Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Twelve Clues of Christmas: The Singapore Science Centre Cafe Mystery

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

We got to play at murder at the Singapore Science Centre Cafe last week!
Forensic details are usually the steps mystery writers (or I, at least) try to fudge so I jumped at a chance to find out how a real forensic scientist (Kang Hua in this case) would unravel this murder I created around the forensic introduction stations they set up...


And here (along with some of the evidence) is The Murder Scenario:

What we know: Just after 3am on Tuesday morning, police were called to the Judgement Heights Apartment on Forensic Walk. The night security guard, concerned that the single lift was stuck on Level 8 for over an hour, walked up to investigate.
There, on the landing of Level 8, he found the body of the Victim, Dan Quek.
He had been stabbed in the chest and bled out.

Forensic examination determined he had been dead for under an hour. The murder weapon was not found. (there was also a strong odour of urine in the out-of-order lift, but this was overlooked at the time, given the guard proceeded to throw up in the lift)

After preliminary investigations, the police narrowed down their suspects to 3 residents whose apartments shared the landing on Level 8, Judgement Heights with the Victim Dan: Suspect A: Amina Suspect B: Ben Suspect C: Chong

Victim Dan’s behaviour had created difficulties with his neighbours, especially those on his shared landing, since he moved in last month.

Suspect A: (Amina) complained that Dan harassed her with sexist and racist comments when their paths crossed, even trying to molest her last week, when she encountered him on the landing.
After she reminded him of the security camera on their landing, Victim D threw her planter (she was growing basil plants in the common area) at the camera, wrecking both the camera and her plants. (Camera was not yet replaced, explaining why the attack wasn’t recorded).

Suspect A was heard threatening the Victim and demanding compensation for her plants.
The Victim was heard making sexually suggestive comments to Suspect A.

Suspect B: (Ben) reported that last week Dan deliberately drove into his Forza 350 sports GT scooter in the basement carpark, after repeatedly mocking men who ride scooters.
Suspect B demanded compensation for the damage and repairs.
Dan laughed and told him couldn’t prove anything and offered to fight Ben.

Suspect B was heard threatening the Victim and demanding compensation for his scooter.

The Victim was heard threatening to fight Suspect B and calling him a "Siao char bor" (疯女人) (meaning crazy woman—but witnesses were certain it was Suspect B and not Suspect A or Mrs Suspect C who Dan was taunting)

Suspect C: (Chong) complained about the noise coming from Dan’s apartment.
Dan had complained about Chong’s baby crying (Chong and his wife have a newborn) and in revenge, started blasting loud music and playing wrestling matches at high volume, especially in the early hours of the morning.
Chong also suspects Dan of leaving broken beer bottles around the Chongs’ front door three nights ago, but since the landing camera isn’t working there is no proof.

Suspect C (as well as Suspect C’s wife and mother-in-law) were heard threatening the Victim and demanding compensation for his wife’s medical bills due to stress and sleepless nights.

The Victim was heard telling Chong that his wife was fat and his baby was ugly.

Thanks to cameras on the perimeter of the property and carpark entrance, it was determined that no one entered or left the property during that time.

The Evidence:



This note was found in the Victim Dan’s pocket: I recorded you smoking in the kopitiam (fine $1000), urinating in the lift (fine: up to $3000) and plucking flowers from roadside plants (fine up $5000) Give me the compensation or I’m posting the video on TikTok #CaughtRedHanded, on YouTube titled 'Singapore’s Most Wanted!' and LinkedIn tagged to your company.

None of the suspects admits to writing the note, but police obtained samples of their handwriting for comparison, which were up for comparison at the Handwriting Station, along with a comparison guide.


Handwriting Sample from Suspect A: Amina

Yes, I threatened Don. I have a cat I love very much. Don told me he was allergic to cats so I should get rid of it if I ever wanted a real man like him to show me a good time in bed…
I told him I was going adopt twenty, thirty, a hundred more cats just to make sure he stays away!
The next morning I found someone had pushed poisoned sardines under my door in the night. There were dead ants and dead cockroaches all over but luckily my cat is a fussy eater.
That’s when I told Don that if he ever tried to hurt my cat again I would kill him. But I didn’t.


My shoe size? My shoes are Size 6.


Handwriting Sample from Suspect B: Ben

I never said anything to Don that he didn’t deserve.
After an accident years ago, I switched from riding a motorcycle to a scooter because I couldn’t manage the gear shift with my right leg any more. I still have trouble putting weight on it.
Don mocked me, saying only girls and girlie men ride scooters.
Last week he purposely drove into my scooter, knocked it over and crushed it. The head lamp is broken, handle bar bent, clutch lever needs to be changed, front wheel needs re-aligning.

I told he needs to pay for the damage. He laughed at me, said I couldn’t prove it.

Why do you want my shoe size? Anyway it’s 9.

Handwriting Sample from Suspect C: Chong

Maybe I said some threatening things, but Don never paid attention.
Whenever he was home he was blasting his music or playing his wrestling matches at high volume or shouting at people.
I told him so many times, my baby and my wife just got home from hospital after a difficult delivery, please have some consideration. Please don’t make so much noise when you come back at 2am!

What does the man do? The next morning he comes round at 3am and smashes beer bottles on our front door. In the morning there’s broken glass everywhere.
My mum in law said she wanted to kill him, but she’s 65 years old and I don’t think she did it.
If you find out who did, tell them I said thanks.

My shoe size is 9.

The police asked about shoe sizes because a partial shoe print was found in the blood on the floor on the landing. Unfortunately no blood was found on the suspects’ footwear (possibly due to severed ponding on the premises) but shoe prints from the suspects were taken for analysis and comparison.

These were on display at the Footprint Station, along with the bloody footprint.





Traces of what appeared to be blood were found on the clothing of all three suspects, and participants were introduced to the Kastle-Meyer test at the Blood Test station.



And of course--fingerprints...

At the Fingerprint Station, fingerprints collected from the suspects were compared to those lifted from a half empty cigarette packet collected at the scene. There was blood spatter on top of it, suggesting it was thrown against the wall before the victim was killed.

Finally, at the Microscope Station, hairs found on the scene were compared to those taken from two of the three suspects (one of the suspects is bald) along with a sample hair from the victim.





And of course: The Solution:
Dan came home drunk around 2am. He found the handwritten note taped to his front door and went to bang on Suspect B’s door.
Suspect B had told him before that he would report him and get him fined, so Dan knew it was him.
Suspect B, afraid of Dan’s temper and violent tendencies, brought the knife with him when he opened the door.
He told Dan he wasn’t asking for anything more than the CFMOTO mechanic quoted him for repairs and told Dan to come to the carpark and see the damage for himself. Dan went into the life and—adding insult to injury—dropped his pants and peed on the lift control panel.

The urine (water and electrolytes) short-circuited the lift's electronics (the panel was over five years old and insulation had worn off) causing the lift breakdown.
Dan lit a cigarette and offered Suspect B the packet, asking if girls like him smoked.
Suspect B grabbed the packet and flung it against the wall (his fingerprints were later found on the packet) and when Dan laughed, Suspect B stabbed him in the chest with the knife.

Then Suspect B returned to his apartment and cleaned his bloodied shoe with ST Shoe Cleaning Foam from NTUC (a nice spot to mention sponsors)—guaranteed to remove all traces and odours.

I hope you enjoyed this--it was certainly fun coming up with a scenario that would touch on all the forensic stations there.

But I'm going to end this piece with a bit of indulgence and share my own favourite exhibit at the Science Centre--this beautiful creature in the coral diorama I've learned is a banded shrimp!



Coral shrimps are cleaner shrimps, meaning they clean parasites and mucus from passing fish. In the wild, they sometimes set up cleaning stations where up to 25 shrimps congregate, waving their filaments to advertise their services.
Very helpful services, as being shrimp-cleaned improves the health of fish and also seems to reduce stress--fish have been observed sleeping while being cleaned!

I like to think that's what murder writers do too--we pick at and pick off all the little (and big) annoying, irritating and injurious parasites and mucus on passing readers and sending them back into the ocean a little soothed!

Have a very Happy Christmas everybody!

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Annamaria's Christmas 2024

 

CHRISTMAS 2024

 

This holiday season just doesn’t feel normal.  It’s supposed to be joyful, but even for an optimist like me, it’s going to be difficult to get all the way to joy.

 

Christmas celebrates the birth in Palestine of a Jewish baby boy.  I went to Catholic school for 17 years—Kindergarten through college.  I know a lot about what Jesus did and said.  What I hear from the so-called Christians of great influence in the US today… Well, it does not jibe with what we know what about Jesus’ teachings.

 

Jesus was born at a time of uncertainty and conflict.  He grew up to be a brilliant man, who taught his people a new way to think about themselves.  He preached of a merciful God, who wanted His people to be kind to each another.  “By this shall they know thee, that you love one another.”  That was his credo.  He practiced what he preached.  He fed the poor.  He healed the sick.  He befriended ordinary people—fishermen, a tax collector, a fallen woman.  He rejected no one.    As far as we know, the only people who angered him were the money changers in the temple.


In that fraught time, not unlike our own, people wanted, needed his lessons.  He soon had such a large following that the elders of his culture wanted him stopped.  He was executed in a horrendous way.

 

I recount this here because the so-called Christians who are operating in the US these days hold forth a body of religious beliefs and practices that are the very anthesis of the teachings of Jesus.  He preached love.  They profess hatred of anyone who is not exactly like them.  He fed the poor.  They promise to discontinue government programs that have  been doing just that.  Rather than abhorring the money changers in the temple, some so-called Christians instead align themselves with the hyper-rich and want to enhance their power. 

 

The ordinary worshippers in the modern-day sects are not the problem. Their leaders mislead and manipulate them.   Those leaders call themselves Christians, but they most resemble the very people Jesus went up against.  The ones who, in the end, wanted Him dead because He preached God’s love.

 

Jesus came to be called the Prince of Peace. In his day, it was Satan who was the Master of Chaos.

 

I no longer practice a religion, but I still embrace Christ’s message of love.

 

Given all of this, how does one celebrate Christmas in 2024?

 

The Christmas after 911 was the most difficult one I have experienced.  Some of us New Yorkers living south of 14th St. in Manhattan decided to make Christmas as normal as possible. We knew it would not be easy. There were still remnants on neighborhood walls of photos of the lost, left by their loved ones who had hoped to find them in the nearby hospital.  We could still hear the grinding noise of the clean up still underway two miles to our south.  The members of the Waverly-Bank Neighbors Association decided that, in addition to the typical wreaths and garlands, we would all put up lots of lights. In our windows and on our stoops and around our doorways. I’m doing a version of that this year.



To hang on to the spirit of the season this year, I am also harkening back something else I did in 2001.  Of course, since it is me solving an emotional problem, it involves music.  This is the song, I hope, will help you enjoy the holiday, whatever your religious affiliation.

 


 https://youtu.be/jxxTHzERTsk?si=ZSlnXsFfqtF7C42n


Do what my friends around the world did in 2001.  Sing this song on December 24, Christmas Eve.  Twenty-three years ago, I got messages from all over from people who told me they had sung it.  Those messages included an audio recording of a young Italian girl who had taught herself to play it on the piano and sang it with her parents,


Try this: sing it with your loved ones or all alone, but do join me and my other friends. Sing it along with Judy Garland. Here are the lyrics in case you need them:


Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again, as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now


Next year all our troubles will be miles away…

If the fates allow…

Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.


Saturday, December 14, 2024

We've Lost a Great One

 


Jeff––Saturday

 

Yesterday, I received a phone call from “Mystery Mike” Bursaw. He asked if I’d heard about Steele Curry.  Steele and Mike had been instrumental in shanghaiing me in 2012 onto the Bouchercon National Board of Directors. Steele and Mike co-chaired Bouchercon back then, and the three of us had become great friends. 

 

The news was heartbreaking, but not unexpected.  Steele had told me he was ill. Still, it’s hard to think of Steele as gone. Barbara and I send our heartfelt condolences to his wife Judy and their extensive family…of relatives and admirers.

 

Steele and I shared a deep love of Greece, his ties being to the island of Skiathos and mine to Mykonos. Each summer we promised to make it to the other’s island home, but summertime flows by so quickly on Greek islands that we never got around to fulfilling those pledges.  Barbara, though, had regularly spent her summers in the 1990s on Skiathos so there always was a generous amount of “did you know” and “do you remember” reminiscing whenever we’d get together with Steele and Judy on one of their regular trips from their Calgary home to our non-Greek island home––Manhattan to be precise. 

 

We’d meet in a Greenwich Village Tuscan restaurant that had become their favorite, where we’d reflect about Greece, talk about our lives, families, how we got to where we were today, and of course, about the world of mystery. Steele had a way of making you feel important in his eyes and applied that gift toward inspiring the many youngsters he mentored, charities he supported, business colleagues, and those who shared his passion for the mystery/thriller world.

 

Steele, together with Mystery Mike, and George Easter (publisher of the mystery world’s bible—Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine) were a triumvirate that kept their collective fingers firmly on the pulse of our mystery world. Among their gifts to us all was the creation of an unofficial annual dinner at Bouchercon designed to welcome up and coming stars of crime writing into the fold.

 

On a personal level, Steele humbled me each year by buying my latest Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Greece-based mystery and setting it aside until he was back on his beloved Skiathos where he’d make mine the first book he’d read that summer in compiling his annual “My Greek Reading Feast” article for Deadly Pleasures.

 

Steele was beyond a good friend; he was an exemplary caring and generous soul. 

 

What follows are two obituaries. One written by George Easter and the other on behalf of the family of Duncan Steele Curry.  Yes, Duncan was Steele’s first name–a mystery he’d kept well-hidden from many until the end.  

 

God bless you, dear friend. May your memory be a blessing for eternity.

 

––Jeff

 

 

George Easter, Steele Curry, RCMP

November 26, 2024 George Easter

 

The Passing of Steele Curry

 

This is a sad time for the mystery/thriller community. Steele had spinal cancer that metastasized and became untreatable. His passing was a blessing because he was in a lot of pain.

Steele was a good friend and a great champion of mystery/thriller fiction. And most importantly, he was a good person, who helped a lot of people along life’s way. I’ll miss hearing Steele’s booming base voice telling me, with an edge of excitement, what I should read next.

As a contributor to Deadly Pleasures, he was the “go-to” guy when it came to spy fiction. But he also enjoyed a good mystery or action thriller. I would often get e-mails from him with recommendations for good reading. And, as our tastes were similar, I often read what he recommended. Jeff Popple, another DP contributor, had similar experiences with Steele.

For several years Steele would provide us with annual columns called My Greek Reading Feast, in which he would give us short reviews of about thirty books that he had read while in residence at his family’s Greek villa that he and his wife Judy visited each summer.

Steele was influential in urging me to create the Barry Award for Best Thriller and it was my pleasure in 2017 to present him with The Don Sandstrom Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mystery Fandom.

 

He also served on the Barry Award nominating committees for a number of years and would frequently proof-read sections of Deadly Pleasures for me.

Steele also served for a couple of years as the Co-Chair of the National Bouchercon Board (along with Mystery Mike Bursaw) during which time he whipped it into shape so it ran as a non-profit should be run. He, with the help of others, created a Best Practices Manual so that future Bouchercons could operate more smoothly.

A few years ago his large collection of espionage and mystery fiction was donated to the University of Calgary. It was so large and comprehensive that the University has added a wing onto its library to house the collection. I look forward to visiting it when I attend the Calgary Bouchercon in two years.

Steele will be remembered for years to come and will be greatly missed by his friends and family.

 

 

 


 

November 24, 2024  Family Obituary

 

August 4, 1940 – Winnipeg, Manitoba

November 24, 2024 – Calgary, Alberta

 

Beloved husband, father, grandfather, uncle, and brother, Steele Curry died peacefully, surrounded by close family on Sunday, November 24, 2024.

 

Predeceased by his parents, Constance Noreen Curry (Murphy) and Peter Duncan Curry, and his sister Kathleen Curry, Steele was a larger-than-life international man of mystery, whose impact was felt on everyone who met him.

 

He is mourned by his adoring wife of 44 years, Judy, his loving son Beau, his devoted daughters, Serena (grandson Jack and his father Tyler) and Jade (grandson Zephyr and his father Mike), his brother-in-law Stephen (wife Rhonda), his brothers, Mark and Patrick, and his nephews and nieces, Ben and Sophie, Sabrina, (husband Jon, Cole and Julia), Zachary (wife Lynn, Victoria and Charlie), Matthew (wife Brooke), Simon (Eloise and Milo), and Xavier and Sylva.

 

Steele had a long and notable business career. After attending Ridley College, Steele received his BA from Stanford University in 1962 and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1964.  His more than 40 years of business experience included being the CEO of Revelstoke Companies, a successful publicly traded retail organization. He also started a tool rental business with The Home Depot and created Gobbles Restaurant.

 

While Steele’s businesses were successful and varied, it was his involvement in the boards, charities, and mentoring that made him truly legendary. As a board member of The Salvation Army, Steele raised countless dollars for the Centre of Hope. He was a member of the Business Council on National Issues and devoted countless hours to the Alberta Mentor Foundation for Youth (AMFY), where he served as the board chair from 2003–2008, and vice-chair of the board of directors of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Calgary and Area from 2008–2016. Not only was Steele pivotal in the merger of AMFY and Big Brothers and Big Sisters, but he also served as a mentor to multiple protegees, fostering deep connections with many young students who he kept in contact with throughout his entire life (and who held a very special place in his heart). His love of mentoring extended so far that he wrote the Citizen of the World Guides, in order to share his wisdom on tips for success in life.

 

Those who knew Steele will know that among travelling, ski trips to Aspen, visits to East Meadows, and later in life, summers in Skiathos, Greece, with his family and friends, his real passion (other than mentoring) was reading and collecting mystery novels. From 2008–2012, Steele was a member of the board of directors of the Bouchercon National organization and for the latter year, served as Co-Chair together with Mike Bursaw. At the Bouchercon convention in 2017, he received the Don Sandstrom Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mystery Fandom and served on the Barry Award nominating committee for Deadly Pleasures magazine (for which he was a contributor, most notably his annual column, My Greek Reading Feast, where he would detail his numerous reads each summer). Steele’s comprehensive collection of books was so formidable that in 2021, he donated it to the University of Calgary, which agreed to keep it intact as The Steele Curry Mystery, Espionage and Thriller Collection.

 

Steele’s larger-than-life personality enriched everyone around him. His booming voice and joie de vivre will forever be unmatched. He shone a bright light of kindness and encouragement on everyone lucky enough to know him. He will be greatly missed.

 

Donations can be made in memory of Steele to the charity of your choice. The family kindly requests no flowers.

 

Condolences, memories, and photos may be shared and viewed with Steele’s family here.

 

In living memory of Steele Curry, a tree will be planted in the Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation Area by McInnis & Holloway Funeral Homes, Heritage, 1708 – 16th Avenue NW, Calgary, AB, T2M 0L7, Telephone: 403-299-0100.

 

Friday, December 13, 2024

Friday 13th !!

 Friday the 13th was my day to blog. It was going to be rather a momentous day when I met the accountant and the business would be handed over and all would be well in my world. Plus the small matter of a structural edit coming back - you know the sort when author's trying to write 'this' book and the editor is editing 'that' book'. Or is that just just me?

Then Glasgow was gripped by freezing fog, the phone lines at work went down during the night and the keyholder had a flat tyre-- well her car had. 

A result of that is that my truly wonderful blog about the British Embassy in Berlin will be next week. And here's a few funnies to keep us going in the meantime.... Mr Brian Bilston with a seasonal offering... 
























Thursday, December 12, 2024

The Masters

 Wendallevery other Thursday

As I am a bit stuck at the moment, I'm revisiting this post and these writers to get me back on track to write during my break from UCLA. Happy Holidays, everyone!

As an author, this is a difficult thing to admit: I’m hard on books. 

 

This is the state of my original university copy of The Portrait of a Lady.
 

If I love them, I reread them. A lot. I carry them in my backpack, I read them on buses while trying to balance a coffee, they fall on the floor when I fall sleep in the middle of a page, and if I think the line or the paragraph is something I want to remember, yes, I will star or underline. I was a huge underliner in college.

 

The shocking inside of the book, above.
 

For old hardback books, I do use Levenger’s gold page markers, at least. 

 

These Levenger page tabs are a lifesaver when you just can't bear to desecrate a book.
 

When a beloved paperback starts falling apart, though, I have been known to hold it together with a rubber band, a trick I learned from my advisor, Bob Bain, as I don’t want a new copy—I would lose all my notes!

 

Two that I just can't abandon, despite the state they're in.
 

I hope that I read widely (I may be deluded, see below), even though there are hundreds of thousands of works I still need to get to. There are certain books that had a huge influence on me as a child that I revisit once a year, including Harriet the Spy, Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, and David Copperfield.

 

But there are three American authors I find most helpful when I am stuck, who offer inspiration and a way to understand the writing life, and who remind me of why I do this at all. Their books are especially beloved. And battered. Henry James, Flannery O’Connor, and Sam Shepherd.

 

John Singer Sargent's portrait of James. I visit it in the National Portrait Gallery every time I'm in London.

One of my favorite photos of O'Connor.



Vintage Shephard, in a photo by Herb Ritts.

They may seem a strange combination. They are certainly different in style. But to me, they all write about the same thing: the ways we delude ourselves. All of their works examine the fine line between having an imagination and flat-out lying, and the disconnect between the way people are perceived by others and the way they perceive themselves. 

 

 

James’s Isabel Archer is one of the great “lying to herself” characters of all time, O’Connor reveals layers of tragic delusion through the grandmother in “A Good Man in Hard to Find” or Mrs. Shortley in “The Displaced Person,” and every character in Shepherd’s Buried Child is lying to themselves and everyone else, until they’re forced to face the truth in their backyard.

 

This is a topic that fascinates me, partly because, as a writer, our job is to make things up. So we have to be good at it, but can that spill into our own, personal narratives? Trying to understand this has certainly helped me as a writer, particularly in learning to hint at the subtext in every situation, and to show the way characters try to cover things up in dialogue, while unwittingly revealing everything. Their dialogue has especially influenced me as a screenwriter.

 

I also think all three of them are, in their own ways, hilarious. I am in the preliminary stages of a new mystery series that features Henry James and he completely cracks me up. If I were casting him, I’d choose Bill Murray. The layers of irony and sarcasm in his work always take me by surprise, but they’re everywhere. Here’s an exchange from one of my favorite, more obscure stories, “The Beldonald Holbein.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“Well, to begin with, she’s American.”

“But I thought that was the way of ways to get on.”

“It’s one of them.  But it’s one of the ways of being awfully out of it too.  There are so many!”

“So many Americans?” I asked.

“Yes, plenty of them,” Mrs. Munden sighed.  “So many ways, I mean, of being one.”

Bill Murray. From Dr. Venkman to HJ?
 

O’Connor, of course, is famous for her zingy one-liners. “Everywhere I go people ask me if I think universities stifle writers. I think it doesn’t stifle enough of them.” When told that author Caroline Gordon did most of her writing while she did the dishes, O’Connor’s response was “I think there should be a complete separation between literature and dishwashing.” And this sentence from “Good Country People” delights me: “Besides the neutral expression she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.”

 

Shephard’s characters are so often defined by absurdist, darkly comic lines like True West’s “There's gonna be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning.”  Or Buried Child’s “You should take a pill for that! I don’t see why you just don’t take a pill! Be done with it once and for all. Put a stop to it. It’s not Christian but it works.”

 

Of course, for all three, the humor is one gateway to the serious topics they’re taking on. This is probably why all three of them are also famously cranky. As someone who was taught it was impolite to be cranky at all, but especially in public, I adore that they snap at people and never suffer fools gladly. This always gives me a vicarious thrill.

 

I love this photo of HJ. What writer hasn't had this kind of day?
 

But maybe I love them most for their other writings—letters, notebooks, interviews, introductions—because they offer a window into the way they work. They certainly all suffered from doubts and missteps, but from what I can tell, all of them learned to trust that they were a conduit for art, that if they showed up, the words would come through them. As a “pantser” I find this comforting.

 

 

O’Connor: “I sit there by the typewriter for three hours every morning and if something comes, I am there to receive it.”

 

Shepherd: “I felt kind of like a weird stenographer. I don’t mean to make it sound like hallucination, but there were definitely things there, and I was just putting them down.” 

 

James: “Well, that is my start—and the rest ought to go. I can trust myself.”

 

My particular favorite places to find these writers’ thoughts include The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, O’Connor’s collection of letters, The Habit of Being, and Conversations with Flannery O’Connor, and a new work which astounds me, Two Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shephard and Johnny Dark.  

 

All underlined like mad, of course.
 

I just hope I live long enough to rubber band these three.

 

--Wendall