D.R. Martin's Blog, page 8

King Harald’s Heist Cover Unveiled

The second canine cozy mystery in the King Harald series is coming ever closer to publication. And last week I finalized the cover art with designer Steve Thomas. Once again, my cover boy is Fiver—alas, no longer with us. I had two enjoyable backyard photo sessions with Fiver and there are enough good shots for a long series of books. I’m so grateful to Fiver’s “boss”—my friend Kelly—for allowing me to use his image.

Jack Frost at Work

Whether it’s the Polar Vortex or some other unwelcome visitor from Canada, here in Minnesota we’re in the deep freeze–about -12 with a -30 windchill. I found this little piece of natural art on one of my dining room windows. I think this was formerly steam from the lentil soup we made last night.

Mistaken Assumptions Make for Great Laughs

A psychiatrist and his wife are dining at Fawlty Towers in Torquay. He asks proprietor Basil Fawlty how often he and his wife Sybil are able to get away on holiday each year.

But Basil—put on edge by the presence of the shrink—walks away for a brief moment as the psychiatrist is talking.  When he steps back to the table, the shrink asks him how many times they manage it? The ever-paranoid Basil  mistakenly assumes the doctor is talking about how often he and Sybil have sex. While the true answer is almost certainly “Not very often,” Basil puffs himself up and boasts, “Two or three times a week.”

It’s not for nothing that Fawlty Towers has been called the “Sistine Chapel of sitcoms.” I’ve never laughed harder in my life than I did when I first saw this episode.

Very few of us who try to write humorous stories ever achieve the John Cleese/Connie Booth level of brilliance. But in the second King Harald cozy mystery, which is now with my editor, I did my best to earn some laughs with Andy and Harald’s shenanigans. One of the plot devices I use is that of the mistaken assumption.

How many good gags are based on one party in the scene assuming one thing, and another party assuming he or she is talking about something else?

Here’s an old (slightly edited) classic version of that technique, found among some old family letters from my wife’s grandmother. My guess is that it dates back to the days of the Model T. I hope it gives you a smile as we ring out the old year and welcome the new.

A newly married couple were looking for a house in the country, and after finding one that they thought was suitable, happened to think that they had not noticed a water closet [flushing toilet] on the premises, and decided to write the owner about it. The young wife did not like to write out the word water closet, being very modest, so she referred to it as the W. C. The owner did not readily understand just what she meant, but after pondering a while came to the conclusion that it was the Wesleyan Church to which she referred, located near them, and answered her letter as follows:
 
Dear Madam:
 
I regret very much the delay in answering your letter, and now take pleasure in informing you that the W. C. is located about nine miles from the house and capable of seating 200 people. This is very unfortunate indeed if you are in the habit of going regularly. No doubt you will be interested to know that a great many people take their lunches with them and make a day of it, while others come by auto and usually arrive just in time.
 
The last time my wife and I went was six years ago, and we had to stand up all the time. It may also interest you to know that it is planned to hold a bazaar to raise funds for plush seats, as that is a long-felt want. I might add that it pains me very much to be unable to go frequently. It is really through no lack of desire, but as we grow older it seems more of an effort to make the trip, particularly in the winter time.
 
Very truly yours,
 
Wat. A. Simp.

Loretta + Ronny — Moonstruck Forever

Last night Sue and I pulled out the Blu Ray of our all-time favorite rom-com, Moonstruck, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. It’s hard to imagine a better screwball romance than that of the Italian-American bookkeeper and the baker from Brooklyn. We’ve seen the film a dozen times, but this was the first time we noticed that the performance of La Boheme they were to attend at the Met is on November 15. So, happy first-date anniversary to Loretta and Ronny!

I know of no other rom-com script (by John Patrick Shanley) that is more perfectly crafted. Here’s one of my favorite exchanges between the two lovers, after Loretta has seen Mimi’s fate in La Boheme:

Loretta: That was so awful.

Ronny: Awful?

Loretta: Beautiful… sad. She died!

Ronny: Yes.

Loretta: I was surprised… You know, I didn’t really think she was gonna die. I knew she was sick.

Ronny: She had TB.

Loretta: I know! I mean, she was coughing her brains out, and still she had to keep singing!

While I was looking for a photo of the two lovers–that’s them above, at the Met–I ran across a couple of interesting posts about locations in the film. Ronnie Camareri’s bakery apparently actually was called Camareri’s Bakery. I assume they named the two brothers after the real bakery. And Loretta’s house in Brooklyn Heights sold in 2008 for $4 million.

 

Back Somewhere in Time to Mackinac

Earlier this fall a couple of things conspired to point me in the direction of a cult movie of the late 1970s called Somewhere in Time. It starred a young, vibrant Christopher Reeve and a luminous young Jane Seymour. I’ll let Amazon describe it:

“Somewhere in Time is the story of a young writer who sacrifices his life in the present to find happiness in the past, where true love awaits him. Young Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is approached by an elderly woman who gives him an antique gold watch and who pleads with him to return in time with her. Years later, Richard Collier is overwhelmed by a photograph of a beautiful young woman (Jane Seymour). Another picture of this woman in her later years reveals to him that she is the same woman who had given him the gold watch. Collier then becomes obsessed with returning to 1912 and the beautiful young woman who awaits him there.”

Though I’d never seen the film, it interested me because I’m in the process of writing a third Mary MacDougall mystery, in which Mary travels to Mackinac Island. That’s where the movie was made; and the historical scenes are roughly in the period when Mary was sleuthing. Many of the scenes in the film were shot at the island’s famous Grand Hotel.

Because Sue and I haven’t had a vacation trip in several years, we decided in September to drive over to Mackinac, do a little research, and knock around the island. I’d been there once before, and nothing really had changed. The main street is tourist-trap city, with fudge shops up the ying-yang. But when you walk, bike, or carriage your way back into the island (horse-drawn vehicles only), it’s quite lovely. We only picked up on the film after we got back.

Somewhere in Time tanked when it was released to movie theaters. But its appearance on early cable TV and as a video rental built it into a cult film that’s beloved around the world. It has a magazine, a yearly convention, and looks like an romantic evergreen for the ages. Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer are still acting away. The director of the film, Jeannot Szwarc, remains active directing TV shows such as The Good Wife and Fringe.

Christopher Reeve’s fate was tragic. But the DVD has extras that feature him, several years before he died, wheelchair-bound, raving about this film that he loved so much–at a time in his career when he was trying to break out of the typecasting of being Superman.

Here you can visit the Somewhere in Time official site.

And here you can get the DVD or Blu Ray.

Glorious Fall Color

Okay, I know that photos like this one are a little too trite, a little too Norman Rockwell. But I just couldn’t resist putting it up.

This scene is just a few blocks from where I live, and it’s Exhibit A in the case for this being one of the most glorious fall color seasons in Minnesota in years. This, after all, is just an ordinary residential street. What must things look like out in the countryside!

And when I arrive home, here’s what greets me by my back door.

Who Is Howard Pease?

Chances are you’ve never heard of Howard Pease.

But he was one of America’s most successful kids’ authors of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. He is best known for a series of boys’ adventure stories set on the rough-and-ready tramp steamers of that era. They follow a stalwart, brave young fellow called Tod Moran, up until the point he earns the exalted position of Second Mate. And what an exciting life he leads!

I probably read a dozen Tod Moran adventures when I was young, because the shelves of the neighborhood library happened to have a bunch of them. They were a staple of my lazy summer reading on the living room sofa, the chaise lounge outside, or under a big old tree in a nearby park.

Just to get his research right, Pease himself worked one summer on a tramp steamer as a fireman and a wiper – both hot, dirty, dangerous jobs. Though written from a lad’s point of view, his tales are anything but sentimental and sometimes even brutal. You can literally smell the sweat and salt and oil and hot metal of life on the open sea. One of his aims was to convey to boys and young men what the real world could be like.

An old article in the San Jaoquin Historian describes Pease’s view: “[Pease] was especially struck by the unrealistic value system presented in many children’s books. Most stories had the hero become wealthy or the school’s winning athlete or fraternity president. Pease felt that a far more realistic view of things was necessary to prepare children for life’s ex­periences. ‘When you begin to get rid of your illusions about life, you are beginning to grow up – to mature into an adult.'”

This past summer I read two Pease titles: Secret Cargo and Jinx Ship. And, just as I remembered from many years ago, Pease tells a ripping yarn.

Secret Cargo (1931) follows a boy, Larry Matthews, who has run away from home, looking for any perch at all; just something to keep a roof over his head and food in his stomach. Through a series of mishaps on the New Orleans docks, he ends up in the black gang (engine room crew) of a tramp steamer, delivering coal to firemen in the blazing, filthy heat down below. And to complicate matters, he has his best friend to take care of–a little black dog called Sambo. When Larry forgets himself and digs coal in a forbidden bunker, he finds a locked chest. And thereby hangs the tale.

Jinx Ship (1927) is the second Tod Moran adventure, and follows Tod as he ships out on the star-crossed Congo as a wiper. On board he makes friend with another young wiper, the scion of a wealthy family who has failed again and again to stay in college. Together, the two of them fall into the mystery of a murdered Frenchman, the matter of a rebellion of black people on a Caribbean isle, and a conspiracy of gun smuggling. Along the way, Tod and his friend get lost on the island and very nearly end up as human sacrifices. Using “the little gray cells” (keep in mind, this is contemporary with the early Hercule Poirot mysteries), Tod makes repeated runs at the convoluted facts of the business, and in the end triumphs.

As the author of two ripping yarns for young readers (at least I like to think they’re “ripping”), I’m full of admiration for Pease. Both these novels are well over eighty years old and they remain entertaining reads. These are unashamed boys’ stories, let’s be frank about that. Female characters are practically nonexistent. But I’m convinced any young reader who likes rough-and-ready adventure and real peril will enjoy them – boy or girl – despite their inevitable archaic qualities. There is a caveat, though…

If these Pease tales are so good, why haven’t they been reissued in new editions? Why do you have to go to library stacks or used book sellers to find them? Somebody has to own the copyrights and why wouldn’t they seek some value from them?

I think the answer lies in something characteristic of many other books from this era. By today’s standards, these books are very much politically incorrect.

These two stories, at least, contain off-handed racism and occasional use of the n-word. This was common eight decades ago. But it was as wrong then as it is now. Many readers, coming upon this viewpoint unawares, would undoubtedly be offended – young, old, or in between.

For Pease’s books to be reissued for the kids of today, they would have to be edited clean of their racism. It wouldn’t be hard to do, but apparently no one cares to try.

USA Today recently noted that Warner Brother has reissued the old Tom & Jerry cartoons from 1940-1957. They come with a disclaimer that these works ‘may depict some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society.”

Would it be enough for Pease’s books to be reissued with such a disclaimer?

Mary MacDougall Featured on Examiner.com

The new Mary MacDougall paperback, A Mary MacDougall Mystery Duet, was just featured in the Book Spotlight of the excellent Examiner.com. Dana Michelle Burnett of the Louisville Books Examiner writes about the stories in the two novellas, as well as yours truly. It’s the nicest attention the new paperback has received.

Seeing the book cover featured here also reminds me what a terrific job designer Steve Thomas did in melding together the two e-book covers. These three covers are, I think, the best so far on my books.

To see the Examiner.com Book Spotlight on Mary, just click here.

Volunteer Tomatoes

Two summers ago, out in our backyard amid the hostas and nasturtiums, we noticed a sort of unexpected interloper: Several tomato plants popping up.

Rather than root them out, Sue and I decided to let them mature. Well, we didn’t get any nice big slicing tomatoes. But we did get what you see above–an heirloom variety called Currant Tomato. They’re bite-sized, little things about 3/4 inches in diameter. Some random squirrel or bird must have eaten one nearby, and deposited the seeds.

This year they’ve spread around the backyard and we’ve already harvested twice what we did last year–about two cups of cute little tomatoes. They taste great in salads, giving juicy bursts of flavor. To the critter that left those seeds, our thanks!

Here they are in situ, with one of the cover boys from my next King Harald mystery–which should be out early next year.

 

 

Post WWII Gem: Montgomery Clift’s Big Lift

Geopolitics is not a normal subject for this blog, but the situation in eastern Europe led me to an old Montgomery Clift film that addressed the aftermath of that last great European breakdown. It’s a 1950 Hollywood film about the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. In it Clift plays an airman flying a C-54 (aka the Douglas DC-4) into and out of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport. The main plot involves Clift’s romance with the widow of a German officer. (The Lithuanian actress who played her, Cornell Borchers, just died this past spring. She also starred with Rock Hudson and Errol Flynn, but retired from acting in 1959.) Their relationship ends with a twist. Here they are together.

But that isn’t the point of interest. What makes The Big Lift a minor gem are its many views of street life in post-war Berlin amidst the rubble and poverty. Most of the U.S. air force men are played by real airmen. It is more docu-drama than drama. What writer-director George Seton shows is the real deal, and it’s fascinating to view. It’s not a great movie by any means, but it is definitely worth a look. The DVD is available on Netflix. It’s also out there in  a cheapie Mill Creek war film box–Mission Victory.