CRIME FICTION’S TEN COMMANDMENTS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Ronald Knox is the suspect. He gave us Ten Commandments for writing crime fiction.
   I have three commandments for writing crime fiction.
   One. THOU SHALT NOT place the word algorithm or any variation thereof in thine manuscript. For there will be a hundred days of darkness and a plague of locusts upon thee if thou fuckesteth this up.
   Two. THOU SHALT NOT place the word protocol or any variation thereof in thine manuscript. For thine bloodline shall be accursèd unto the seventh generation and long will be the wine-red shadows o’er thine tomb. Frederick Forsyth appears to be notably excused from this commandment.
   Three. THOU SHALT NOT permit any character to utter the phrase beginning Is this the part where. For if ye transgress against the Writing Gods themselves, woe be unto thee and thine and all others within a mile’s radius of the divine blast. Also, lice shall worry thee.
   Death by Algorithm on the Nile just ain’t gonna cut it. A brick wall will delay your protagonist. Or a hard and fast law. But placing a protocol in a murder mystery isn’t a barrier. You’ll only make it sound as though you just introduced a green yoghurt-ish health drink to the scene of the crime.
   Is this the part where I get to subvert the cliché by prefacing the cliché with the phrase IS THIS THE PART WHERE? Frankly I’d prefer it if you just hit us with the cliché minus the preamble. We’ve abolished the Edwardian Age and the string quartet prelude to taking a shit. It’s quicker just to go when you need to go.
   I was going to talk about the writing commandments set forth by Ronald Knox. And I planned to do that by dragging a few crime shows into the conversation. But I immediately realised that confirming or denying the existence of the breakage of these commandments in a show…well, that might spoil certain aspects of the mystery for you.
   So I’ll just have to talk around a few choice areas.
   A Murder at the End of the World.
   Death and Other Details.
   Two television shows aiming themselves at the Golden Age of murder mystery. Yes, the Golden Age of detective fiction is dead. However, its corpse is on permanent display in the kitchen freezer, and that is here to stay. For the body is trotted out at regular intervals as high technology allows us to revisit the case in search of suspects new.
   What was the Golden Age of the crime story? Very specifically, the detective story. You’ll be shocked to hear that this amazing period of untrammelled homicide is generally fixed Between the Wars. Loosely, we’ll take that to mean in the 1920s and the 1930s, though there were ripples from before 1914 and many aftershocks well beyond 1938.
   Does this exclude Doyle and his creation Holmes? Of course not. The Problem of Thor Bridge appeared in 1922. We don’t really exclude anyone writing after 1938, my dear Watson, given the building blocks of golden murder mysteries are so durable.
   A Murder at the End of the World and Death and Other Details both make use of an old foil: death in the isolated English country house. This house is ivy-clad and snow-bedecked. The telephone is cut off for at least some of the action. And the party? It’s a party of rich ne’er-do-wells and rapscallions. With a coat of computer technology daubed across the scene, to make things appear less ancient, you are in business.
   End of the World features a bright female detective and her bright male co-detective investigating murder in the past. We move through another story in which the same two detectives meet up years later after one walked out on the other. The venue is an English country house a Bond villain’s lair in an icy wasteland, and there are suspects aplenty when death occurs. Technology features heavily.
   That story shifts between past detection and current investigation. It’s a major feature of the tale. Two murder mysteries for the price of one.
   Other Details features a bright female detective and her bright male co-detective investigating murder in the past. We move through another story in which the same two detectives meet up years later after one walked out on the other. The venue is an English country house a cruise ship very much all at sea, and there are suspects aplenty when death occurs. Technology features heavily.
   That story shifts between past detection and current investigation. It’s a major feature of the tale. Two murder mysteries for the price of one.
   Both narratives showcase at least one scene that should be discussed heavily. Each scene isn’t. Therefore, each scene is instantly deeply important to the seasoned mystery reader. The cogs whir, and you reach a conclusion.
   Also, both shows feature security cameras. And then they both do backflips to neutralise the security in the name of allowing the murder mystery to continue. These aren’t spoilers. No. Massive building blocks are shuffled around to keep the episodes going.
   What are the Ten Commandments, provided by Knox? Well, he was a priest as well as a mystery writer. He provided guidance. The High Priestesses of the Golden Age were many, and their works are still known very well. Commandments exist to be broken. How many were broken in those two television shows? Here, I tread on thin eggs.
   One. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
   Veteran readers are always on the lookout for aliases, disguises, wordplay in names, servants in the background, distant relatives, shady tradesmen at the door on the night in question or two days beforehand, and all sorts of tricks. The warning about thoughts is about thoughts, musings, unreliable narration, outright lies, and so on. These are not facts. And murder mysteries rely on facts, not the murderer’s thoughts. Flashbacks by narrators, reliable or otherwise, are always suspect.
   Knox demanded that the mystery have a mystery. He wanted the mystery presented early. And the mystery had to grab the reader and make the reader care about the resolution. You needn’t care about the legion of unsympathetic suspects, detectives, or even victims, in these tales. But you should care about how it all ends.
   Two. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
   If you tell a tale of a ghostly dog and then present evidence concerning the footprints of a gigantic hound, you’d best follow up with a declaration or two against the supernatural. To his credit, Holmes, through Doyle, does so.
   We are, therefore, going to rule out vampires, demons, the forces of darkness, Christmas in July, and all other nonsense. Since the commandments were written, people have gone on to write vampire murder mysteries – but even those come with their own particular logical or vampirological frameworks, guides, rules, regulations, and commandments.
   Three. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
   If a passage of text is written in invisible ink, does that count as a secret passage? I’ve always liked the idea of a secret door leading to a secret passage that has another secret door inside it. You’re meant to miss this door on the left, on the way to the more obvious secret room ahead.
   In electronic murder mysteries, we’ve reached the point of no return. Secret passages are conjured from nothingness when the security cameras fail. This is the only way for a murderer to bypass all that surveillance. The mystery writer creates a secret passage through the field of vision. It’s all done with mirrors.
   So secret passages aren’t only to be found in ancient castles. They may exist in ancient castles with security cameras all over the place. I like a good secret passage myself, though your taste may suffer an allergic reaction. Is there such a thing as a secret passage? Or are we really speaking of the hidden door? Have as many of those as you like, I say.
   Caution. The more secret doors, passages, and rooms you add, the greater the chance of turning your detective story into a comedy. Perhaps that was what Knox had in mind, when warning us off.
   Four. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
   At least Knox leaves scope for long scientific explanations in the middle of the story. Brand new untraceable poisons are right out, it must be emphasised. If the victim dies from a heart attack and science goes on to prove this, then you’ve written a story about someone who died of a heart attack. Don’t slap a murder mystery label on that one.
   Five. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
   That’s extreme. What Knox is attempting to say is that he was bored. He’d had enough of racist depictions of Chinese characters popping up as instant suspects in murder mysteries on the basis that they were being Chinese in a built-up area or being Chinese in the English countryside – both crimes once punishable by hanging and possibly flogging.
   Spoiler alert for Death and Other Details. Part of the plot involves a merger with a Chinese company. So Chinese characters are in the show aplenty, and they are suspects. They are played by Chinese actors. This was not always the case. Did Peter Ustinov really need the money?
   Here’s a spoiler alert for A Murder at the End of the World. The cast includes Joan Chen. Now I’m wondering if Knox would have objected to a Chinese woman featuring in the story. A Chinese murder mystery set in China with an all-Chinese list of detectives, victims, and suspects…could, at least, include one unsympathetic chinless wonder of a toffee-nosed English public schoolmaster, surely.
   This isn’t just about Chinese murderers/suspects/victims or detectives. You may take it that racist depictions of all types must be excluded from murder mysteries. Unless the murderer is racist.
   Six. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
   Note that Knox doesn’t rule out accidents which hinder the detective, or intuition which proves to be wrong.
   Seven. The detective himself must not commit the crime.
   This goes without saying, but Knox said it. I’m reminded of publishing advice when it came to putting the book in front of someone in the business.
   When dealing with publishers, in your summary of the story you must never describe how the mystery ends. There was another piece of advice to go with that. When dealing with publishers, in your summary of the story you must always describe how the mystery ends.
   Anyway, I think Knox is hinting, strongly, that the detective’s sidekick should also be included in this particular commandment. We’ll return to sidekicks shortly.
   Eight. The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
   I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Murder mystery stories depend on the steady drip-drip-drip of information to the readers. Overwhelm your audience with clues. Many people have gotten it into their heads that a mystery must, by definition, be mysterious – and they write books in which clues are jealously withheld in favour of padding. Padding won’t lead to a conviction at the Old Bailey, not unless the murderer smothered the victim with an exotic brand of cushion.
   Are there variations on this one? Absolutely. The detective may draw attention to a detail that is not recognised as a clue at the time. But the avid reader makes note of this. Clues may be presented in a jumbled order. All the better to disguise the timeline of events, my dear. The detective won’t last long in a series of books by pocketing clues and declaring that those will all be explained later. This simply will not do.
   Nine. The sidekick of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
   It’s a roundabout way of saying that the sidekick mustn’t remain silent. The detective can always do with someone to talk to. Musing aloud lets the detective dangle herrings – red or otherwise – in front of the reader. Meanwhile, musing silently tells the readers eff-all.
   Ten. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
   This applies just as well to twin suitcases, near-identical cars, similar doors, and clones. If clones are to feature in your murder mystery, put clones in the title. You’ll save a lot of bother later.
   There’s an alternative list of twenty acid barbs, fired off from the waspish pen of S.S. Van Dine – who sounds as though he might’ve been torpedoed off the coast of Newfoundland by the Germans back in 1917. We needn’t concern ourselves overmuch with those. I’d find myself having to avoid spoilers all over again.
   One non-spoiler to finish on. A Murder at the End of the World features Harris Dickinson as one of the detectives. You can catch his performance in See How They Run. He plays Dickie Attenborough in a murder mystery set around the performance of an Agatha Christie play. And I daren’t say anything about that.
   I’d leave to write The Algorithm Protocol, with the opening line Is this the part where…
   But I fear murder most foul would be committed.

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA…AGAIN: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Come to this blog freely, go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.
   Regularly, I place tree-based data-storage devices on tree-based data-storage devices. Paper books on wooden shelves. Books come in and must be stored somewhere.
   I know, yes, I know. Books come in and books don’t go out, and there’s always a Bookpocalypse looming. New books must be read. Yet…
   Old books can be read again.
   And so…I turned, once more, to Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. What is a classic? Stoker’s tale is certainly that, but what’s the definition? We might as well go with Alan Bennett’s remark: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
   Have I read this classic work or…did I only watch the move/TV adaptation? In watching an adaptation, would I be shocked and surprised, on reading the book, to discover that diabolical liberties had been taken?
   Classics I’ve read. Time for a very brief list in no particular order. Strong Poison. Tom Sawyer. Jane Eyre. Treasure Island. Wuthering Heights. Dracula. Frankenstein.
   Adaptations, flattened to fit a two-hour movie-slot, are always going to be patchy. Better to go for lengthier TV adaptations, in which fewer diabolical liberties are taken. If you have a dedicated reading-space, and coffee, then stick with the originals if you can’t bear to see a much-loved classic knifed from all directions.
   Curl up with a good book, and pretend the awful motion-picture does not exist. (Round up the usual suspects. You know the drill.)
   Dracula opens with a lawyer, Jonathan Harker, travelling to Count Dracula’s quaint home to assist in legal matters when it comes to moving house. Spoiler. Oh, and the Count is a vampire.
   When we leave the castle behind, things don’t look too good for the abandoned lawyer. London is Dracula’s target, and Stoker fills the text with characters. Fictional London, aye, and Fictional Whitby, are both fair teeming with characters.
   Dracula’s thirst for blood is matched by the workman’s thirst for alcohol, judging by the many friendly bribes that aid the vampire hunters in their investigations.
   In the opening of this tale, at the castle, in the severe vampiric wilderness, there are precious few characters. Indeed, it is Harker’s realisation that the Count’s home is empty of servants that raises more and more suspicion in his fevered mind.
   Harker is left to the lack of mercy of Dracula’s three undead minions. Few other characters visit the castle. Over in the pub-filled stamping-ground of humanity, Stoker throws characters our way thick and fast.
   Here lies the problem of dealing with adaptations of the tale. Many characters are many characters too many. In the book, there’s space for these choir-like assemblies of voices and their different methods of conveying story. Hardly anything truly happens directly in Dracula…
   We are given a collection of notes. Letters. Diaries. Newspaper articles. Stoker warns us of the existence of many receipts and bills of lading and railway timetables, but he doesn’t bog us down in those.
   The novel is written, pencilled in, penned, typed up, noted in shorthand, and gathered at the edges by means of newspaper stories. Characters frantically chronicle that morning’s events while on the afternoon train to the next vampire hunter meeting, which, itself, will be noted in print much later.
   Only with Doctor Seward and his phonograph in action do we occasionally stumble upon an event that is happening while his recording device is in motion.
   That brings me to his patient: R.M. Renfield. Our lost lawyer friend, Mr Harker, arranged Dracula’s purchase of a property right next to Doctor Seward’s very Victorian asylum. Dracula’s new temporary abode isn’t spooky enough by itself. His new lair needs Edward Gorey levels of lunacy on neighbouring soil.
   It isn’t long before Dracula is at the asylum window, having late-night chats with Mr Renfield. They share an interest in blood. There’s a much-used method running through adaptations, to save screen-time, of condensing characters into one role…
   For some reason, it is fated to Renfield, across adaptations, to merge with the character of Jonathan Harker. Renfield/Harker is often the first condensed casualty in a Dracula adaptation. It seems that writers are hell-bent on turning the patient into the lawyer.
   The lawyer is mobile. Renfield, however, is an inmate who engages in brief bursts of movement when he escapes the confines of his cell. It’s a shame that he’s the first of many elements to go, as…
   He’s vital to the plot.
   In movies, Renfield can come across as a minor character. In the book, though, he’s significant. For a novel named Dracula, we find Dracula himself conspicuous by his absence. Stoker wisely has Dracula conspiring offstage for much of the action.
   Various unrelated newspaper accounts track Dracula’s bursts of activity across the map of London. When he appears in person, he takes the centre of the stage.
   Bram Stoker, should you look him up, would be remembered chiefly as a figure of the theatre had he not written Dracula. He kept one eye on adapting his story to the stage, after all. (And his theatrical version predated the book’s publication by the barest whisper of a vampiric sigh.)
   So don’t be surprised by the Victorian theatricality of a Victorian novel penned by a theatrical fellow. Stoker was not just any theatre-lover, but assistant to noted actor Sir Henry Irving. Much has been made of Dracula’s habits and their alignment with the temperament and physicality of Sir Henry.
   Adaptations sent me to the source, and I found I much-preferred the source. Dracula wasn’t the first vampire story, and it certainly wasn’t ever going to be the last. Stoker threw an undead quote into the book by mentioning the poem Lenore, so we see vampiric roots from an earlier time appearing in the novel itself.
   And it is to poetry that we’d look, in search of early vampire tales that were written down. Before that, as usual, to stave off the mystery of the night, you’d be huddled around a campfire trying to keep people entertained.
   If that campsite happened to be the Villa Deodati at Lake Geneva, and you knew Byron or Shelley, then the stories told would chill the very marrow of your bones. From that rain-lashed place, two classic works emerged.
   We’ll call one Frankenstein. And, just like the later Dracula, this tale faces knives from all directions when being adapted. For reasons of cheapness, a trip into the icy wastes at the novel’s end is a trip too far for most movie budgets. That chill journey is often replaced by a lab explosion.
   The other spooky story from out of Lake Geneva, scribbled by John Polidori, is titled The Vampyre. Today we’d call it highly literary revenge-porn against Lord Byron. The Villa Deodati was the prototype of an internet forum where a teenager could publish her grave-robbing fan-fic without fear of cancellation.
   A forum like that always has an edgy character in there, floating on the periphery while aiming barbed taunts at the centre, and that’s pretty much Polidori’s role in the literary space.
   Polidori gave us the aristocratic vampire preying on young women. Lord Ruthven, the vampire, or vampyre, is based on a man who had little time for the undead – Byron, though there’s a cottage industry out there trying to convince us of his own vampirism. But this blog post is about Count Dracula and not Lord Byron, and I fear we must move on before sunrise surprises us.
   In short, it’s a good while after The Vampyre before we reach Dracula, by way of Varney the Vampire and other literary routes most quaint and curious. For completeness, we should add alternative titles to the well-known tales…
   Frankenstein is all about The Modern Prometheus. Varney’s vampiric saga also travels under the guise of The Feast of Blood, and a last-minute change to Dracula deprives us of the story named The Un-Dead.
   If we are to believe the notion that Lord Byron was (and remains to this day) a real-life vampire, then we must go along with the awkward literary notion that Byron wrote everything. He penned The Vampyre, scribbled Frankenstein, created Sherlock, and wrote up his exploits as Varney…
   And then “in retirement” Byron went on to write Dracula, The Railway Children, 1984, The Phantom Menace, several episodes of the TV soap EastEnders, and, in a failed attempt at dispelling the mythology, this very blog post.
   My point, in detouring through this graveyard and that cobbled street, is to consider Dracula against the backdrop of a blood-red sky as we approach the setting of the sun. There’s before Stoker’s novel and after…
   Before, you certainly had the aristocratic vampire in fiction. After, you had a legion of aristocratic vampires. You can hardly move through fiction without encountering Count Orlok (Dracula, hiding from copyright law), Countess Dracula, Count Yorga, or every edgy aristocratic vampire character from the roleplaying game Vampire: The Masquerade.
   As to that last, I fervently avoided the aristocratic cliché when playing the game. When you think of roleplaying games and aristocratic vampires, you are led in the direction of Dungeons & Dragons and D&D’s very own Dracula photocopy, Count Strahd von Zarovich, ruler of Barovia. (Curiously, Dungeons & Dragons emerged from the American Lake Geneva. Coincidence? Byron wrote the Monster Manual, obviously.)
   Your mileage in subverting vampiric cliché in your own fiction will vary – for the dead ride quickly – but, damn it, over in the fantasy world of D&D, the Hammer Horror treatment comes across as a bite refreshing…
   Moving swiftly on…
   I revisited Dracula. It is a dramatic telling of Johnny Foreigner invading London. You can see the tabloid headlines today…
   EASTERN EUROPEAN CRIME LORD AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CORRUPTS ENGLISH ROSE…AND MILKS OUR BENEFIT SYSTEM. HE’S EXPLOITING THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE AND HAVING A LAUGH WHILE ABOUT IT.
   Of note, I once stepped onto Ellis Island and straight into the viewing of a play on illegal immigrant Bela Lugosi’s acceptance into America. On his side, he wasn’t an actual vampire. And, today, if a vampire like Lord Byron came out of “retirement” and promised to use his vast and secret fortune to fund his own happy meals from out of a blood bank, would we use vampire as a term of abuse?
   We’re human. Of course we would. (I have to say we’re human. This camouflages the fact that the blog post was written by Lord Byron, and is fresh to print from his holiday hideaway retirement cottage in Transylvania. Cottage. Castle. The terms are interchangeable.)
   There’s so much lore around the creation of Dracula, and of Frankenstein before it, that the best thing to do is ignore all the psychobabble and delve straight into the words. Visit these books. Revisit these books. Judge for yourselves.
   I like Dracula for the framing of the story. Readers are invited to piece together the narrative as the clues come in. It’s a Victorian detective piece, and you are forgiven if you end up wondering where Sherlock Holmes is in all this.
   Stoker’s novel is out of copyright, and the Dracula/Holmes crossover is not the original idea it once was. There’s a well-worn path from Baker Street to Castle Dracula, now. I have at least one comic book adaptation on the shelves, around here, somewhere.
   From time to time, I revisit works. Some books are worth reading again, even though unread books glare at me as I pass them by to remove the stake from Stoker’s novel one more time. In literary terms, Dracula is bound to outlive all of us. The book is still in print to this day, and has taken on an Un-Life all of its own. It’s better for a classic to be an Un-Dead book than an unread one.

NEW COMPUTER VERSUS OLD OFFICE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

I’ve run many offices out of cramped quarters. They were near-clones of each other. Common features? A chair at a desk or table. The computer, the screen, the keyboard, the mouse, and the printer…all present and mostly correct.

   To this day, the office remains papery. I reduce the use of dead trees and almost go paperless, until I am overwhelmed by a sudden surge in rectangular sheets that takes me back to the old ways.

   Well. Damn.

   I’ve gone about as hi-tech as I can run – the printer is wireless and sits in a different room, with actual room for it there. But I never quite manage to be 100% paperless. There is a printer in this room – I only use the scanner part of that machine. Yes, there’s always a need for paper. I scan stuff into the digital world, in imitation of the movie TRON.

   No, I don’t have a big eff-off laser or a massive vault door. One day, sigh.

   We’ll always need paper. Even if it’s just toilet paper. I have a roll of that handy, to mop up spillages that threaten to turn my chair into an electrical one if the rising tide consumes the cables. As more time passes, the cables grow longer and snakier and cablier…not less-so. If I went completely wireless, I’d be my own radio station.

   The computer sits to the left in one office. Now it’s on the right in the revamped writing lair of another set-up. Here, in an earlier incarnation, it’s still under the desk in the flashback I’m having. There, it’s on a chest of drawers next to the table and I’m being inventive with the cabling. The cable creature is the hydra-headed monster that grows two new cables for each old cable I ditch.

   As I type, I moved the new computer from under the desk to the right of the desk for around five minutes and…now, for however long NOW is, I’ve settled on a platform to the left of the desk. Low, the machine perches on a TV stand chosen for its ability to fit in the lack of space not available.

   I’m in the process of clearing the bookshelves of non-book things. Living clean, now. No gadgets amidst the stacks, away with clutter, why would I perch spare shoelaces there anyway…and so on. The TV and desk both block very easy access to the lower shelves, but those hidden planks are taken up by the cabling. Of course.

   Still with me, long into the digital age, is my reference shelf. Twenty books. There were nineteen tomes when the reference section sat, loosely, atop a small bookcase. The rule of the bookcase is simple.

   That topmost area of the wooden frame is also for books. The low bookcase just squeezed in, and made for a great stage on which my reference works strolled and acted.

   Storm after storm shook the office. And with each organisational tornado, shelves rose and whirled and flew and settled. I kept the doorstopper books on the ends, without support, to hold everything else in place.

   Now and again another bookcase acted as a default bookend of sorts, buttressing the reference works. Storms came and storms went. The reference section remained intact. Fossilised, as it turned out. I left the reference relic to sparkle, in amber, as the easy lure of the internet made it more convenient to cross-reference items.

   Today, the reference shelf is a little longer, and higher up, on an entirely different bookcase within easy sight and reach. Living on a wider bookcase, nineteen books accepted a twentieth into the ranks when I picked up a new reference work.

   A papery refugee, struggling to find a home.

   They stand, tight-packed, in there. Those books. No matter how the office is arranged, the reference shelf survives. As technology advances, the reference shelf endures. Just this minute, I’ve added eight tiny dictionaries to the reference shelf.

   Those micro-books are held in place by a large dictionary in what is now the back row. No, I don’t know how many dictionaries I own. I’m sure there are others, somewhere else. Yes, I was once trapped behind a bookcase. But I survived to have another coffee.

   Moving books from shelf to shelf is a tricky prospect. Many books loom over my workspace. I sleep on the other side of this great divide. One day, I’ll be found dead under the collected works of Dorothy L. Sayers.

   A clear slipcase of murder.

   Moving books around shelves is a tricky prospect for reasons of memory. I’m engaged in wordy toil over movies at the minute, and I was reading up on The Matrix when a name jumped off the page at me.

   That name collided with the bookcase to my immediate left. Over the past month, I’ve been accused, by three separate sources, of being surrounded by bookcases as I sit in a high-backed chair next to a roaring fire…

   Smoking-jacket, optional. Tobacco-products, not in evidence. I’m suspected of swilling brandy, most likely just for the atmospheric effect. A Mary Shelley Level of Rain™ rattles off the windows, and another lump of coal cracks and splits dramatically…

   The truth is, it’s been a good while since I sat in a high-backed chair next to a roaring fire with a shelf of books to hand…but, yes, there’s a grain of reality on that fictional beach. No smoking-jacket. The room contained an empty brandy glass. Rain rattled off the windows.

   But the real truth is…as I type, I am hemmed-in by the too-tall bookshelves that will one day deliver a succession of fatal blows from the typewriter of Dorothy L. Well, if you have to go…go dramatically, with a hint of murder and mystery.

   In other words, I’ll have vanished, on the run, after killing them all.

   My reference shelf grew based on what would fit in. A biographical dictionary sits next to an Atlas. Then there’s a dictionary on artists. Wikipedia and Google Maps are closer to hand. I’ve entered, or exited, The Matrix too many times to know what’s real.

   Another author tells me that there is still room in life for picking up a book and checking a reference. And I agree…if only to assist in keeping the fruits of my research sound exactly like everyone else’s browsing of Wikipedia.

   Top tip. On Wikipedia, I read the Talk pages as well. Mostly for the humour.

*

The last time a maintenance man was in here, he declared that someone likes to read, and left it at that. The library changes in the sense that the library grows. Bless your heart if you thought I cleared the stacks at intervals. Away with your heresy.

   That business of change is an easy business. Far trickier is the puzzle over ensuring things stand still. When the old computer dies, electronic koff, digital splutter, you move to a new computer.

   It works fresh out of the box, but it’s not the same. That’s the bloody trouble. You must house-train the young pup. Teach the new dog all the old tricks by installing familiar software. Not to go all Yogi Berra on you, but I think we’ve been here before.

   I endured a month of computer disruption. Two weeks crawled along as I used my old retired computer. At least this was familiar. I’d ported the look, the layout, and the software from the retirement home computer to the dust-free model all that time before, after all.

   Familiar, but slow – like a much-favoured brand of treacle. My computer died and I took a familiar-looking computer out of retirement. Now it was time to pass the grandfather layout to the grandson.

   But. That’s all digital. Making the new computer set-up so familiar that it resembles the computer before and the computer before that. Going back further, it was more like an offshoot of the family with little resemblance.

   This is where I came in…

   I’ve run many offices out of cramped quarters. They were near-clones of each other. Common features? A chair at a desk or table. The computer, the screen, the keyboard, the mouse, and the printer…all present and mostly correct.

   Out of the box, the new computer was a magnificent thing. As long as I had a monitor it recognised. That was sheer luck, Jeeves. And gradually, week upon week, I transformed the faster machine into a racehorse I recognised. The old racing colours flew again. That desktop is the old desktop once more.

   But.

   The new machine was…bigger as well as faster. Adding an extra reference book to my reference shelf was possible only after the transfer of the entire collection from a small bookcase to a large bookcase with longer shelves.

   I had a case problem. The new computer case was just a bit too big for the space available. Solution? Okay, I reached for a hacksaw. So what? This is what you have to do when you really have to do stuff.

   Briefly…(too late.) The old system was sideways. You walked in, turned left, shut the door, and sat in the chair. My computer sat on an old TV unit that barely fit into the alcove of bookshelves. I am, sadly, still clearing up those shelves so there are only books and hardly any clutter. Yes, I tidied. And yes, I’ve untidied the shelves all over again.

   The old TV unit wasn’t tall enough. I needed an overhang for the keyboard. In comes the upright desk thing. Whatever the gadget is called. It lets you stand at a computer and type. Height is adjustable. I had the wooden TV unit with the upright desk thing on top, and the computer itself sat down inside the glass door of the TV unit.

   Fine. It worked. Cables were all over the place and then some. But it worked and I didn’t care how it worked. So much for the Olden Times. It worked. Until the new computer arrived. And the new casing for the PC was just a shade too large to put under the TV unit inside that glass door. Not total glass. Wooden frame with a pane of glass in there.

   Right. I’m stuck with a huge unit and a too-huge computer. Is there a solution? Yes, if you chase after one. When you shut the wooden frame of the door, it buts up against a crossbar. That support is there to make the door fit snugly. It was loose. (I’ve put it back together again, and it is still loose.)

   I decided to pry this slat out. No bother. The computer now had enough of a gap to fit in there. Terrific. Only problem…the computer case was too fucking long. What to do? It is essential, if you have a library stacked with dead trees, to possess some spare bookcase shelves. Obviously, I have spares.

   Short and narrow, two of these spare planks would fit under the case and act as a platform allowing the case’s annoying feet to rest evenly and safely…

   Well, sign me up to that shit.

   Problem I see in my near-future. The two shelves together are narrow, and will slide around from right to left if I bump into the whole arrangement. UNLESS I fill the gap down the side with two pieces of wood cut just right. And I have a piece of wood left over from a chunk of packaging.

   All I need is a hacksaw. I hack and I saw. There is some measuring, of course. You can’t go around with a hacksaw, willy-nilly. It’s just not done. When the dust settles, what do I have? There are two planks of wood forming a makeshift platform, inside this cupboard area. They are jammed in solid by the wooden bracing pieces I’ve cut up…

   The computer slides in on this contraption and all is fine. It’s terrific. EXCEPT…

   Oh. For. The. Sake. Of. Fuck.

   This machine has a glass panel at the front. Which means all the USB ports are at the back, as expected. And all the front USB ports are on top instead of the standard arrangement. I truly need the two front ones for various gadgets.

   BUT. The top of the computer case is a shade TOO TALL. It nestles just barely under the extending desk arrangement that holds the TV monitor. The only way to access the USB is by extending the extending desk into the air and taking the TV up the way. Then there is room for the USB. Okay. Thank fuck for the extending desk.

   I stepped into difficult territory here. My archive, from my dead computer, was in a live hard drive. That hard drive sat in a cradle to make it easier to plug in with a USB for all that wonderful access. The USB went in the top of the PC. I started copying the data over.

   This took a few hours. As I came and went and did other computery things, the extending desk shuddered and dropped a little. Shit, fuck, bugger. I couldn’t unplug the USB during file transfer. So I had to sit there and catch the desk to stop it crunching down on the USB head and ruining the gadget.

   I resolved to save the day by using toilet roll. The roll was hardly touched. I place it as a brace under the extending desk. The desk later collapsed with twenty minutes of file transferring left. It landed on the toilet roll, and the roll held. I banked on the cardboard core being supported by the huge wad of paper. And I stayed with the machine for the final transfer of files. As soon as that procedure was done and digitally dusted, I switched the old archive off and took the USB the hell out of Dodge.

   And then?

   Either raise and brace the extending desk platform or change the office once more. I had to rearrange so much fucking furniture to make room for a new desk. The computer sits to the left of it on a glass TV stand, and I now face the back of the room instead of the left-hand wall. There’s less faffing about with the chair behind the door.

   I am in the same place and a much better place all at the same time. The TV is all cabled up and sits on the extending desk unit atop the new desk. It’s been a long time since I rearranged an entire office set-up to cater to a new machine.

   Here’s hoping it’s going to be a long time again before the next upheaval.

MY PALOMA PICASSO MOMENT: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Let's talk about Paloma Picasso.
   I know. That's just me. The way I process information. Anyway, I don't just make this stuff up. It's true that I do make stuff up, but all kinds of source material is swirling around.
   There are semi-deliberate decisions. Often I find I make a choice based on three or four sources hanging out as part of some random coincidence.
   Flying in loose formation.
   I just note coincidence and plan accordingly.

*

One of Picasso's many children, Paloma is the character most people remember out of that crowd.
   She's one-point-five of those types with a sense of inherited fame hanging around her - that's neither one thing nor the other.
   Paloma is remembered for something that she always does, except when she doesn't.
   And though that has nothing to do with me, it's one of those scraps of info that I filed away and made use of in another area entirely.
   Yes, Paloma is known as Picasso's daughter. But there's something else she is really really known for.
   Lipstick.
   She doesn't always wear lipstick. I guess she could actually sleep in it, but, ew, poor pillows. If she uses pillows.
   Okay. She doesn't always wear the slap. But she's known for the particular shade of red when she does slip into lipstick. That red shade, according to what I heard, is always the same.
   If you dig deeper into that story it's not true, of course. She tried many red lipsticks, and went for fire-engine red as much as possible.
   The brand changed. And the shade varied. But the lipstick was red.
   Paloma tried different shades until she came up with her own. What else to call it, but Mon Rouge. These are the things I heard about Paloma Picasso.
   She wore specific fire-engine red in-your-face lipstick - which is the point, we must suppose.
   Picasso eventually wore one shade of red - her own product - and much of the marketability came from the designer's making use of that lipstick and no other.
   You could argue that everything manufactured is of limited edition...
   Earth milk from this planet's moo-cows is a limited product. Once the planet dies, that's probably it for moo-cow products. Unless we export ourselves to other worlds.
   But the milk just won't be the same, will it? Even moo-cows that evolve on far-flung worlds won't produce our stuff. It could be chemically similar, but humans are built to complain about how things just aren't the same.
    Everything is of limited edition.
   And so it was, is, with Paloma's specific red lipstick. It's not manufactured now. Once she started wearing one specific shade of lipstick, designed by her own mind, she stuck with it.
   What does she do, now? She has her own private stock. As long as that lasts, and as long as she lasts, she'll wear the same shade of lipstick.
   It's red.
   I kept this in mind. No, I don't wear red lipstick - or any other kind - in case you were about to laugh as you asked.

*

Paloma did her own thing.
   I took that lesson in lipstick and applied it to my presence on book covers. Let's stick with red and talk about periods. If you mention periods to me, you provide menstrual imagery.
   Blood. Life-cycle. Red. However, your decidedly American origin indicates you might be discussing full stops.
   These handy dots at the end of sentences.
   I can't say how I jumped from Paloma Picasso's lipstick to full stops. The story stayed with me, and I eventually applied some essence of it to thoughts on book covers.
   What do I always do on my book covers? I use full stops. Because full stops aren't generally used on book covers.
   This is a deliberate design decision, at odds with the world of books. And it's all Paloma's fault.
   Though I must take the blame.
   You'll see the punctuation on a book by E.L. Doctorow, L. Frank Baum, or Dorothy L. Sayers. That's about it as far as usage goes. I wanted to do my own thing.
   A Paloma lipstick thing. So I experimented and settled on this business with the full stops.
   For consistency, I apply the full stop to author name and to book title - whether the book title is a complete sentence or not.

*

I want this Paloma Picasso moment on my book covers. My demands aren't that outrageous. Full stops with everything, courtesy Paloma Picasso's lips.


 
 

WRITING FICTION. THE CHAPTER TEST.

For chapterless works, take a different approach. (A warier one.)

If you plan to write a work of fiction divided into chapters, or acts, there's an important test to apply. Of the piece under consideration, ask yourself this question...

Does something important happen in the chapter?

   Be brutal. If you manage to answer yes, then that part of your writing passes the chapter test. (That's if you manage to answer yes. Apply honesty.)

   If the answer is no, chances are that you can remove the entire fucking chapter without adversely affecting your book.
   Your fucking so-called fucking precious fucking so-called fucking feelings are fucking unimfuckingportant. Fucking take the fucking so-called fucking pain - so that your readers don't have to.
   Profanity in the preceding paragraph was employed to jar complacent writers reading this - the ones who sat straight-faced and said I'm not that writer. My chapters contain stuff.
   (I concocted this blog post after reading a novel in which the plot was relegated to the last ten pages and negated through plot-reversal in the final five. Just so you know.)
   The definition of something important is left to the honest appraisal of each writer. A few points worth considering...

*

 

There is a view that everything in your story must be relevant to your story. No room for dead wood. Taken to extremes, this affects readers who know that is precisely how you always operate. Readers may be herded into thinking that every single item is of significance, comma by fucking comma.

   Result? Even the seemingly-insignificant points raised in your story are automatically flagged as significant. When there really is no dead wood lying around inside your text, will you still leave scope for surprise? Only you can answer that one.

*

Dramatist Anton Chekhov made a statement many take as a commentary on foreshadowing items in storytelling. He was writing about placing the detail of a gun in a tale.

"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep."

   The comment isn't just about foreshadowing. It's about cutting the story until there's no fat left, then writing it down. Or cutting the fat after being written, prior to publication. (Don't go cutting after publication - let the story go. Write a better one next time.)

   No dead wood. Chekhov feels it's vital to place everything just so. Something important happens in each act of the play. More than that, though. Chekhov indicates that nothing unimportant should happen at any point in the story. His statement has also been written as...

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

*

Do we go along with that? We have choices to make. Another dramatist, J.B. Priestley, wrote a play called Dangerous Corner. This starts in darkness with the sound of a shot. Priestley's story has often been likened to a radio play unleashed on the stage. I heard it performed on radio, and was left to imagine the darkness of the opening seconds.

   Though I haven't seen the movie adaptation or a staged performance, I'm inclined to think radio may just be the best place for Dangerous Corner. With the introduction of the shot, does a gun feature in proceedings? Yes. I'll leave the plot out, for those with the inclination to experience Priestley's material.
   Priestley gave us the indication of a gun, and followed up with a firearm in act three. Was he taking Chekhov literally, with a wink at the audience? Priestley often winked at the crowd while displaying the straightest of faces.
   Google's mapping service has blurred the face of Priestley's statue in Bradford. J.B. Priestley, Grumpy Old Git? I can't help but think, had Priestley lived to comment on the sight, he'd have expressed a preference to see the background architecture blurred instead.
   It's the addition of a pipe to the statue that renders Priestley into a wrinklier version of Harold Wilson, with less hair. Judge for yourselves. There are images of these two pipe-smokers side-by-side on the internet, should you trudge far enough. Squint at photos of the young Priestley, and you can almost imagine that he is Harold Wilson.
   My diversion into talk of pipe-smoking Yorkshiremen serves no plot-based purpose. A chapter without development in plot may indicate plot is coming along shortly, after the instigation of character-based activity. Occasionally, story is about atmosphere.
   If every single item in your tale is vital, does that turn you into a predictable writer? Make a choice. Are you in the mood to write a mystery? Herrings of a scarlet hue may mislead your audience for a time. In the same breath, those things are vital and trivial. Of no consequence, yet of great consequence.
   Should nothing happen in a chapter? If the nothing in question is a way of delaying an important act, then the nothing in question becomes all about something. You can heighten tension by throwing kitchen sink after kitchen sink at your readers, before you heave a truck packed with kitchen sinks at your audience in the NEXT chapter...
   But it's easier to build tension by leaving the introduction of essential plumbing UNTIL the next chapter. No advice here. Just a reminder that it's all down to choice, in the end.
   If a chapter-divided novel is a collection of short stories flying in loose formation, then yes...something important must happen in each chapter. For every chapter in which nothing important appears to happen, you'd best throw in a chapter which explains why. Chekhov has a point about needless clutter - wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.
   Be mindful of the importance of needful clutter. Herrings painted scarlet. And, just as important in writing mysteries, don't overlook gold herrings. Diversions from the plot which concealed the plot all along, upon further examination.
   In Five Red Herrings, Dorothy L. Sayers lays on a boatload of misdirection around the death of a painter, knowing most of her non-painting readers will be fooled long enough to keep reading. Artists may give her plot no more than a scathing glance.
   Something must happen in each chapter. Will that something be important to the readers, and not just of interest to the author? Jay Parini offered his novel up for sacrifice on the altar of Gore Vidal's wit...

PARINI: I’m writing a novel in which two characters talk about Kierkegaard for about twenty pages. Can I get away with this?

VIDAL: You can do that, of course. But only if these characters of yours are sitting in a railway car, and the reader knows there is a bomb under the seat.

   A sly dig from Vidal indicating that, should Parini proceed without the bomb, that novel will only have one reader.

*

Decisions, decisions. What do I give time to, as someone who experiences fiction?

   If I pay to see a movie, you have me until the movie ends. This country hick invested time in reaching the vast glowing screen, after all.
   Though if a movie is showing on TV, I'll find something else to do if you can't hold my attention for twenty minutes. At most, I'll waver as long as the half-hour point.
   I tend to give a new TV series about fifteen minutes to convince me. No, I'm not a fan of the idea that episode two is better. Don't let episode two do episode one's job, TV writers. The Sopranos gained and held my attention. I checked out of Lost before that first precious quarter-hour had elapsed.
   Books? If I start a book, I am almost always bound to finish that book - regardless of quality. Here, it is the writerly eye intruding that makes the drudgery of trudgery bearable. For, as a creator of fiction, I often learn much from reading truly shitty wordsmithery.
   The chapter test is all about having forced myself through books with wall-to-wall nothing chapters. Writers inflicted these flaming coals upon my weary feet. I'm sure they'll continue to write The Great (Insert Nationality Here) Novel, believing that which is of utmost importance to the scribbler is of equal importance to the reader.
   Scribbler, beware.
   So I'll raise caution again, for those who missed it. Does something important happen in the chapter? The definition of something important is left to the honest appraisal of each writer. Chapters are short stories flying in loose formation. The looseness of that formation is as much the reader's affair as it is the writer's. Your audience may forgive.
   To write one stray chapter may be regarded as a misfortune. Writing more than one is definitely a sign of carelessness.

Other entries. See also WRITING FICTION. THE KNIFE TEST and WRITING FICTION. THE WOMAN TEST. For a piece on conduct, rather than typing, there's WRITING FICTION. THE CREEPY SEXIST DICK AUTHOR TEST.

BOOK SNOBS.

That term conjures an image of the fur-clad Duchess of Literati sneering at ill-mannered urchins from the safety of her mink-lined Rolls-Royce Silver Spoon. What is a book snob? One who reads only the BEST. No.

   The term was used by fellow-scribblers to worry over the grim prospect of never again reading stories for the sheer fun of it, Jeeves. Becoming a writer may destroy you as a reader, if you let yourself fall into that trap. I’d walked that clifftop path before. What to say of it? Everything has its behind-the-scenes viewpoint.

   If you are a police officer, you will glare at the travesty that is the cop movie. Medical dramas placing emphasis on the heroism of overworked doctors are bound to leave nurses feeling cold. Stories about vampires will, inevitably, piss werewolves right off.

   And writers? Don’t get me started. Oh, if you insist. Crank the starting-handle on the front of that Rolls-Royce Silver Spoon, Jeeves. The Duchess of Literati wants to go for a spin. She has her quota of ill-mannered urchins to mow down, after all.

   My fellow-scribblers bemoaned the occupational hazard a writer must inevitably deal with. This is the business of READING. At some point, readers decide to become writers. A few of those writers actually manage the transition after penning five or six novels.

   How harsh a reader do you become, in reading as a writer? Do you read for enjoyment? Are you prepared to read a story just to see how it was constructed? Do you find a book so badly-written that you simply abandon it?

   Where, along the way, do you transform into a book snob, mowing down lesser books from the back seat of your Rolls-Royce Silver Spoon? (All 0.75 regular readers of this blog will glean that the spoon in question must be non-runcible.) The difficulty for the writer, in reading, is one of being a back-seat driver. You want the story to go in a particular way, but you aren’t the one at the wheel.

   I said that I’d walked that clifftop path before. Luckily, I didn’t fall. I didn’t find myself reading a book for pleasure only to discover, shock-horror, that I was merely reading to study technique. Why not? Was I capable of disengaging the writing brain and using the reading brain to get from start to fart?

   Not exactly. I pulled stories to bits, to see how they worked. And I enjoyed doing that. I decided to read certain authors to see how particular stories were constructed. If I enjoyed the fiction along the way, great. That’s the point I’m getting at. Enjoy reading, even if you are reading as a writer.

   This was the case with the detective novels of Raymond Chandler and the Bond books by Ian Fleming. I read them to see how they were done. Sat down and planned it. I’ll buy these books, and look at particular authors. And I’ll learn. My time in the company of Sherlock Holmes was spent absorbing structure. But it was with one eye on fun, just as the other eye dealt with the mechanical side.

   Reading books and seeing faults in them from a new stance just because you’ve labelled yourself a writer…is a losing game. A clifftop path with a sudden halt. Don’t get too tangled in that pursuit of the BEST in fiction. Oh, I read GREAT stuff. But I also read GRATING stuff. I think you really have to go slumming, same as I did. You have to be prepared to read books that you suspect you may put down and give up on.

   It’s a RARE book I’ve done that with. Once I start a book, I’m meant to go through with it to the bitter end. And sometimes that end has been world-class bitter with a patent pending. I’m struggling to think of the books I gave up on. One, two, three, four. I’ll struggle some more. How many? Not many. Perhaps no more than half a dozen in a reading lifetime…oh, the crap I forced myself to read. And the crap I wrote. The books I should have given up on…let me count the ways. Ah, no time.

   See the positive side of reading. Let your stance as an author enrich your enjoyment of the experience. Better that, than to let your writerliness taint your views. Yes, you’ve read some stinkers. But the ones you finish are the ones you finish. Those finished books, good, bad, indifferent, taught you much I’m sure. I’d hope you came away from reading having enjoyed reading.

   You may demand great fiction, but you won’t always get it. I’ve read great books with appalling typos in them. That didn’t destroy my reading experience. Flip that over. Wonderful typesetting couldn’t disguise a crap book. Who decides whether a book is crap or not? Each reader. Individually. Inside each tiny mind. Thus endeth the lesson.

   So, writerly ladies, gents, and all those caught between or far outwith, are you book snobs? Writers, reading and coughing up blood simply for being writers? I think you are just trying critical hats on for size in an attempt to flog yourselves over your own worst imperfections. Nothing to do with the stuff you are reading. Everything to do with the stuff you are writing.

   Remember, those imperfections of yours may actually be key indicators of your wonderful writing style. Tread carefully. Don’t squash your own unique telling-points. Here are a few books to consider. They are not bad books. Quite the reverse.

   Does it matter to me that the characters in Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth should probably die off from lack of supplies with all the to-ing and fro-ing underground? No. It doesn’t matter to me at all. No book snobbery there.

   What is Dracula’s rationale for avoiding the major population centre of Berlin? It’s closer than his destination of London, and he has a greater grasp of the language in Germany. Why not set up his undead empire as a Berliner? He heads for London. Does this destroy the book’s plot? Certainly not.

   Dare we mention the books that JUST HAPPEN TO TURN UP in front of Frankenstein’s monster? Really, Mary? No, seriously. REALLY, Mary? The monster must be educated, so here’s Paradise Lost. WTF?! I glossed over this. Almost became a writing snob, but I reined the mare in. The clifftop path I walked that day was signposted. So I came back down, unscathed. (I like what Mary Shelley did with that book. She’s a fucking superstar. I gladly say that of the author of the next piece…)

   Okay. I have a slight problem with Jane Eyre, in that she just happens to fall in with her relatives after wandering in the wilds. But the family situation is explained. There is foreshadowing. Even so, it does come across as a thumping geographical coincidence.

   My shameless bias in Charlotte’s favour excuses this literary excess, as Mary Shelley’s excess is similarly excused – but only just. I look askance at the connection, bundled up in a sub-plot concerning inheritance, and move on. The walk along the cliffs is not for me, for there is much enjoyment to be had from Frankenstein and Jane Eyre. (Suddenly, I have a deviant literary mash-up in mind. Dr Phibes, the screens!)

   The Hound of the Baskervilles…plays a very strange game of pitting the occult against Sherlock Holmes. Is there really a huge spectral hound out there on the moors, Sir Arthur? Er…

   In Kipling’s case, style intrudes. Both editions of The Jungle Book contain a story not set in the jungle. Snow and ice intervene. Should we return the books as not representative of content under the Sale of Goods Act…

   The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers, houses a wholly improbable cause of death within its mysterious pages. Yet that sits perfectly well within the self-contained atmosphere of the story. And that’s a few books in on the series featuring her aristocratic detective. She went out of her way to contrive many an arcane scene in her books, did Dorothy.

   Does that matter? Have His Carcase has one of the most outlandish plot-devices going for it. The scramble to secure evidence from a corpse before the sea washes clues away. Mad writing. But it works. Because, as readers, we want it to. As writers, we should want it to, too.

   Find me a book you can’t find fault with, and I’ll find fault with it. Not out of spite. This is just the way things are. A book isn’t a wheel, or a meal. You’ll know a broken wheel, or an awful meal. A book is harder to place. Flip that over. A book is harder to excuse.

   Your terrific book may not be mine. So, I say again. Find me a book you can’t find fault with, and I’ll find fault with it. With that in mind, I warn of the path to the shaky cliff. Don’t go out of your way to climb to that high spot, with its winds buffeting you.

   If you can’t read a book without finding faults, you are reading every book you’ve ever read. Buck up. Enjoy what you read. That is the point of reading. Worry about being a writer when you are WRITING. The Duchess of Literati crashed her Silver Spoon up her own backside. Don’t join her in that pursuit.

NEXT BLOG: OPERATION JOCK MACBASTARD.