Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 91

Some Thoughts on the Art and Craft of Writing

I was interviewed recently about the art and craft of writing in general and writing in the historical fiction genre in particular.

As a journalist for some thirty years, I interviewed thousands of people all over the world. Now that I am on the other side of the table, I am finding that being the interviewee is as different from being the interviewer as chalk and cheese.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy being interviewed because it obliges me to think about what I do. It’s a lot like teaching. You must be able to verbalize your skills and knowledge and present them in a compelling way to teach effectively.

That’s not always easy to do. But I thought I would share my interview with my readers. I hope you will find it useful and perhaps even enjoyable.

Q. What historical time periods interest you the most and how have you immersed yourself in a particular time?

A. Growing up in rural Kansas I was always fascinated by the state’s 19th Century history. Kansas was a pivotal state before the Civil War because it entered the union as a free state and was populated–especially in the Northeast–by abolitionists. Kansas was a terminus for the Underground Railroad.

After the Civil War, it became about as wild and violent as any state in the union. Cattle drives from Texas, wild cow towns, outlaws, legendary lawmen and fraudsters of every stripe gave Kansas a wicked reputation. At the same time, the 19th Century in America was a time of fantastic growth, invention, progress, and expansion.

For some, such as Native Americans, this growth was not a pleasant experience, and in some cases, it was quite deadly. For others, the possibilities seemed limitless. Prosperity seemed restricted only by one’s determination and effort.

[image error]             Dodge City, Kansas

Q.  Introduce us briefly to the main characters in Book 1 of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy.

A. William Fitzroy Raglan Battles is the main character in the trilogy. We meet Billy Battles through his great-grandson who meets him when he is 98 years old and living in an old soldiers’ home in Leavenworth, Kansas. The great-grandson inherits Billy’s journals and other belongings. Then, following his great-grandfather’s request, he produces three books that reveal Billy’s fantastic life.

The book begins with Billy introducing himself. We learn that his father is killed during the Civil War. He is reared by his widowed mother, Hannelore, a second-generation German-American woman who has to be both mother and father to her only son, rears him.[image error]

It is a tall order, but Billy grows up properly and is seemingly on the right path. His mother, a hardy and resilient woman, makes a decent living as a dressmaker in Lawrence, Kansas. An ardent believer in the value of a good education, she insists that Billy attend the newly minted University of Kansas in Lawrence. She is a powerful influence in his life, as are several other people he meets along the way.

There is Luther Longley, an African-American former army scout who Billy and his mother meet at Ft. Dodge in 1866. He escorts them the 300 miles to Lawrence and winds up being a close friend to both Billy and his mother.

There is Horace Hawes, publisher and Editor of the Lawrence Union newspaper who takes Billy with him to start a new paper in Dodge City. There is Ben Minot, a typesetter and former Northern Army Sharpshooter, who still carries a mini ball in his body from the war and a load of antipathy toward The Confederacy.

There is Signore Antonio DiFranco; the Italian political exile Billy meets in Dodge City. There is Mallie McNab, the girl Billy meets, falls in love with, marries and with whom he hopes to live out his life. There is Charley Higgins, Billy’s first cousin, who sometimes treads just south of the law, but who is also Billy’s most faithful compadre.

Then there is the Bledsoe family–particularly Nate Bledsoe who blames Billy for the deaths of his mother and brother and who swears vengeance.

Book one of the trilogy ends with Billy on a steamship in 1894 heading for French Indo-China and other points in the Orient where one adventure (and misadventure) after another awaits him.

Book 2, The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles, begins with Billy aboard the S.S. China headed for Saigon from San Francisco. Aboard the S.S. China Billy meets the mysterious Widow Katharina Schreiber, a woman who propels Billy into a series of calamities and dubious situations. She may or may not be a good influence on him.

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He also meets a passel of shady characters as well as some old friends from his days in Kansas, etc. Events conspire to embroil him in a variety of disputes, conflicts and struggles in places like French Indochina and the Spanish-American War in The Philippines–events with which a Kansas sand cutter is hardly equipped to deal.

How does he handle these adventures in the “mysterious East?” You will have to read Book #2 to find out!

Q. What drew you to write this story

A.I was intrigued by the idea of a 19th Century Kansas boy forced to deal with a string of tragedies and misadventures who eventually makes his way to the Far East in search of himself.

How would he handle himself in such strange places as French Indochina, the Spanish-controlled Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.? I spent most of my career as a foreign correspondent in Asia and I often wondered what it would have been like to have been in that part of the world in the 19th Century. This book gives me (and my readers) an opportunity to find out.

Q. On what are you currently working?

A. I just finished The Lost Years of Billy Battles, Book #3 of the trilogy. As Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy begins we know where Billy is. He is in Chicago with his wife, the former Baroness Katharina von Schreiber living a sedate and comfortable life after years of adventure and tragedy. That changes with a single telephone call that yanks Billy and Katharina back into a life of turmoil and danger.

Persuaded by a powerful old friend to go undercover for the U.S. government the two find themselves in Mexico during the height of the violent 1910-1920 revolution. There they encounter assorted German spies, Mexican revolutionaries, devious political operatives, and other malefactors. Caught in the middle of the 1914 American invasion of Veracruz, they must find a way out while keeping their real identities secret.

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After managing to extract themselves from danger, disaster strikes. It is a tragedy Billy is all too familiar with and one that will send him plummeting into a painful abyss of despair and agony. Consequently, Billy vanishes leaving family and friends to wonder what happened to him. Where is he? Is he dead or alive? What provoked his disappearance? In Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy, those questions are answered, and the mystery behind Billy’s disappearance is finally revealed.

Q. Is there ever a time when you feel like your work is truly finished and complete?

A.I don’t know if that ever happens. I do know that at some point, YOU MUST LET IT GO! Writing a book is a bit like rearing a child. Eventually, after you have imbued the child with as much of your worldly experience and wisdom as he or she can grasp and absorb you have to allow your creation to encounter the world. It’s the same with books. Writers can fiddle with plots, characters, endings, and beginnings ad nauseam and never feel the book is finished. My advice. JUST FINISH THE DAMNED BOOK! Get over it and get the book out into the public domain. Readers will let you know if you have finished the book–and if they like it.

Q.  What is the most significant misconception beginning writers have about being published? 

A. Probably that once you get a publishing contract, you are going to become a millionaire. I have published two books before Billy Battles with traditional publishers, and I am still on the hunt for my first million. The J. K. Rowling’s of the world are anomalies. However, thank God they do exist because it keeps the rest of us working our tails off in pursuit of that elusive kind of success. I do believe many writers write for the sheer joy we get from telling a good story–at least I do. The $$ are less of an incentive.

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Q. What would I like readers to gain from reading my book(s)? 

A. Because the Finding Billy Battles trilogy is historical fiction and is set in the 19th Century, I would like readers to get a sense of the time and place of the story. I would like them to have an appreciation of the way people lived, how they thought, and how they dealt with both adversity and triumph in a very different era. Finally, I would like readers to finish the trilogy and think to themselves: “Damn, I didn’t want that story to end!”

Q.  Do you have some final words for readers or writers?

A. For Readers: Please DON’T STOP READING! Those of us who love telling stories need you. And when you read a book, don’t be shy. Write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, etc. and let us know what you liked and didn’t like about a book. I value the reviews I get from Amazon Verified Purchase customers more than I do from professional or editorial reviewers. After all, customers spent money on the book and that gives them the right to tell the author what they think.

A. For Writers: Keep Writing. The world needs good storytellers today more than ever. I know that many who write are frustrated by letters of rejection from agents and publishers. Don’t be discouraged. If you can’t get a book before the reading public going the traditional publishing route, consider self or indie publishing. Publish on Demand (POD) books are everywhere these days and so are e-books. Writers today don’t have to feel a rejection letter the last word in their aspiration to publish. You have options to reach readers that didn’t exist 10 or even five years ago.

I must be honest, however. Many self-published books are not well done. The writing may be poor quality; the covers are often inferior, and the proofreading and editing are shoddy. Frankly, some books should never have made it off the printing press or into an e-file. However, there are enough gems coming from self-published authors to offset the marginal efforts.

Q. What advice do you have for beginners?

A. Give yourself time to learn the craft of writing. How do you do that? Read, read, and read. If you want to write well, read well. Learn from the best; imitate, and by that, I don’t mean plagiarize. Listen to the words! You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on writing seminars, conferences, etc. Gifted writing can’t be taught. It must be learned. And we learn from doing it; from experience.

Writing is a discipline that you can learn at any age. Unlike ballet or basketball or modeling, becoming an author is not something that if you missed doing at 16, 18 or 20, you could never do again. You are NEVER too old to begin writing!

[image error] Pearl S. Buck

I recall interviewing Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck once. It was late fall, 1971, and at the time she was living in Vermont. We were talking on the phone, and suddenly she began describing her backyard and what she said was the first snow of the season.

“You should see this, Ron. From my office window, I am watching a leisurely shower of white crystals floating, drifting, and landing softly onto a carpet of jade. I wish you could see it.”

“I do,” I said. “Thanks for showing me.”

I never forgot that conversation with the first American female Nobel laureate. She was 79 and still writing. Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her book “The Good Earth,” about life in rural China.

Finally, writing–as difficult as it is–should also be fun. When you turn a beautiful phrase or create a vivid scene, you should feel a little flutter in your heart, a shiver in your soul. If you do, that means you have struck an evocative chord with your writing. Nothing is more rewarding than that!

Write On!

 

My Favorite Classic Hotels

[One of the great things about being a foreign correspondent is the opportunity one has of staying in classic hotels around the world. During my career, I stayed in my share of them–some more classic than others. In some cases, I lived in a hotel for months at a time [the Continental Palace in Saigon, the old Le Phnom–now the Royal–in Phnom Penh, the Rosarito Beach Hotel in Baja California, etc.]. From time to time I will post a story I wrote about one of these classic inns. Today, I am sharing my look at the Grand Dame of Asia, the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.]

‘LET’S MEET AT THE PEN,’ HONG KONG’S MOST ELEGANT GATHERING PLACE IS STILL THE PLACE TO BE

There are some experiences every traveler to Asia should savor at least once. There is the experience of strolling through that ancient and sprawling citadel of opulence and imperial intrigue called the Forbidden City in the heart of Beijing.

There is the experience of visiting the Grand Shrine on Japan’s lush Ise Peninsula–the most revered spot in The Land of the Rising Sun. Its assortment of ascetic Shinto shrines, surrounded by ancient forests of cedar and cypress, is where the spirits of Japan’s past emperors are enshrined.

And there is the experience of sitting in the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel on the southern tip of Kowloon Peninsula in what was, until July 1, 1997, the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong.

True, the lobby of The Peninsula cannot match the verdant panoramas of Ise or the expansive dimensions of the Forbidden City.

But sitting in the legendary lobby of The Pen is nevertheless one of those splendid little Asian experiences that should not be missed.

[image error] The Peninsula’s Exquisite Lobby

From the time the hotel opened in 1928 the long, rectangular, neoclassical lobby has been Hong Kong’s most elegant gathering place. For 80 years the phrase “Let’s meet at The Pen” has meant “Let’s meet in the lobby of The Peninsula.”

And that’s exactly what thousands of people do every year. Some are attracted by the traditional afternoon tea with its strawberry cakes, sandwiches, and the hotel’s fabled green mango juice–all served in Tiffany chinaware on tables topped with marble.

A live string quartet plays Mozart, Haydn, and Vivaldi from a small corner balcony overlooking the lobby. In the evening the mood changes. Jazz supplants Rococo and Baroque, and more robust liquid refreshment flows forth.

But even though the music and refreshment are terrific, there is another, more compelling reason to visit the lobby of The Pen. It offers Asia’s best venue for that age-old pastime: people watching.

It’s an eclectic, multinational crowd that passes through the hotel’s massive glass doors and into the lobby today–some in linen and jeans, some in Dior and Armani.

But back in the early 1970s when this correspondent first made The Pen’s acquaintance, the lobby was still frequented by aging relics of the British Raj, who would gather in the evening for gin and tonic and watch the last rays of sunlight evaporate in the azure waters of Victoria Harbor.

Some would reminisce about pre-World War II Hong Kong, reflecting on a simpler era when high-rises didn’t obscure the jade hills of Hong Kong Island and rickshaws still scurried along the colony’s streets.

In those days, the only way to travel between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon was on the Star Ferry. The 12 green and white ferries have been making the 8-minute trip between Tsim-Sha-Tsui and Central Hong Kong Island since 1898, and the fare of HK $1.70 (about 22 U.S. cents) for the upper deck and HK $1.40 (about 18 cents) for the lower deck hasn’t changed in 98 years.

Despite those prices, the Cross Harbor Tunnel under Victoria Harbor is the route most car, bus, and truck traffic takes between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island today.

Although Hong Kong’s old hands offer parsimonious approval of the tunnel’s convenience, they are less forthcoming in their praise of Hong Kong in general. Some are still skeptical of the colony’s future since control shifted in 1997 from the British to the Communist regime in Beijing.

“Too damned many cloud scratchers,” opined a retired Swiss trader named Felix Hartfeld as he regarded the Hong Kong skyline with its ever-expanding forest of glass and granite skyscrapers. “The place is losing its character . . . .Its charm. If it had looked like this in 1938, I never would have come here. I certainly wouldn’t have come here if the Communists had been in control. Just wait. They’ll make a proper mess of everything.”

Old hands like Hartfeld are more forgiving of The Pen and the changes it has made through the years.

Nevertheless, Hartfeld and others of his generation affectionately recall the lobby of The Pen “B.A.C.” (before air conditioning) when teakwood paddle fans hung from its 25-foot ceilings, cool evening breezes blew through open doors from the harbor, and “ladies of ambiguous virtue” lounged at the tables on the left side of the lobby.

Why the left side? Because in those days it was the part of the lobby that was out of view of the front desk and, therefore, a discrete place for those to meet who didn’t want to be noticed.

“The left side of the lobby was for ladies who were, shall we say, available,” recalled Bryan Reid, a former Australian merchant marine captain who, in the 1960s and ’70s, ferried supplies between Hong Kong and Saigon. “The right side was for more virtuous Hong Kong society.”

Reid, now in his 70s, sighed. “Those were times,” he said lifting a glass of Tsingtao beer to his lips. “Those were some damned good times.”

The 1960s and ’70s were also a time of intense, internal turmoil for The Pen. For the first time since it opened its doors, The Pen was faced with a sudden burst of competition.

The first serious international competitor was the Hong Kong Hilton, which opened in 1963. As difficult as it is to believe today standing amid the opulence of The Peninsula, the Hilton–not the Peninsula–was Hong Kong’s first official five-star international hotel.

[image error] A Lobby Like No Other

Located across Victoria Harbor from The Pen on Hong Kong Island, the Hilton was one of those glass and granite towers so despised by people like Hartfeld. Its 820 rooms overlooked Queens Pier, the Star Ferry, and Chater Park. It had all the latest gadgetry, including the first Xerox copy machine in Hong Kong. (Sadly, the Hilton closed its doors in April 1995. The hotel was a favorite of many of the region’s foreign correspondents–due in large part to longtime general manager James Smith, a Scotsman, who had a soft spot for itinerant hacks. Even though the Hilton was earning about $500 million a year in revenue, it was sitting on land that could earn more than $1 billion annually as an office complex.)

Within a few years of the Hilton’s debut, other international hotels opened in Hong Kong, among them the Mandarin and the President.

The Regent Hong Kong, regarded as The Pen’s stiffest competition today, didn’t open until 1980. The 16-year-old, 602-room hotel sits on the shore of Victoria Harbor just down Salisbury Road from The Peninsula. Like The Peninsula, the red granite, 17-story Regent consistently ranks among the top five hotels in the world.

But back in the early 1970s, before there was a Regent to worry about, the Peninsula Group (the operations and marketing division of Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd.) which manages The Peninsula and six other hotels, was faced with another problem.

Those with eyes fixed firmly on the bottom line argued that with only 168 rooms The Pen couldn’t possibly compete with Hong Kong’s newer and much larger hotels. Across Salisbury Road, directly in front of the hotel, the Canton-Kowloon Railway station already had been torn down and prime waterfront real estate was beckoning to the bean counters.

It all added up to a compelling argument–even for the sentimentalists in the Peninsula Group who were reluctant to scrap decades of history and tradition.

And in the end, the profit motive did indeed win out, and plans were made to raze the old hotel and rebuild a much larger Peninsula along the edge of Victoria Harbor, about 100 yards from its current location.

When word got out about the plans to demolish The Pen, many of Hong Kong’s old hands were infuriated. How could the Peninsula Group even remotely consider demolishing one of Hong Kong’s icons–especially one that was the repository of so much of the colony’s fabled history?

Hong Kong was suddenly rife with amateur historians, recalled one Peninsula staff member. And each was intent on reminding the hotel’s management again and again of the role The Pen had played in that history.

Some of that history was made even before The Peninsula officially opened.

In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists were battling China’s communists for control of mainland China. Faced with the genuine possibility that the struggle would spill over into Hong Kong, the British rulers of the colony brought troops into Hong Kong from India and the Middle East. They promptly commandeered the almost finished Peninsula and turned it into a barracks for the Second Battalion of the Coldstream Guards.

Machine guns were mounted on The Pen’s balcony so the troops could conduct target practice. Rooms became billets. Ammunition and supplies were stored in the hotel garage.

A year later, with order restored in China, the troops departed and at 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 11, 1928, the hotel officially opened its doors to its first paying guests.

The first person through the doors was Hong Kong’s governor, the Honorable Sir Wilfred Thomas Southorn. Hotel documents show that as Sir Wilfred entered The Pen’s lobby with his wife and several official guests, the band played “God Save the King,” followed by a march titled “Steadfast and True.”

Some 3,000 people roamed through the hotel that day, and it didn’t take long for the lobby to become what one colony wag called “Hong Kong’s emporium of gossip.”

That lasted until Christmas Day, 1941, when, after three weeks of fighting, Imperial Japanese troops took the colony. On that day British Governor, Sir Mark Young surrendered Hong Kong to the Japanese. The ceremony was conducted (where else?) in the lobby of The Peninsula. Immediately afterward, Sir Mark was placed under house arrest in Room 336.

Hong Kong’s new governor, Japanese Lt. Gen. Rensuke Isogai, ordered the Rising Sun flag hoisted over The Pen and then turned the hotel into Imperial Japan’s official Hong Kong headquarters–but not before renaming it the “Toa (East Asia) Hotel.”

The Pen’s new name was meant to reflect Imperial Japan’s attempt to create what it called “The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

For almost four years the hotel resonated with the sounds of Japanese. Then, on Aug. 14, 1945, another surrender ceremony was held in The Peninsula. This time, it was Imperial Japan’s turn to capitulate.

[image error]   Japanese Surrender in 1945

In the months immediately following the war, the hotel became a refugee center, with some 2,000 homeless men, women and children packed into its 168 rooms, lobby, and corridors. Many were prisoners repatriated from Japanese POW camps.

When the hotel was finally turned over to the Peninsula Group at the end of 1946 by the British government, they found a building in dire need of repairs. Two feet of water stood in the basement–the result of a street-level hole created by Allied bomb damage. And most of the hotel’s crockery and cutlery had been liberated by the Japanese and the throng of postwar refugees.

By 1947 the hotel had returned to normal operations. And by the early 1950s, it was not only ranked as Asia’s top hotel, but its historic role in the war also had given The Pen a kind of official significance and magisterial stateliness that elevated it to something more than an elegant bivouac for travelers.

The Pen was now, more than ever, a part of Hong Kong lore–a place awash in the ebb and flow of legend and fact. As a result, it attracted a who’s who of writers, from Noel Coward and Eric Ambler to Arthur Miller and Sterling Silliphant.

In the 1960s James Clavell moved in for almost two years and began penning books such as “Noble House,” “Taipan” and “Shogun.”

There was little doubt that the Pen had become the primary magnet for the social, literary and political elite of the region.

That’s the way things continued until the early 1970s when talk of razing the hotel thundered through Hong Kong like a spring typhoon.

It was in this atmosphere that this correspondent first set foot in The Pen’s lobby. You couldn’t have a conversation there in those days without someone commenting on the future of the revered hostelry.

“If they rip the old place down, the owners should be taken out and flogged, by God,” huffed one of The Pen’s aging regulars one evening in the lobby. “It would be a bloody outrage . . . like scuttling the Star Ferry or shearing off the top of Victoria Peak.”

The man, a British businessman, named Thomas Crowell who arrived in Hong Kong in the early 1930s and married a Russian woman born in China, earned his livelihood in the shipping industry. During the war, he was captured by the Japanese and, like thousands of other British POWs, spent almost four years in a POW camp on the island of Hainan.

“I was billeted in The Peninsula after the war with a lot of other chaps from that bloody awful POW camp,” he recalled. “There was no electric, no running water, and nothing coming up from the kitchen. But even if we smelled like hell and cooked beans over Sterno cans in the hallway, it was still The Pen. And it felt like home. And it still does, by God. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let it go without a damned proper scuffle.”

As it turned out, Crowell needn’t have worried.

The global oil crisis and a precipitous drop-off in tourism during the recession-plagued early 1970s combined to scotch plans to raze and rebuild across Salisbury Road. The Pen was saved.

Instead of being razed, the hotel has undergone a series of renovations–the most recent of which ended in 1994 after $200 million was spent to upgrade the hotel’s original 168 rooms and to construct a 30-story tower at the rear of the original building.

[image error]      Remodeled Guest Room

The new tower adds 132 rooms and suites, giving the hotel an even 300. It also adds ten floors of commercial office space and twin helipads on the roof that will ferry guests between the hotel and Hong Kong’s new airport that opened in 1998 on Chep Lap Kok Island some 30 miles away.

The new addition also solves another problem. When The Pen didn’t buy the land across Salisbury Road, somebody else did. Today, just across the road–and blocking the view of the harbor from the hotel’s original seven-story facade–is the Hong Kong Space Museum and Theater.

The chalky geodesic dome-like building seems as out of place along historic Salisbury Road as a Chinese junk on the Mississippi River.

“Rather an eyesore isn’t it,” quipped a British hotel guest standing near the small fountain that fronts The Peninsula. “Looks like a great white wart.”

The Pen’s 132 new tower rooms, which start on the 17th floor, offer unobstructed views over the “wart” across Victoria Harbor to Hong Kong Island. The tower also has a new spa with a 60-foot-long pool, two Jacuzzis, a sun deck overlooking Victoria Harbor, gymnasium and massage salon.

The new rooms–each about 500 square feet–come equipped with Chinese lacquered coffee tables, writing desks, oriental wicker lounge chairs, sofas, silent fax machines, five telephones (three in the room and two in the bathroom), laserdisc/CD players (with individual headphones) and computerized controls in a bedside console for the TV, radio, curtains, air conditioning and lights.

The outdoor temperature and humidity are even displayed on a panel located in each room’s foyer.

The large bathrooms are done in marble and come with a deep bathtub, separate shower stall, private toilet, a TV set housed in the wall above the tub, a regular telephone, and a hands-free telephone.

As opulent as the original Pen’s rooms were, veteran visitors say they don’t come close to the new digs.

“I first stayed here in 1955,” said a guest from London who preferred to give only her first name: Libby. “It was a wonderful ambiance back then. Lots of class. Very nobby. But the rooms today are much nicer. And so is the lobby.”

The lobby should look nicer. Between 1994 and ’95 it underwent a multi-million restoration project. Craftsmen were brought in from England and, working from original blueprints, every plaster figurine, filigree, frieze, fillet, quatrefoil, and flower was cleaned, reconditioned and repainted.

“Absolutely bang on . . . back of the net,” said Libby. “But one wonders about the taste of some of the clientele today. Just look.”

Visitors and guests were wandering through the lobby in the de rigueur travel attire of the today–baggy, knee-length shorts, T-shirts emblazoned with advertising and high-top Reeboks.

“People looking like that would have been turned away at the door back in 1955,” said Libby. “It may be the indulgent and mannerless ‘2000s, but class is timeless. You either have it, or you don’t. And frankly, not many of these people have it.”

Just then a woman in skin-tight canary jogging tights padded into the lobby. Headphones from a portable stereo tape player were clamped to her ears; perspiration dripped from her face, and her running shoes squeaked abrasively against the marble floor as she tramped toward the elevators.

“Isn’t that just perfectly frightful?” Libby said. “I certainly hope she isn’t English.”

She wasn’t. The lady in yellow was French.

“Well, that explains it,” sniffed Libby.

What about those golden days of The Pen back in the 1950s? Any interesting tales to tell?

Libby, now in her late 70s, flashed a wicked smile.

“Now you’ll understand why I don’t want my family name in print,” she said. “I recall sitting in the lobby one night and seeing William Holden sitting alone in the lobby drinking a vodka tonic. So I walked over and introduced myself.

“He was in Hong Kong filming `Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.’ I was an air hostess on holiday. He bought me a vodka tonic, and then another, and then another, and we talked for several hours. It was magical. Then he walked me to my room. And well, that’s as much as you need to know, or I want to say . . . .”

You get the feeling that it was one of those little Asian experiences that could only have happened in the lobby of The Pen.

Book Tour: Author A. M. Manay

Periodically, ForeignCorrespondent participates in virtual book tours that allow authors to showcase their books to a broader audience. Today I am hosting fellow RRBC/RWISA author A. M. Manay and her new YA Fantasy novel, Hexborn. The descriptions, book blurb, and biographical information are provided by the author.   Enjoy. Ron Yates

                                                         AUTHOR BIO

[image error] Thank you so much, once again, for your support!!

 

Musings in a Writer’s Mind When He Should be Writing

I get a lot of strange emails. Sometimes they contain little bits of wisdom, and when they do, I file them away on my computer for future reference.

Today, I want to share some of these musings with you. Perhaps you will find them interesting. Perhaps not.

In any case, take a look. You may find something you like.

I had amnesia once — maybe twice.
I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart. Now what?
Protons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.

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If the world were a logical place, men would be the ones who ride horses sidesaddle.
What is a “free” gift? Aren’t all gifts free?
They told me I was gullible and I believed them.
Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up, he’ll never be able to merge his car onto the freeway.
Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone.
One nice thing about egotists: they don’t talk about other people.
My weight is perfect for my height–which varies.
I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not
How can there be self-help “groups”?
If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?
Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and  I’ll show you a man who can’t get his pants off.
Is it me — or do buffalo wings taste like chicken?

Finally, a few interesting facts that you can use to win a bet or two.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos. [image error]
There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants.
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.
The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad.

And this little tidbit for those of us who use keyboards.

The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet, which is why it was always used in typing tests.

 

 

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people

Robert Frost once said, “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.”

He was right. All of us need a little humor now and then in a world where levity often seems in short supply. The other day, I received an email that contained the following “Signs of the Times.”

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Read ‘em and enjoy! And as a bonus, check out the Henny Youngman one-liners and a couple of quips from two other folks at the tail end of this post.

A SIGN IN A SHOE REPAIR STORE IN VANCOUVER: We will heel you. We will save your sole. We will even dye for you.

A SIGN ON A BLINDS AND CURTAIN TRUCK: “Blind man driving.”

Sign over a Gynecologist’s Office: “Dr. Williams, at your cervix.”

In a Podiatrist’s office: “Time wounds all heels.”

Sign in the Army Recruiting Office: Marry a veteran, girls. He can cook, make beds, sew, and is already used to taking orders.

On a Septic Tank Truck: Yesterday’s Meals on Wheels”

At an Optometrist’s Office: “If you don’t see what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.”

On a Plumber’s truck: “We repair what your husband fixed.”

On another Plumber’s truck: “Don’t sleep with a drip. Call your plumber.”

At a Tire Shop in Milwaukee: “Invite us to your next blowout.”

On an Electrician’s truck: “Let us remove your shorts.”

In a Non-smoking Area: “If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and will take appropriate action.”

On a Maternity Room door: “Push. Push. Push.”

At a Car Dealership: “The best way to get back on your feet – miss a car payment.”

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Outside a Muffler Shop: “No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.”

In a Veterinarian’s waiting room: “Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!”

At the Electric Company: “We would be delighted if you send in your payment on time. However, if you don’t, YOU will be de-lighted.”

In a Restaurant window: “Don’t stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up.”

In the front yard of a Funeral Home: “Drive carefully. We’ll wait.”

At a Propane Filling Station: “Thank Heaven for little grills.”

In a Chicago Radiator Shop: “Best place in town to take a leak.”

  And the best one for last.

Sign on t back of another Septic Tank Truck: “Caution – This Truck is full of Political promises.”

[image error] Henny Youngman

How many of you remember Henny Youngman? He was known as the king of one-liners that often were punctuated by the sound of the lone drum.

. Here are several of his best:

My neighbor knocked on my door at 2:30 am this morning, can you believe that….. 2:30 am?!  Luckily for him, I was still up playing my Bagpipes.

I saw a poor old lady fall over today on the ice!!  At least I presume she was poor – she only had $1.20 in her purse.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

A guy complains of a headache. Another guy says “Do what I do. I put my head on my wife’s bosom, and the headache goes away.” The next day, the man says, “Did you do what I told you to?” “Yes, I sure did. By the way, you have a nice house!”

My girlfriend thinks that I’m a stalker. Well, she’s not exactly my girlfriend yet.

A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor says, “You’re crazy.” The man says, “I want a second opinion!” The doctor says, “Okay, you’re ugly too!”

I was so ugly when I was born; the doctor slapped my mother.

My wife said: ‘I want an explanation and I want the truth.’ I said: ‘Make up your mind.’

A car hit a Jewish man. The paramedic says, “Are you comfortable?” The man says, “I make a good living.”

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Went for my routine checkup today and everything seemed to be going fine until he stuck his index finger up my rear! Do you think I should change dentists?

I was behind a rather large woman at the checkout. She had on a pair of jeans that said, ‘Guess.’

I said, “I don’t know……..maybe 350 pounds.”

And finally here are a couple of extras:

 

“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know

I’m not dumb…and I also know I’m not blonde.” – Dolly Parton

 

“When I was a boy, the Dead Sea was just sick.”

-George Burns

 

I will close with a bit of Chinese wisdom:

There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. – Chinese Proverb.

Where free speech should be promoted, free speech is under attack

(I have posted often on this topic. Here is commentary from Rachel L. Brand, Associate Attorney General of the United States. She makes excellent points about the erosion of Free Speech and the First Amendment at universities—places where a diversity of opinions SHOULD be available to all students, but sadly, are not. Ron Yates)

By Rachel L. Brand,  Associate Atty General of the United States

Free speech is under attack at college campuses across the country.  The problem is not limited to a few colleges barring radical speakers to avoid a riot.  Universities large and small, public and private, are restricting students’ and professors’ speech or enabling others to silence speech with which they disagree.

These restrictions take a variety of forms.  For example, speech codes at many colleges ban speech that is “offensive,” a subjective standard that allows college administrators to arbitrarily ban speech they find disagreeable. For example, Georgia Gwinnett College stopped a student from speaking about his religious faith because it “disturbed the comfort of persons” – even after he had gotten a permit from the school to speak.[image error]

Other schools claim they allow free speech but impose so many rules and procedures that it is almost impossible for speakers to reach an audience. Pierce College in Los Angeles, for example, limited students’ “free speech” to a space the size of a couple parking spots and required a permit to speak even there.  At a community college in Michigan, a student was arrested and jailed for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution because they didn’t have a permit.

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Even where they don’t limit speech directly, schools’ actions often enable students to silence others’ speech through shouting, threats of violence, or actual violence.

Sometimes schools fail to prevent students from intimidating and even attacking speakers, as happened at Middlebury College, where student protesters violently shut down a debate and physically assaulted one of the school’s own professors.   In other cases, schools’ policies effectively encourage this behavior by imposing special limitations on speakers they deem controversial.

A new policy at Berkeley, for example, imposes a curfew, security measures, and location restrictions for events that administrators decide are likely to “interfer[e] with other campus functions or activities.”  It doesn’t require much creativity to turn this policy into a heckler’s veto.  If you disagree with a speaker about to visit campus, simply declare his views offensive and threaten to riot, and the speaker will be sidelined.

The net result of these policies has been a narrowing of the views expressed on campuses and therefore the range of views students hear.   The heart of a university education used to be exposure to a wide range of ideas and the opportunity to debate their merits in order to inform one’s own positions and learn to articulate them persuasively.  This has apparently taken a backseat to students’ desire to be comfortable and affirmed.  University administrators, faculty, and students – not to mention the parents and taxpayers who are footing the bill – should be concerned that the quality of higher education is diminished by this change.

And everyone should be concerned about threats to free speech, regardless of their political beliefs. It should not give anyone comfort that she disagrees with the speech that is being silenced at the moment. Viewpoints that are mainstream now may quickly become minority views, and vice versa, as has happened repeatedly throughout history.  That is why protecting even unpopular speech in the short run benefits everyone in the long run.

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When public universities restrict speech, it has constitutional implications as well.  The First Amendment prevents government institutions from imposing speech restraints such as arduous permitting restrictions or arbitrary curfews, particularly if the school discriminates against certain viewpoints.  Yet this is precisely what many university speech policies do.

The U.S. Department of Justice is not standing on the sidelines while public universities violate students’ constitutional rights – we are backing free speech lawsuits against universities that violate the First Amendment.  Thursday, we are filing a brief supporting a group of Berkeley University students who allege that the University’s policy imposing stricter rules on controversial speakers violates the First Amendment.  This is the third suit in which we have filed such a brief, and it will not be the last.

Defending the fundamental constitutional rights of all Americans is a core part of the Department’s mission, and defending free speech rights is particularly important.  Free speech is not only a fundamental right, but, as James Madison said, the “effectual guardian of every other right.”  Free speech enables citizens to advocate for all their other civil rights and is the single most powerful bulwark against government tyranny. This is perhaps why our Founders protected it in the very first amendment in our Bill of Rights.  It is also why the Department of Justice is working so hard to protect it – free speech is too important for the Department of Justice not to speak on its behalf.

Rachel L. Brand is Associate Attorney General of the United States. As Associate Attorney General, she serves as the third-ranking officer in the Department of Justice.

 

 

An Idea to Save Book Stores and Help New Authors

One of the saddest events of the past ten years or so has been the inexorable demise of the brick and mortar bookstore. Fully half of the bookstores in the United States have vanished in the past ten years.

Gone are places like Borders, Crown Books, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, Kroch’s and Brentano’s, Oxford Bookstore, Atlantic Books and Davis-Kidd Booksellers.

A few are still hanging on. Barely. Barnes & Noble, for example, and Follett’s, Book Off USA, Hudson News and places like the sprawling and immensely popular Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon.

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But for the most part, physical books stores are being shoved aside by online booksellers like Amazon, Alibris, AbeBooks.com, Biblio.com, ValoreBooks, etc.

The exception to this trend was recent reports by CNBC and Wall Street Journal that Amazon is planning on putting up a physical retail bookstore across from New York City’s Empire State Building.

So far there has been no confirmation from Amazon.

But even if that were to happen, most experts see the demise of brick and mortar bookstores continuing as more and more readers chose to buy their physical and e-books online.

So what can be done?

I recently received an e-mail containing an intriguing idea.

It came from author Doug Preston, who along with co-author Lincoln Child, has written such bestselling books as Relic, Riptide, Mount Dragon, Gideon’s Sword and The Lost Island.

 Preston attached a note containing an idea for saving bookstores and helping authors sell more books in them. The idea was from author Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, who has written books like The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Why We Broke Up.

Rather than paraphrasing Handler’s note and idea, I will include it here verbatim and add some final thoughts:

“Dear comrades-in-ink,

  “Whether or not you are an author published by Hachette (as I am), you may lately feel as if you are engulfed in a rather unpleasant flood — as if the fate of your books is whirling dreadfully out of your control, battered by the waters of some enormous South American river, the name of which I cannot remember at the moment. 

“While all this fierce sword-fighting rages on without you, you may find yourself feeling even more hapless and hopeless than authors usually do, while your local independent bookstore struggles with a similar feeling that it’s some sort of jungle out there.

[image error] There is Nothing Like a Bookstore

“As a tonic, allow me to suggest a new program, cooked up by assorted interested parties and named, after some tipsy debate, Upstream.  The idea is to connect authors with their local independent booksellers to offer signed books as an alternative to, say, larger and more unnerving corporate machinations. Upstream was test-piloted this summer and is now spreading steadily, like optimism or syphilis.

“How does it work?  Easily, hopefully.  Here are some numbered steps.

“1. Choose and contact a bookseller close to your home.  If you cannot find one, the good folks at Indies First, coordinated by the American Booksellers Association, can be of service.  They are quite excited about the launching of this new and hopefully enormous campaign.

“2. The bookstore will order and sell your books; you will sign them.  Perhaps you’ll stop by at regular intervals with your pen, or perhaps you can convince, with cake or gin, the bookseller to come to you.

“3. Both you and the bookseller will promote this arrangement as best you can, spreading the word not only about an exciting source of signed books to your readers anywhere in the country but about a program anyone can join. 

“Feel free to tell your publicist you’re participating.  Upstream should be in full swing in time for the holidays when signed books are good gifts for loved ones and distance acquaintances alike.

“Will Upstream rescue us all from strife and worry?  Of course not.  But the hope is that it will remind both authors and booksellers of their local, less monolithic resources, and improve general esprit de corps at a disheartening time.

“With all due respect,

“Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket.”

It sounds like a great idea. I have yet to approach any of my local bookstores about it, but I plan to. It seems like a win-win proposition. It’s an opportunity to have authors in the store signing books and for readers to interact with authors.

E-book sales are fine. I have nothing against them. In fact, most of the sales of my books have come as a result of Kindle, Nook and Kobo.

But as convenient as e-books are they are also impersonal. You can’t sign an e-book or talk to readers.

And let’s not forget. What exactly are e-books? They are a collection of computer code that we essentially lease from companies like Amazon. Think about it. You can loan your physical books to as many people as many times as you wish.

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But that is not the case with e-books. You may think you own an e-book, but you don’t. If you want to loan a Kindle e-book to a friend you must make sure the person you are loaning it to is using compatible e-book software. Then you can lend it only once for 14 days–and even then, you need to belong to Amazon’s “Prime Program,” which costs extra.

For an author like me, another frustration with e-books is this: if everybody on a train or bus or plane is reading an e-book, I can’t tell what they are reading. There are no covers, so I don’t know if they are reading one of my books (highly unlikely) or one by J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, or Stephen King.

Finally, (and for me this may be the most important point) I like bookshelves. And I want bookshelves with lots of books sitting in them. An office or den or family room without a bookshelf filled with books seems naked to me.

Maybe that’s why I like brick and mortar bookstores and why I hope they never vanish entirely.

They have LOTS of bookshelves filled with books that you can pick up, handle, thumb through, take home and put in your bookshelves.

It’s one of life’s simple pleasures.

 

Dealing with Rejection Letters from Agents & Publishers

If there is one thing most authors have in common, besides the sheer agony that sometimes accompanies the writing process, it is the dreaded Rejection Letter from an agent or publisher.

I don’t know who got this one from Harlequin, but it had to be devastating to the person receiving it.

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I have received a few rejection letters–though none like the one from Harlequin.

Most authors–even wildly successful authors–have also received their share of rejection missives.

Don’t believe me?

Just take a look at this list of rejection letters that were sent by publishers and agents to world-renowned, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors. It is simply part of the creative process, and you need to keep moving ahead–just as these authors did.

“The American public is not interested in China,” a publisher wrote Pearl S. Buck. Her book The Good Earth  becomes the best-selling US novel two years running in 1931/32, and wins The Pulitzer Prize in the process.
Alex Haley  writes for eight years and receives 200 consecutive rejections from publishers and agents. His novel  Roots  becomes a publishing sensation, selling 1.5 million copies in its first seven months of release, and going on to sell 8 million.
“He hasn’t got a future as a writer,” a publisher opines. Yet, publication of  The Spy Who Came in From the Cold  leads to its author, John le Carré, having one of the most distinguished careers in literary history.
“Hopelessly bogged down and unreadable,” a publisher tells Ursula K. Le Guin in a 1968 rejection letter. She was not deterred, and her book The Left Hand of Darkness  goes on to become just the first of her many best-sellers and is now regularly voted as the second best fantasy novel of all time, next to  The Lord of the Rings .
The Christopher Little Literary Agency receives 12 publishing rejections in a row for their new client, until the eight-year-old daughter of a Bloomsbury editor demands to read the rest of the book. The editor agrees to publish but advises the writer to get a day job since she has little chance of making money in children’s books. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone  by   J.K. Rowling  spawns a series where the last four novels consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history, on both sides of the Atlantic, with combined sales of 450 million.
“It is so badly written,” a publisher tells this author. Dan Brown is not discouraged, however, and tries Doubleday where his book makes an impression.  The Da Vinci Code   eventually sells 80 million copies.
“Too different from other juvenile (books) on the market to warrant its selling,” says a rejection letter sent to  Dr. Seuss . His books have racked up $300 million in sales, and he is now the 9th best-selling fiction author of all time.
J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye was rejected multiple times by New York publishers until an editor at Little, Brown, and Company bought it. To date, the 1951 novel has sold more than 96 million copies and has been translated into almost every major language.

See what I mean?

Editors, agents, first readers who dig through the publisher’s slush pile–all are quite capable of making bone-headed decisions about other people’s work. And they do it all the time.

So if you have a stack of rejection letters sitting on your desk or stuffed into a file cabinet, don’t despair. You are not alone. [image error]

 

What you should do, instead of becoming despondent and inconsolable, is read those rejection letters carefully and look for the constructive criticism in them.

In most cases, you will find some–though as one publisher told an author many years ago: “This manuscript should be buried under a pile of rocks and forgotten for the next thousand years.”  (That book went to become a bestseller and was even made into a movie. Its name: Lolita.)

Phrases like that can be a bit disheartening–even to the most thick-skinned scribbler.  So far I have not received anything quite so venomous…though I have had my go-rounds with a few agents and editors who couldn’t see the value of book on which I was working.

Now that I am writing fiction rather than nonfiction, I am finding that I no longer care what an agent or publisher may think of my work. I find that especially satisfying when I can see that customers on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Goodreads like my book and are giving it mostly 5-stars with a handful of 4-star ratings.

That tells me that I must be doing something right.

The key is believing in yourself and the story you are telling. You will NEVER please everybody. There will always be those who don’t understand or simply don’t like your book or books. That’s life.  But it is critical that you DO NOT stop believing in what you are writing. Does that mean you should ignore valid and constructive criticism?

 

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No, it does not. If somebody has taken the time to tell you what is wrong with your book or why he or she didn’t like it, you should also take the time to consider that criticism and learn from it.

It doesn’t mean you should just give up, stop writing and walk away from your computer. Writing is a skill that cannot be taught–at least not in the same way one learns calculus or biology.

It must be learned. And we learn to recognize good writing by reading.

Then we learn how to write by by writing, writing, writing–even if the writing we do is terrible, with way too many adjectives in place of strong action verbs or way too many compound-complex sentences that give readers migraines as they slog through page-long paragraphs.

Reading should be fun–not a chore. And only you, the writer, can dictate that.

So if a rejection letter says your prose is ponderous and pretentious, or your story is tedious and byzantine, you might want to take a hard, critical look at what you have written.

And after doing that if you still disagree with the author of that rejection letter, then, by all means, plow ahead. You may be right, and that agent or editor may be wide of the mark.

Time and book sales will tell.

 

 

 

 

 

How to Handle a Negative Book Review

There is an adage that says “any publicity is good publicity–even if it is bad.” Why? Because the objective is to get people talking about you and your book.

If you are like me, I don’t believe a lot of the negative reviews I see on sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, etc.  In fact, I will often comb through all of a book’s reviews to see if others are saying the same negative things about a book. If they are not, I will typically rely more on the positive reviews than the bad ones.

Sometimes I will buy a book with bad reviews just to see if it’s as bad as the reviewers say it is. Often, it isn’t.

I spent most of my life as a journalist. I KNOW what it is like to have one’s work criticized mercilessly by nasty editors. The key is to look at negative comments of your work for “constructive” criticism and then be open-minded enough to use that criticism to improve your writing, your pacing, your plot, your characterization, etc.

Of course, there are those trolls who merely live to “trash” other people’s work. Those reviews are easy to spot. They will write that the book is “dumb” or “boring” or “trashy” without backing up their opinions with anything constructive. Writers need to let those criticisms go and not obsess about them.

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Check out Amazon’s reviews. You will see books like War and Peace and Gone With the Wind getting one and two-star reviews or ratings.

Indeed, you will find bestsellers with lots of bad reviews. For example, the last book in the popular Hunger Games Trilogy has racked up something like 500 one-star reviews on Amazon. And John Locke has a 3-star average on his popular Saving Rachel (a Donovan Creed Crime Novel) and almost as many 1-star reviews as 5-star reviews. Despite that fact, his books are selling tens of thousands worldwide

The point is: You Can’t Please Everybody, nor should you try. You need to write what you are passionate about, tell a good story and leave the naysayers behind and eating your dust.

Somone once said that writing a novel is hard; panning it is remarkably easy.

Having said all of that, it is a blow to the ego to see a bad review of one’s work pop up on Amazon and elsewhere. It’s like a punch in the gut. It makes you angry. You want to find out where the author of that lousy review lives and set their house on fire or beat them senseless with a baseball bat.

Don’t. Instead, focus on the GOOD reviews your book as received. And have a sense of humor about it all.

All authors get bad reviews (more on that later). Don’t take it personally. The criticism is about your ideas and the way you presented them, not about you as a person. Most sophisticated readers can distinguish a rant from a genuine review.

Sometimes if a book gets a bad review, other readers who disagree will challenge that reviewer’s conclusion. That can set off a useful discussion of the book and cause readers to buy the book just to see who is right.

Don’t forget; you didn’t write your book to generate reviews. You wrote it to appeal to readers. You had a story to tell, a point to get across, a desire to inform and even educate readers. Reviews–good or bad– are merely marketing tools.

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True, good reviews may feed your ego, cause intellectual indigestion and lead you to believe you are the next Hemmingway, J. K. Rowling or Ursula K. Le Guin. My advice: deflate your ego and remain planted on terra firma.

If the reviews you are reading seem to be an unnecessary distraction and are causing you to alter the way you write or the way you present a story, you may want to stop reading reviews altogether–even the good ones.

You need to believe in yourself, not in what some snarky reviewer says. Look for the constructive criticism and avoid the hateful rants.

Work to get more reviews. Good reviews often will invalidate bad ones and on sites like Amazon, will shove the negative reviews down the page.

Finally, take what the late Elmore Leonard said about writing to heart: “If it sounds like writing….rewrite it. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

(Next Time: Dealing with Rejection Letters from Publishers)

 

 

 

 

19th Century Newspaper Editors Imagine Newspapers of the Future

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post that discussed how people in the past predicted the future and I promised a sequel. Here it is with another sequel to follow.

Back in 1895, several prominent newspaper editors were asked to speculate on what newspapers would look like in the 20th Century. Some of their predictions were quite uncanny, and some were, well, a bit off the mark.

Here are a couple of examples:

Felix Agnus, Editor of the Baltimore American:  “Today I saw a new invention that distributes written messages to its customers, the matter clearly printed on convenient sheets. The inventor tells me he can afford to place these at a very moderate cost in offices or in homes. All it needs is a long roll of paper. It does the rest. Now, what is to prevent the people of the next century from having their news continuously? As soon as an event occurs, it is broadcast over the wires and is immediately printed by the automatic machine. How will a newspaper published once a day compete with a scheme such as that?”

 Sounds a lot like something we used to call a telex machine. They never made it into homes, at least not on a large scale, but they were in just about every newsroom in the world.

Then there was this prediction from A.G. Boynton, editor of the Detroit Free Press: “Keeping…with the limits of the possible, this much is safe to forecast….there will be great and marked progress in independence—that the newspaper of the twentieth century will not be tied, as the newspaper of the nineteenth century is far too often, to a party, a sect or a creed.”

Sadly, Mr. Boynton’s vision of today’s newspaper has proven to be more aspiration than reality. News today is too often skewed by reporters, editors, producers, and publishers to fit their own political agendas or worldviews. I should acknowledge, however, that for a while in the 20th Century the concept of trying to achieve some form of objectivity and fairness in reporting was rigidly adhered to in the best newspapers. At least it was at the newspapers I worked at.

Mr. Boynton’s predictions and others appeared in an article that appeared in the Tacoma Daily News March 30, 1895.

We can enjoy this 120-year-old article because of Readex, a company that for seven decades has specialized in providing access to primary source research materials such as early American Newspapers. Here is a link to the Readex blog: http://www.readex.com/blog   and a link to the actual article: http://www.readex.com/sites/default/files/Notable%20Forecasts%20Tacoma%20Daily%20News%2003.30.1895.pdf

Many of these editors had already personally witnessed amazing advancements in newspaper publishing; the Readex article pointed out.  They had seen newspapers progress from the old Washington hand press to enormous printing presses capable of producing tens of thousands of newspapers in just a few hours; from the Pony Express and stagecoach to the telephone and telegraph; from hand-setting type to typesetting linotype machines and the halftone photo reproduction process.

And while some of the predictions may seem a little quaint, given The Internet and today’s 24-hour news cycles, I am amazed at how prescient these editors were.

Here is James Elverson, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

  “The chief characteristic of the twentieth-century newspaper must necessarily be correlated with the twentieth-century scientific inventions….If the flying machine is perfected, every first-class reporter will have one. If the airship is a success, they will distribute tons of newspapers daily. If telegraphy becomes an exact science, the inmost heart of man will be revealed daily to the public. If Esoteric Buddhism gathers the world to its bosom and Mahatmas drops messages about the present, past and the future through newspaper roofs from the desert of Gobi, then every first-class newspaper will have its staff of Mahatmas to preach ethics to its readers. Pneumatic tubes may distance trains; photo scopes may reproduce pictures 10,000 miles away, and possibly the kinescope may be so adapted that every reader may have one in his house in which to view the scenes of which he reads in his favorite newspaper, the photographic strips, therefore, being issued as supplements. Possibly we shall not use type anymore, but by some complex arrangement, issue rolls that shall run through phonographs. Then, as the twentieth-century man sits down to breakfast he can have the news read to him while he sees every event in the kinescope, and at the same time he can swallow his morning meal.”

Sounds a lot like watching CNN or FOX while eating your oatmeal. And don’t forget, this was BEFORE the invention of radio or television.

 Percy S. Heath, editor of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, may have foreseen the ubiquitous “Op-Ed” page of today’s newspaper:

“A forum, where the people may go with ideas and grievances, and appeal to public opinion. This to my mind will be the feature and the characteristic of the future newspaper. I believe the forceful utterances of the press will come directly from the people; that the intelligent reader is becoming every day a man or woman of opinion, of fixed ideas, and that sentiment will be expressed more and more freely through the press by those not directly connected with it. There will be less arbitrary editorial expression. The ‘fourth page’ will contain that thought of the reader which up to this time the editor has sought to forestall or anticipate.”

Charles W. Knapp, editor of the St. Louis Republic, seems here to presage the way many of us customize the news we get from our online newspapers.

To fulfill its mission perfectly, (the newspaper) will be issued not once, or twice, but half a dozen times every day. Perhaps also the great fin de siècle newspaper of the twentieth century will be published in several different editions varying radically in the character of their contents, so as to meet the varying wants of different classes of subscribers and at the same time obviate the undue enlargement of its size. It is bound to be more comprehensive in the exhaustive completeness of its information than the newspaper of today, but it will not be necessary for every reader to take the whole daily encyclopedia. Those who wish will have the opportunity to designate specific classes of news to be sent to them, and in some degree, every subscriber will have the privilege of ordering his newspaper made to fit his own individual and particular wants.”

.George A. Robertson, editor of the Cleveland World sees newspapers using several “new” inventions to collect and disseminate news faster. He also sees the use of more photography.  However, his vision falls a little short when it comes to his altruistic view of the 20th Century newspaper.

“Already within sight are numerous remarkable inventions that will be made use of to improve the newspaper of the future. A machine is already patented and in limited use that sends messages by wire ten times as fast as the present telegraphic code and these messages are automatically written out as they arrive. This will be employed by the coming newspaper in improving its news facilities. A machine for transforming pictures by wire will be fully perfected within the near future, and there will be such a cheapening of engraving processes that newspapers will be much more fully and beautifully illustrated than at present. Telegraphic accounts of happenings in all parts of the world will be accompanied, as received, with engravings ready to be dropped into the forms….Sensationalism is on the wane and the time will come early in the next century when the newspaper that lies will be considered as despicable as the man who does the same thing now. The twentieth-century newspaper will not be entirely composed of the record of the ‘evil that men do,’ but some the good things will also be mentioned.”

Finally here is Frank A. Richardson, editor of the Baltimore Sun. While I applaud his optimism concerning the human condition and his laudable vision of scrupulous and truthful editors, there are far too few of these trustworthy souls toiling in today’s newsrooms.

“As mankind with the march of time becomes more noble and elevated, the newspaper, which is at once the leader and the follower of public sentiment, must share in this. Therefore I should say the newspaper of the twentieth century must be conducted on a higher plane. Its great aim must be to instruct and purify, rather than merely amuse for an idle hour and increase its circulation by pandering to the baser instincts of humanity. There are a few striking instances among the leading newspapers of this day where the desire for gain is not made the paramount consideration. In the twentieth century, this will become more and more apparent, for incentives to the contrary course which exist now will disappear. The newspaper of the next century will be guided by the hand of strictest truth and honor, for policy, if not conscience, will make it so.”

Perhaps the most troubling part of this story is the fact that of the 13 newspapers polled in this 1895 exercise, only four are still being published today. That none of the editors could foresee the demise of their own newspapers is not surprising to me.

The 1890s were an optimistic decade in American history with a young nation just beginning to flex its political and economic muscles on the world stage.

Given the gloomy, often deplorable world we live in today with its poverty and wars waged by religious fanatics like ISIL with its beheadings and mutilation of innocents; its pervasive drug use; the decline of the traditional family; the inexorable secularization of society and with it the relentless obliteration of morality, integrity and civility; I wonder how today’s 21st Century editors would foretell the world of the 22d Century.

With much less optimism I would wager.