Jance and Ali Reynolds so I found this story a bit like one of those threatening murder notes where the words are cut out of different printed articles. They delivered the message, but it wasn’t a joy to read.

Private Viewing - Geoff Palmer

Genre: World Literature

Private Viewing was published in 2015 by Podsnap Publishing Ltd.

I am always pleasantly surprised when I come upon a writer who knows what they are doing and cares about how they are doing it. Geoff Palmer is one of those pleasant surprises. He has won some awards and spent twenty plus years doing freelance technical writing. From his bio, “he has climbed mountains in Africa, picked grapes in Switzerland, sold cameras in London, programmed computers in Fiji, and spent eight years working as a professional photographer. He’s also quite tall.” He lives and writes in Wellington, New Zealand.

Jane Child , the protagonist of this story, is a banker. At the beginning of the novel she thought she had a straight line path to an Divisional Manager role at Bartley’s Bank. It is not to be, however, because the position has been filled by a rising star in the British Banking world who just happens to be the son of Sir Jamieson Trotter, who has deep societal connections.

But Damien Trotter is good looking and Jane is good looking, and despite her best efforts she is not able to resist his charms. It’s not at all surprising that Damien turns out to be an ultimate, salacious sleaze. What is surprising is the role that the seemingly homeless man who sits on the sidewalk across the street from the bank plays in the story. Jane is not the most sensible young woman, but she is a romantic and that gets her into trouble.

Palmer develops his characters well, providing a personality to good-old Aunt Daisy and the neighborhood cat, Bluebell. There is a plethora of spy gadgets and technology which is always fun, and with Palmer’s experience with computers in Fiji, I am assuming that he got that stuff right. There is the occasional word that is missing, but that seems to be common unfortunately these days. No matter how many times you read through your own book, it is easy to see the words on the page the way you are seeing them in your head.

Private Viewing is a fun, entertaining read, with enough suspense to keep the pages turning and the midnight lamp burning.

Bookfunnel gathers writers together to give books away. My novel - Death at the Edge of the Diamond - and Geoff Palmer’s as well as D.F. Bailey’s Five Knives along with a bunch of others are in this group. This is a very helpful program. The downloads can be to virtually any platform. And they’re free!

Free Books!

Master Class

What a world! Imagine having Dan Brown, Salman Rushdie, Amy Tan, David Baldacci, James Patterson, and LeVar Burton talk directly to you about how they do what they do so well! That would have been mind-boggling just a few years ago. If just one or two of these people had been speaking at a conference, I would have paid to be there. But instead, I can listen to any of them and many, many more across my desk, talking to me - virtually. But wait. There’s more. They also include in depth work books to go along with these classes.

There are many, many more than just these exemplary writer courses. And they are beautifully filmed.

These are not college credit courses, and I suppose if that’s what you are looking for you’ll need to go to . . . college. But a class with a master of any skill is an experience that can widen your mind. With over 100 different courses for $180 for the year, you can’t do much better than this. Each class runs from 2 to 5 hours. And you can click your mouse button and stop James Patterson in mid-sentence, come back later and he’ll finish it. Or repeat it again and again if you want.

The Cape Cod Writers’ Conference which takes place at the beginning of August, will be a virtual conference this year. Signing up for the conference costs $80. There are 10 instructors and each one costs $60 and each of their sessions runs for 2 hours. You can add on a review of your own writing with one of the mentors for another $150. This Writers’ Conference doesn’t provide college credits either.

There are a lot of on-line reviews of the Master Class program, but what’s important is what you get out of it. Personally, I think it has been wonderful. I have learned a lot from each of the Masters I have listened to so far. I intend to keep listening, taking notes, thinking, and learning more.

Is it worth it? I would say definitely yes! (And they didn’t pay me to say that!)

https://www.masterclass.com/

A Whisper Came - A Cape Cod Mystery - Keith Yocum

Genre Fiction

I have come to the conclusion that a lot of reviews are written so that ‘‘word bites” can be ripped out of them and stuck on the covers of books and in advertising - phrases like “page turner”, “thriller”, “incisive”, “suspensful”, “kept me on the edge of my seat”, “couldn’t put it down”! That sort of hype promises a lot, but often doesn’t deliver. I guess that’s kind of a ‘duh’ observation, but I guess that kind of hype sells books.

This book has a lot of strong ingredients:

a dead body wearing strange clothing floating off Monomoy Island off Cape Cod,

a curious and ambitious, attractive female reporter;

a spiteful ex-boyfriend;

a kind, attractive, intelligent charter boat captain;

an abandoned, ghostly town;

spooky legends;

an odd clutch of writers led by a well-known mystery writer with a crazy wife.

Throw all these ingredients into a book and see what happens. Yocum makes a contract with the reader to explain the body and her strange clothing. Who killed her and why? Yocum does satisfy that contract by the end.

The edge of the seat element comes from time pressure or something similar. Is the murderer going to strike again? Is there a body in the closet? What approximates that in this novel comes from the question of when (or if) the charter boat captain regains his memory and if the reporter’s bosses are going to stop being nice.

The story is the path from the body to the resolution of all the issues and the complications that get in the way of the explanations and resolutions.

Stacie Davis, the ambitious young reporter in this novel doesn’t recognize the real story until she has almost lost her mind as well as her life. I would have liked her better if she hadn’t been so ditzy. Although her bosses at the Boston Globe seem to like the stories she is writing for the paper, and they tell her to stay there, to keep digging, and to stay at a Ritzy Resort. The stories she writes seem like fluff, atmospheric pieces. She doesn’t recognize the real story until it almost kills her. Much of the drama in the novel hangs together by coincidental links.

Yocum is a strong writer with experienced writing connections including with the Boston Globe, and he lives on Cape Cod. So he knows what he’s writing about. He has a bucket of ingredients for an exciting book in a great venue. I’m not sure I understand where the title fits in the story. The dark lighthouse on the cover at sunset does have a solid role to play. It’s worth a read.

Charcoal Smoke with a Hint of Sulfur

Gun fights are a dime a dozen in the movies and on TV. But if that is the only shooting you know, how can you write convincingly about it? The more you know about what you are writing about, the better you can write about it.

There is a scene in my new novel - Second Law - where people are shooting at each other. I wanted to know what it felt like to hold a pistol in my hand, feel the kick, hear the bang, and smell the smoke. So my son took me to his range in Texas and gave me instructions and introductions to different guns and different calibers. I got to experience how difficult it is to hit the target just standing and shooting at a metal plate that dinged. There was no pressure. No one was shooting back. No lives were at risk. It was very, very controlled and calm - not at all like a high pressure, life or death situation. It was hard enough to get it right.

In a real life - save your life situation - there is noise and terror and adrenaline pumping. Remembering all the steps involved in loading and chambering and pointing requires practice. And how often do the majority of people who own a gun practice?

I was going to try shooting without the ear protection but quickly gave up on that concept. These things are loud! Especially in a confined space. The recorded sound or the sound on TV is greatly muted. Holding the gun two feet away from your ear can be deafening.

The smell was sulfurous. Supposedly there is less smoke with more expensive ammunition, but at a $1 a shot, I thought it was already pretty expensive.

If you put your hand in the wrong place (as I did), the action comes back and bites you. (I’m healing well now, thanks for asking.)

It became very clear to me that shooting is something that should not be attempted without practice. You can’t just go down to the corner gun store, buy some fancy ass shiny gun and be ready to shoot someone. The scene in my book will require adjusting to accommodate the noise, the smell, and the difficulty of hitting what is being shot at. Even on TV the shooters miss a great deal of the time, and that is probably one of the most realistic parts of those scenes. You still don’t want to be ‘up-range’ from lethal weapons.

Free Crime Fiction Books

The Red Lotus - Chris Bohjalian (Copy)

Genre: Thrillers & Suspense

Chris Bohjalian published The Red Lotus at the very beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. After reading this book, you have to question whether or not he had an inside track! I’m glad that I read it at the end of the pandemic. (I hope it’s the end. Don’t want to jinx it - as Bohjalian writes about one of the characters at the end of the book.)

Alexis - an ER doctor - and her boyfriend go off to Vietnam on a bike tour. At the beginning of the book she is waiting in the hotel for him to return from a solo ride taken ostensibly to visit sites that were important to his family. But he never comes back. It was a dangerous road. And he probably shouldn’t have been biking alone. But the story is much more sinister than a simple bike accident.

As Alexis begins to learn more about this man, his lies unravel. Her need to know parallels her emergency room character. She could have just left it alone, but she feels the need to hire a private investigator, to contact police sources in Vietnam, and not trust anyone.

The most positive characters in the story are in Vietnam. There is an overlay of the horrible things that Westerners have inflicted on the Vietnamese people.

I had a problem with her insertion into the mysteries of his character because he told her that his father was wounded in battle. And he wasn’t. Would that really have been enough to catapult someone into a cascade of events that resulted in a great deal of death and dying?

And there was a long filler piece about the private eye’s experience in Vietnam during the war that didn’t move the story forward.

On the other hand Bohjalian’s writing is excellent and worth reading. The story is carefully researched and technically well supported. It is a thriller tale that comes way too close to paralleling reality.

Don’t ignore the Epilogue.

The Red Lotus - Chris Bohjalian

Genre: Thrillers & Suspense

Chris Bohjalian published The Red Lotus at the very beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. After reading this book, you have to question whether or not he had an inside track! I’m glad that I read it at the end of the pandemic. (I hope it’s the end. Don’t want to jinx it - as Bohjalian writes about one of the characters at the end of the book.)

Alexis - an ER doctor - and her boyfriend go off to Vietnam on a bike tour. At the beginning of the book she is waiting in the hotel for him to return from a solo ride taken ostensibly to visit sites that were important to his family. But he never comes back. It was a dangerous road. And he probably shouldn’t have been biking alone. But the story is much more sinister than a simple bike accident.

As Alexis begins to learn more about this man, his lies unravel. Her need to know parallels her emergency room character. She could have just left it alone, but she feels the need to hire a private investigator, to contact police sources in Vietnam, and not trust anyone.

The most positive characters in the story are in Vietnam. There is an overlay of the horrible things that Westerners have inflicted on the Vietnamese people.

I had a problem with her insertion into the mysteries of his character because he told her that his father was wounded in battle. And he wasn’t. Would that really have been enough to catapult someone into a cascade of events that resulted in a great deal of death and dying?

And there was a long filler piece about the private eye’s experience in Vietnam during the war that didn’t move the story forward.

On the other hand Bohjalian’s writing is excellent and worth reading. The story is carefully researched and technically well supported. It is a thriller tale that comes way too close to paralleling reality.

Don’t ignore the Epilogue.

Naughty Words & Stuff to Check

Writing a first draft requires writing down the words as they flow out of the brain. No checks. No balances. Only natural tweaks and refinements. JUST LET GO! And then you can take the time to pull out all the weeds as you develop the second draft.

I have a check list that I go through of all these little nasty zingers that pull the power away from what I’m trying to say. Here they are - in no particular order:

words that end in ing

words that end in ly

there

here

it was (it)

down into (down)

off over (off)

back away

up toward

as

looking

glancing

heading

turning/turned

went

began

and

just

only

Take for example a simple sentence like this, “Mostly he was thinking about what his father had said about his future.” “Was thinking” is a passive approach. If I change that to “Mostly he thought about what his father had said about his future”, it’s still not a great sentence, but improved. My process is to go through every chapter once for each of these naughty words. Some of them I can’t change - I can’t take the ing off spring for example. Some of them cause a struggle to find a way around. Some of them go fast. Give it a try. Expose some of your writing to these little uglies.

Hopefully after I go through each chapter 19 times I can weed out the majority of these weaklings and find a bunch of typos and other gotchas along the way. It always amazes me how much better the writing is after I go through this process.

Learn more

The Searcher - Tana French

Genre: Mystery

This is Tana French’s eighth novel, but the only one I have had the pleasure of reading so far. This book is going onto my reference shelf - books that I pull out when I want to remind myself how to write a particular scene.

There are numerous levels to this book. First of all, the overall canvas of the story. French’s description of the sky, hills, fields, and weather provides a dynamic, visual background for all the events that transpire.

Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago police officer who buys a run-down house in Ireland. He believes the remote village to be peaceful and untroubled by crime and murder, a place where he can just quietly rehabilitate his run down house and watch the rooks scold him from end of his yard. That’s the way it starts - just sliding into the scenery.

Then there are the people. His neighbor, Mart, likes his cookies, but like everything else in this story there is more to Mart than his neighborly charm.

Cal goes drinking at the local pub and is induced into the local society, drinking some home brew. French does such an amazing job describing this evening that I was concerned that I was going to wake up with a hangover the next morning. She described one of the participants (I’m paraphrasing) as making face like a frog linking piss off a nettle.

French layers the story on like the skin of an onion with a solid structure, wonderful characters, beautiful scenery and a bit of romance and violence to make it interesting.

The story is written in the present tense which I always find a challenge. There are backstory references in the past tense, but keeping the main stream of the tale in the present tense creates an immediacy to the words. It’s happening now as I’m reading it. It’s the kind of story that fits neatly within the covers - as though Cal’s life begins and ends right there and goes no further.

But the rooks are always there to comment.

It is an entertaining book, but it is also a master class in how to write a mystery without buildings exploding or planes falling out of the sky. Excellent. I’ll have to read more of Tana French’s books.