writing

reading on paper (part two)

~ Anthony Lee Collins

Update: The final parts of The College Murder Case are up, starting here. Please don't let it distract you from the exciting announcement below.

A Sane Woman is in print!

As I indicated here, I've been very happy with lulu.com, and here is the result. An actual book, portable, easy to read, with a very nice cover. It's sturdier than a Kindle, too.

Here's the blurb:

A Sane Woman is a mystery story. First, we’ll meet the characters, including a proofreader, a school teacher, a famous novelist, a successful lawyer, and two teenage girls, one a record store clerk and the other a runaway. And then they’ll start to vanish, one by one.

The detective is named Jan Sleet, but she doesn’t come in until toward the end, with her trusted assistant Marshall. And when she solves it, it’s because she’s really trying to solve a very different mystery instead.

If you like it, please tell your friends (or order copies for them – everybody likes to get presents). If you don't care for it, recommend it to your friends anyway. Their tastes might be different.

Here is the link to order: http://www.lulu.com/content/2274007.


Also, as I mentioned here, the mystery stories I'm currently writing are now available in single files, easily printable. Just go here. The College Murder Case will be added as soon as it's complete, which may be within this week.


On another subject, I read this in The New Yorker, and then this on wikipedia.

As somebody now entering his 19th year of writing novels online, posting each part as soon as it is complete, I'm glad this is finally catching on. I wonder what took so long.

Not that I have any desire to write on a cell phone. (Of course, as I think of it, I am writing this on a Palm, so I guess that's not that different after all.)

names (part three)

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

It's been a while since I've talked about where all the names come from, as I did here and here.

Chapters

To pick up about the chapter titles, most of the titles in the third novel are pretty utilitarian ("A Visit to Perry," "Return to U-town," "On the Medical Team"), but some are references to other things.

"Quartet" is the title of Perry Nelson's third novel (as mentioned in A Sane Woman, and probably elsewhere, too).

"Distance and Time" is the title of Perry Nelson's second novel.

"In the Hotel Bar" is utilitarian, but somebody mentioned that it makes him think of butter, so now it makes me think of butter, so it will be changed to something else in rewrites.

"Absolute Beginners" is a song by David Bowie. A terrifically romantic song, chosen for obvious reasons (I'm particularly fond of the version from the "Bowie at the Beeb" CD, by the way).

"A Journey in the Dark" is the name of the chapter in Lord of the Rings where they go through the mines of Moria.

"A Different Choice" is a quote from my favorite Alanis Morissette song, "Out is Through," which is about how to get through problems, you have to solve them, not sidestep them.

"(At This Moment of) The World" has a double meaning, because The World is the name of Perry Nelson's first novel (by the way, imagine calling your first novel The World, especially when you're still a teenager). But the whole title is a quote from a Joni Mitchell song. You can google it if you want, but I won't name the song or the album here (it's the title track), because it would be a big fat spoiler if you haven't read the novel yet.

People

As for people, I've found that one thing about mystery stories is that you have to create a lot of new characters for each story, and most of them need names. This is a shock for me, since mostly I write about the same characters. New characters are introduced here and there, but usually one at a time.

There is no particular significance to the names of the characters in The Apartment Mystery.

In The School Mystery, which has a lot of suspects, I decided I needed a system, so most of the names of the new characters are from Dark Shadows: Roger, Willy, Amy, James (Jameson), and Carol (Caroline). Some of their physical characteristics and personality traits were shared with the originals, but only up to a point. It was mostly a device to help me keep it all straight. Of course, I avoided having characters named Barnabas, Quentin, and Angelique.

There was a David in Dark Shadows (David Collins, in fact). but the David in the story is quite obviously not based on him. He's based on a friend of mine from high school who was a science fiction enthusiast and who indeed taught some classes at the high school where he was a student.

None of the names in The Hospital Mystery were significant, except that I was inspired by The Dutch Shoe Mystery by Ellery Queen, which took place in a hospital, so I gave the murderer the same name as the killer in that book. Oh, and the gang name "the Scorpions" comes from Dhalgren.

In The Vampire Mystery, most of the new names come from the "Resident Evil" movies: Nikolai, Isaac Ashford, Jillian Wells, Lloyd, Spence, Nurse Betty. If you've seen the movies, you'd probably be able to get some sense of who's more good and who's more evil.

Mindy's name doesn't come from anywhere. Marisa is obviously a reference to Mrs. Coulter (from The Golden Compass), but mostly I just chose it because of the way it contrasted with Mindy. Mindy's home town (Missoula, Montana) was chosen because that's where David Lynch is from, and Mindy seemed a bit like a Lynch heroine (pretty and small-town wholesome, but with darker aspects and depths and possibilities).

Åsa's name didn't come from "Resident Evil," and by the time the story was done, I was certainly tired of typing the HTML code which gives you that little circle on top of the "A."

In the current story, Ron's name isn't a reference to anything. She just barged into my brain one day, announced herself, dropped off some mail, and left.

Stuart Anson, on the other hand, is a deliberate reference to Stuart Rene LaJoie, from the Robert A. Heinlein novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ("Anson" was Heinlein's middle name). He's the first elderly character who isn't either a loon (Old Waldo) or a drunken loon (The Professor), and Heinlein novels often included an older character to impart wisdom (Heinlein's wisdom, of course) to the younger protagonist(s). In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, that character isn't Stuart Rene LaJoie, it's Professor Bernardo de la Paz, the rational anarchist (who is a Loonie, but certainly not a loon). But I used Stu's name because Stu (our Stu) is in an analogous position to the Stu in that book, who was the earth-side ally and representative and agent of the lunar revolutionaries.

As I think of it, Ron was probably inspired by Hazel from the same novel, a young girl who the narrator first sees during a riot, bowling over one of the Authority guards. That seems like something Ron would do.

There will be more new characters introduced in the current story (at least two, since we haven't met either the victim or the killer yet), but I'll give them names when they appear.

Oh, and speaking of names, a reader asked about when Marshall chooses to refer to Jan as "my employer," when he calls her "my wife," and when he uses her name. This was my answer:

Mostly he refers to her as "my employer" or "Jan." The former is used somewhat more often when it's a professional moment, the latter when it's personal. I think in the scenes when they're in bed together, or preparing for bed (or trying to get her out of bed), she's mostly "Jan."

He refers to her as his wife in that one instance (in the last paragraph here) because the thought wouldn't make much sense otherwise. Why would he enjoy taking a brief trip to the city (just the two of them) with his employer? Only because she's also his wife. And remember (though I just thought of this now) these are two people whose life together has mostly been traveling, always just the two of them. Now that they don't get to do it that often, they probably enjoy it even more. Which is probably related to her sudden desire to spend some smooching time with her hubby, though mostly that's because she's in such a good mood in general (with the college thing apparently going to work out).

My idea (at this stage, subject to change) is that the stories are designed to be read in order, so the "big reveal" that they are married is at the end of the first one ("She put her arms around me and we kissed, and I could feel the tears fall from her eyes to my cheeks, and maybe some the other way, too. That's what it's like when you're married to a detective. You sometimes have moments like this on blood-splattered sofas in murder rooms.")

After that, the alert reader should be remembering that they're married, even if I don't refer to it a lot. If someone should forget and then be reminded, all the better, because it makes the point of how complex their relationship is.

let me be the 1 (one)

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

As I think I indicated before, I liked The Golden Compass quite a bit, both the book and the movie, though of course the book is much more etc. etc. etc. (you know the drill about books and movies).

But there is one thing I don't care for in the story, and that's the prophecy of the witches. Lyra is special because there's a prophecy that says she will do various things, and the only question is whether she's that child.

Like Neo in The Matrix, like Anakin in Star Wars, the only question is whether she's "The One."

Yeesh. Can't anybody ever just do something because they decide to do it? This is one thing I like about The Lord of the Rings. There's a little hint of "The One"-ness right at the beginning ("Maybe you were meant to have it"), but then that's pretty much dropped and we end up with the council at Elrond's, where everybody argues and yells and insults each other until they come to an uneasy and imperfect agreement, sparked by Frodo's decision to take the responsibility for the Ring himself.

Which, unlike this "One" stuff, is how things happen in the real world. So, if hobbits and elves and dwarfs can work this way, I think Jedi knights and witches and those matrix people could, too. Just like Vicki, who found herself in a particular position, quite unexpectedly, and realized that she could be useful. And even Jan Sleet, who has a rather high opinion of herself, fully appreciates that she ended up where she is by (as she would put it) a combination of random chance and applied intelligence.

Of course, as an atheist, that would be her conclusion. And her atheism will play a part in the current mystery, where she's investigating vampires.

Oh, and speaking of The Lord of the Rings, I do recommend an episode of South Park called "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers." As Cartman would say, it's hella funny.

lyra and her daemon

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen."

When Philip Pullman wrote that line, the first line of The Golden Compass, he had no idea what a "daemon" was. He just knew he had a problem to solve, since he'd already written several versions of the first chapter, where Lyra sneaks into the Retiring Room of Jordan College and hears things she isn't supposed to hear. The chapter wasn't working, because there was nobody for Lyra to talk to. There's a reason the Hardy Boys did all their eavesdropping as a duo.

So, Pullman invented a "daemon," and made up its attributes as he went along.

(All this is according to one of the documentaries which comes with the Golden Compass DVD.)

There are people (not writers) who like to think that writers have everything planned out before they start writing, both the plot and the underlying themes. Some, at least, do not.

When Randi first appeared, in U-town, it was because I was thinking about a joke which starts, "A guy comes into a bar, talking to himself." I don't know of a joke like that, but I'm sure there is one. Then I started to speculate about who Chet might be talking to, if he wasn't talking to himself.

Daphne was introduced because it occurred to me that none of the characters had pets, and I thought it would be good to introduce a pet (since many people do have pets, and I've even had a few myself). Now it's hard to think about Pete without Daphne, almost as hard as it is to think about Lyra Belacqua without Pantalaimon.


There more of The Hospital Murder Case posted, starting here.

artists are weird

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 1 Comment

I read somewhere, years ago, that all of the directors in Hollywood had started editing their movies digitally, except for one. Steven Spielberg was the only holdout, the only one who still cut film (you know, with a razor blade and tape, or some equivalent). I've wondered since then if he'd given in, but apparently not. According to Entertainment Weekly, he's still cutting on film (on a device called a Moviola, and they were invented in the 1920s, though he previews on something called a KEM, and they were invented in the 1970s).

This is especially amusing right now, since he's working on the fourth Indiana Jones movie with George Lucas, who is the #1 proponent of creating and editing and showing films digitally. Apparently a lot of good-natured ribbing goes on.

At the end of the interview, Lucas says, "When Steven works on his scripts, he does his work on a computer. I wouldn't touch a computer. I do mine on nice yellow tablets with a No. 4 pencil, and I will not change."

It's at this point that Spielberg says, "This interview must seem like we're in Bellevue."

Newer technology in the arts is always supposed to replace older technology, but it seldom does, at least not as quickly as predicted. Synthesizers were supposed to replace orchestras, but they didn't. In fact, they didn't even completely replace the creaky, wheezy, out-of-tune device called the Mellotron, because no synthesizer can give you that horrendously wonderful sound (at least not yet). Most of my fiction is still written on paper before it's put into a computer (blog entries are usually just written on the computer). I know somebody who thinks the Kindle will replace all books. And it may, eventually, but it will take a long time, probably when the Kindle becomes like the books in The Diamond Age.

There are seldom artistic reasons for one thing supplanting another, but there are often commercial reasons. Nobody is going to keep on making Moviolas and KEMs just for Mr. Spielberg, so when his last one breaks (and he has around 30 KEMs, to cannibalize for parts, so it will be a while), he'll go digital. I wonder if some people still record music on magnetic tape. Probably. But they'll have to stop when the companies stop making the tape.

I just finished my current story. It was all written on 20 lb. gray paper with a purple Bic Velocity pen and a black Tombow brush pen.

the deadline wakes you up

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 1 Comment

I saw a very interesting interview with the guys who created South Park here.

Of course, South Park is wonderful, at least based on the episodes I've seen, and the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut is hilarious. But the reason I'm bringing this up here here is because of two particular things they talk about in the interview.

The first is their preference for working on the television show, as opposed to making movies. They talk about the difference between thinking of an idea and then having it appear on television nine days later, compared to working on a movie where it can be two years between those events.

I can understand that. I think it sharpens the mind, to know that what you're creating now will be public within a few days. That makes it hard to do something carelessly, figuring you'll fix it later on in the editing (or "we'll fix it in the mix" for musicians, or "we'll fix it in post" in the movies).

In fact, Trey Parker talks about trying to do some work one summer, when the show was in hiatus, with no pressure, and doing some of the worst work they'd ever done. He then goes on to compare it to writing a song:

...I like to fancy myself more of a musician than anything else, but it really is – for me, writing an episode of South Park, it's like sitting down and writing a song. When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff. But there's this thing that happens when the song first comes out, that sort of magic when it first comes out of the ether, and you can't even really explain where it comes from. That happens so much with music, and people understand that with music. But I really think that a lot of movie and TV should be the same way.

So much of what you see now in Hollywood is written and directed by committee, and you can see it. Things are so workshopped and so run around the room, and so overthought. And finally, once you have a draft and then a draft of the draft, then they go in there and they work on every single little joke, and "Is there a gag here? Is there something here?" You would never do that with a song. You would never sit around for a month and talk about what a song should sound like, and what the chorus is going to be. To me, every episode is like a song, and every season is like an album. There's that part of the day when you first get the idea and you say, "This could be really funny." And you sit down and you write it. There's just something that happens there that doesn't happen when you really give it a lot of time beforehand. And that's basically my long-winded answer of saying I'm a procrastinator. [Laughs.]


Having written quite a few songs, I can see the parallel, and I wonder if my songwriting experience affected my preferences for writing fiction. And, as I think of it, it's how Rex Stout wrote all the Nero Wolfe books, from beginning to end, with no editing. This took about three weeks for each book, then he had the rest of that year off.