Signing My Life Away

Sujata Massey 

Stacks of books, sharpie pens, a microphone. A sea of empty folding chairs—and a slight rush of nervous energy.

This scene is a cliché for any author who’s been fortunate enough to have a bookseller invite you sign books.

I count myself very lucky to see whatever number of seats the bookseller has set out filled with people. But a bookseller friend said to me that publicists for mega-selling authors sometimes require a bookseller to be able to offer seating for 200 or more. Hence, the Instagram reel of the 1500--person audience in Brooklyn Center, MN for Abby Jimenez, a popular romance author with a new book, The Night We Met. What I could see of the event was more akin to what I hear about Taylor Swift concerts, and I am going to bet the fans received books that had been signed in advance. How else could it be done? Three cheers for any author who can get that many people to assemble for a book launch! 

The first book signing I remember attending was back in elementary school—probably fifth or sixth grade. Susan Cooper, the seminal British author who wrote fantasy novels for children from the 1960s onward, was speaking at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul during her national tour for one of her books—my likeliest guess is it was The Dark is Rising, her most famous book in the series that is still captivating readers today. During my childhood, Susan Cooper was my dream author, a woman from my birthplace of Great Britain who used legends and lore from Wales and King Arthur to develop her haunting series. We were reading this Newberry Award winning novel while under the age of 12, although I notice that her books are now classified as 'young adult.' In the crowd at the college, I recall only adults being there. I felt wise beyond my years and still am grateful to my elementary school librarian who thought I might like to go and asked the parents of me, and a few other friends, 

In the twenty-first century, faculty members are no longer allowed to take students in their own vehicle to off-campus events. But in the 1970s, people ha more freedom. And while I regret that the kind librarian's name is forgotten, I still remember her and am grateful for this early experience meeting a literary superstar. Susan Cooper, who was around forty at the time, spoke quite warmly to us. I don’t remember if we bought any books—probably not, because my paperback copy of the book (which I’ve carried to my adult home, after all these years!) is dog-eared and unsigned. We children didn’t know what a special opportunity this was—to have a signed book by a writer we loved, and who at the age of 90, is still a perennial in bookstores. 

My next experience with a fiction author came about ten years later. I studied as an undergraduate in the Johns Hopkins University writing seminars, a department different from English in that we Writing Sems majors did read novels, but we were also expected to learn from working authors of all sorts—poets, science writers, journalists, and yes, novelists. Martha Grimes, the celebrated American author based in Washington DC, came to the campus for as a visiting professor for the spring semesters of both my junior and senior year. 

Martha Grimes looked like this during my college years

Every Thursday afternoon, nine other students and I sat around a long table, not quite realizing she was on the New York Times bestseller list, right at that moment, and probably had a lot of choices of what to do with her time. learning from one of the masters. And at the end of the semester, she presented each of us with her latest book, signing it herself with a personal message. “I hope you get across the effing lake” she wrote to me, a reference to the implausible-sounding plot point in my mystery story submission that she critiqued for the class. Now I think how generous she was to sign and gift her reader copies with us. I treasure this signed book almost as much as what she taught me about the feasibility of crime fiction as a bona fide career. 

When I began struggling with the craft of my own mystery writing a decade later, one of the first signings that I recall was that of the late M.C. Beaton, when she visited Mystery Loves Company Books in Baltimore in the 1990s. Beaton is another British writer well known for her humorous Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as more than 100 romance novels, most of them under her real name, Marion Chesney. I attended with my friend and mystery maven (heck! she designed this website!) Susanne Trowbridge, who was close fwith the store owners, Paige Rose and Kathy Harig, who sadly are both deceased. I remember feeling shy at the event, but knowing that because I was an adult, I must say something to this author who had amazed me with her deft, humorous hand. It was a small but enthusiastic turnout, typical for the tiny store, one of those places where books are piled up everywhere and cats wind their way through your legs. Ms. Beaton was quite agreeable, and I remember thinking, I can’t fathom ever finishing my own manuscript-in-progress, selling it, and having people hear enough about it that they'd take the time to meet me. 

“You’ll have your first signing here,” both Kathy and Paige promised me, separately, so I knew it would be true--if Ionly I could finish and sell my book.  I kept going to book signings, I joined Sisters in Crime, and I kept writing. In 1996, I signed a contract for my first mystery, The Salaryman’s Wife. Kathy Harig read the galley that HarperCollins sent the store and told me it was good. What a relief it was—and from that point on, I was in the book signing world, receiving invites from stores I'd never heard of, and badgering the publicists to ask after ones in big cities, like New York and San Francisco, that I dreamed about. Fortunately, the 1990s was a time when female-centric mystery was booming, the economy was good, and tours were a possibility for writers once their books were coming out in hardcover editions.  Yet for many years I would go on tour, sitting in my economy seat on the plane with my throat closed, thinking the whole journey was unknown and could very well be disappointing. Who was I to have a signing when there were Martha Grimes and Susan Coopers in the world? These fears have subsided as I've built two series, and audiences also show up because booksellers themselves are increasingly sending email newsletters to their readers about upcoming events. 

Not all signings take place at independent bookstores. Sometimes events are scheduled in place where there’s a large captive audience. This includes mystery fiction conventions and conferences like the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, a giant writing extraganza where I was featured with my longtime mystery writer friend Laura Lippman, with our interview conducted by our new friend, the suspense novelist Angie Kim. 

During this last tour, I’ve spoken at stores with crowds as small as four and large as sixty-plus. I know that the store that might not get a lot of audience for me one night might simply choose to ask you to sign as many books as if there had been dozens--thus ensuring the books stay at the store, until they are sold, something quite generous to do in a business where profit margins are very tight. There are also a few stores that have voracious readers out of state who want signed books mailed to them. As I see it, each store visit is an incredible opportunity for a writer to connect with a reader—and if readers don’t show, you can demonstrate to the bookstore that you're a well-tempered and kind individual who appreciates their efforts. 

I’ve grown to feel I’m holding a serious responsibility at a signing. I’m not there to be promotional, despite a tour being a form of book promotion. Being a wee bit nervous can be helpful: it pushes me to remain sharper and more aware of what I hope to communicate. But truly--there's no need for a witty or profound speech. If I read a bit of the ew book, it allows people to know if they might want to read it. The coup de grace  is to allot plenty of time to receive questions. The most typical questions I hear are: why did you make your protagonist a Parsi, what’s your writing process, how do you do your research, and will any of your books ever be made into a movie? I hope is to satisfy the queries candidly without revealing spoilers. I also aim to share my particular experience of becoming (and staying) a writer, because I know that amongst the folding chairs, there always sits an individual who is quietly working away at their own manuscript. 

And isn't it wonderful they--the readers, writers, and the curious--have a place to come? The act of bookstores opening themselves to hosting events is akin to creating a literary picnic gathering in a town green. Whether or not an attendee buys a book, they're taking part in an impromptu community meeting that is about . . . imagination.A writer's, and their own. 

I came to Laurie R King's book signing in California

When I moved to Minneapolis in 2005, I was lonely the first few years. I really missed my friends from Maryland, DC, Virginia and Pennsylvania. I had felt so connected--and now I was living in a city that was so different from my childhood experience. The only solution to my social boredom that I came up with was visiting the city’s famed mystery bookstore, Once Upon a Crime and introduced myself to its owners at the time, Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze. They already had my books on the shelf and became fast friends. I kept shopping at the store and attending events they hosted like the monthly Twin Cities chapter of Sisters in Crime meetings. My circle slowly widened, and I became part of a writing group (hello, Stan Trollip, one of the members!) 

I also attended signings for out-of-state authors coming to sign their latest books. Cara Black and Libby Hellman are both mystery authors who I didn’t know very well during my early Baltimore years--but I went to their signing to hear them talk about their work, and to buy their books to ensure Pat and Gary made some money that night. The bookstore seats were completely filled, making the authors happy. Cara and Libby then invited me to join them for dinner at a nearby pub, and the three of us formed an ongoing creative and supportive relationship that endures. After I moved away from Minnesota and transformed back into a Maryland author, Minnesota became a very important book tour stop. So in 2019, when I toured to St. Paul, the great mystery novelist William Kent Krueger showed up to 'welcome me back to St. Paul.' Things had come full circle.

William Kent Krueger's St. Paul welcome

Speaking of writer friends, it's now becoming a bookstore strategy. Many booksellers like to promote signings in which one writer (a local fixture who's not on tour) interviews an author who is on tour. This tandem work takes away the pressure of a tired writer repeating a stump speech, but rather answering surprising questions and going on spontaneous tangents with their interviewer. Readers are thrilled by natural conversations featuring real, unscripted moments between people. When I'm in this role, I read the book ahead of time, prep questions, and ask the writer if there’s anything in particular they love to talk about. During The Star From Calcutta book tour, I was quite grateful for the interlocution assistance from writers Vera Kurian in Washington, DC, Dan Fesperman in Baltimore and Ritu Mukherjee in San Francisco. Doing it all by myself, every night, when my day typically started with an early morning flight can be wearying. The antidote is  knowing one's night has been organized by the interviewer, and all I have to do is answer questions. 

Readers at the Raven Book Store in Kansas

Barbara Peters, owner of Poisoned Pen, and Naomi Hirahara

It seems a shame, but inevitable, that most publishers are curtailing authors book tours. I understand that sending authors to places that involve plane travel, road transportation and hotels is quite expensive, and the return on that investment is uncertain. I am so grateful that my publisher, Soho Press, listened to me when I spoke about the importance of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the West Coast, as well as all the spots I can easily drive to in my area. And during this last tour—as I grasped the hands of customers who had demonstrated a real sense of caring about the characters in my books-I also felt their care for me as a person. 

Although we'd never met before, they knew me. 

And that is quite a gift for someone whose best friends in childhood were her books. 

Sujata has a few U.S. signings left for The Star From Calcutta. She'll share the stage with author Amin Ahmad on Saturday, May 9 at 11 a.m. at McIntyre's Books in Fearrington Village, NC. After that, she'll appear alongside author Kate Hilton in a discussion at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland at 1:15 p.m. on May 16.

 

Are you Scripturient?

Karen Odden – every other Thursday 

Like everyone, I get all kinds of random fun-fact stuff in my in box every day. Today in History. Mastering French Phrases. O&H Kringle of the Day. (Almond will always be my favorite. Raspberry a close second.) Some of this email traffic I glance over, and if I’m busy, I don’t always look at it. 

But if I have a moment, I do like to look at the Word of the Day. This word caught me. I know I’m a bibliophile; but recently, I discovered I’m scripturient. Who knew? 

Then again, maybe we all are scripturient. We write constantly – especially if we consider typing on our keyboards writing. Think about your day. Which of these have you written recently? Emails, blogposts, to-do lists, social media posts, entries on a paper calendar (yes, I still keep one, in addition to the one on my phone), scribbles in notebooks, marginal notes in the books you’re reading, novels, short stories, poetry, a recipe for a friend, a birthday card, lists of things to pack for a weekend trip, itinerary for a conference, a signature on the credit card pad at the store, a quick text, a Post-it reminder note, a shopping list. 

It’s interesting to take a moment to consider how deeply embedded writing is in our lives, and how many kinds there are. How it’s part of our day, instinctive, almost unconscious, in a way that blinking or breathing is, and also how many different ways there are, physically, to produce written texts, from Egyptian hieroglyphics to Braille to feather quill pens to Bics to keyboards. Think how quickly our fingers move on our phones when we're texting. Perhaps there, especially, our rates of speaking and writing approach each other.

"Creative writing" is, to my mind, somewhat of an artificial category. Perhaps a shopping list isn't creative writing ... but a birthday card? I'd say it is. I mean, I choose my words for the extra words I add to the message inside -- because each person is different, and I have different kinds of relationships with different people. I'll make a joke to one person that I might not make with another; I know my audience, and I write to them, with awareness of my voice and what message it's carrying. Is that so very different from choosing my words for starting a chapter? 

I think we all do more creative writing than we realize. Just something to consider. 

I’m going to leave you with a few famous quotes on writing because I like these quotes better than anything else I could say on the topic. These mostly apply to creative writing ... but also to writing generally, in some cases. Sometimes it's fun to read what brilliant, famous people have to say about writing.

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”  — Natalie Goldberg 

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anais Nin

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” — Madeleine L'Engle 

“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” – Libba Bray

“As for ‘Write what you know,’ I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.” — Ursula K. Le Guin  [photo]

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” — Margaret Atwood 

“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.” — Jane Austen 

“I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts, so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just going to delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.” — John Green 

“On first drafts: It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.” — Stephen King

Between Hills and Pilgrims: Oviedo's quiet geography

 

Kwei - Alternate Wednesdays

Oviedo doesn’t announce its geography. You notice it gradually—on foot, looking up. The city feels contained, but not confined.

 

Routes around Monte Naranco—
where local trails intersect with the Camino Primitivo

To the north rises Monte Naranco, less a mountain than a long, steady ridge. It frames the city without enclosing it, shaping both skyline and movement.

 

Spring fields below Monte Naranco—
green, open, and deceptively gentle

Oviedo sits in a shallow basin rather than a true valley. The land rolls instead of dropping away. There are no steep walls—just continuous green slopes that soften distance and scale.

 

Cristo del Naranco watches over the ridge
—visible from almost anywhere below

These paths are not just local trails. They form part of the Camino Primitivo, one of the oldest routes to Santiago. For centuries, pilgrims have crossed this same terrain—walking the same gradients, reading the same skyline.

Layered greens—
Oviedo’s terrain never quite settles into flat.

Walking here means constant adjustment—small ascents, gradual descents. The terrain never disappears; it stays in the body.

The result is subtle but distinct. Oviedo feels held by its landscape, not trapped by it.

Technically a pilgrim—just the short-form version

One feels friendly, open skies.

How Can It Be that Last Sunday was Easter--But So Is Tomorrow?

 

Jeff--Saturday

There are two explanations for that phenomenon.  One easy, one not––but neither being that it's the movie "Groundhog Day" come to life. 

The simple answer is that Greeks and others of the Eastern Orthodox faith calculate their Easter based upon the Julian calendar while Protestants and catholics use the modern Gregorian calendar.  If you want to know precisely how wth date is determined, the explanation starrs to sound strangely reminiscent of some I've herad touted these days about where our world is headed:

“The determination of the date of Easter is governed by a computation based on the vernal equinox (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator, the sun having a northerly motion) and the phase of the moon. According to the ruling of the First Ecumenical Synod in 325, Easter Sunday should fall on the Sunday which follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox. If the full moon happens to fall on a Sunday, Easter is observed the following Sunday. The day taken to be the invariable date of the vernal equinox is March 21.”

I think it best we just say that Greek Easter follows the Julian calendar (though both can be on the same date) and leave it at that.

But no matter how the date is determined, Easter is by far the main event in Eastern Orthodoxy.  It is preceded by more than a week of significant religious and cultural observations.  And on Mykonos, Easter literally brings the island back to life.

Mykonos in Springtime

In the winter, Mykonos is a sleepy island village with virtually no tourists, no business, few open bars, fewer restaurants, and no clubs.  But come Easter Week everything changes.  Red and yellow springtime poppies burst to life all over the island’s hillsides, and those and still more varieties of flowers embroider the blanket of green covering the nearby holy island of Delos.  There are Church services every day of Holy Week, as well as daily preparations for the feast to come at the end.  Breads and cookies are readied on Monday and Tuesday, baking is done on Wednesday, and eggs are dyed red on Thursday, the day Christ was put up on the Cross.

Tsoureki Easter bread

By Thursday, Mykonos is filled with mainland Greeks flocking to their vacation homes and others looking to participate in a perfect example of spiritual and temporal coexistence: Easter church rituals strictly observed during the day, followed by the island’s as nearly hallowed party traditions through the night.  But that taste of the coming mid-summer craziness is short lived, for if you don’t catch the action that weekend come by in June, because Mykonos is back in hibernation come Tuesday.

An Epitaphios in procession on Mykonos

Evening services on Good Friday start at seven in the old town’s three main churches, Kiriake, Metropolis, and Panachra.  At precisely nine, each church’s clergy and worshipers leave their church in separate processions carrying their church’s epitaphios (the painted or embroidered cloth representation of Christ on a bier elaborately adorned in spring flowers and symbolizing his tomb) along a prearranged route, winding past the other two churches before ending up back at their own to complete the service.  It represents the funeral of Christ, and Mykonians and visitors line the route, some standing on balconies and sprinkling the participants below with a mixture of rose water and perfumes, the rodhonoro used on Christ’s body when taken down from the cross. 

The same three churches serve as the scene of the following night’s Holy Saturday services.  Most generally start heading off to church around ten, but for certain everyone is there by midnight.  For that is the high point of Easter, when church bells ring out across Greece and even total strangers exchange the traditional Christos Anesti and Alithos Anesti greetings that Christ has risen, kiss each other, and light each other’s candles to share the light and joy of the occasion—a light brought to Greece for just this purpose from the Holy Flame of Christ’s nativity cave in Jerusalem.  Worshipers carry the light back into their homes or their favorite restaurants, except for the hearty souls who remain in church for the balance of a service that lasts hours more into the morning. 

Midnight in Mykonos

Mayiritsa soup

Now it is time to challenge each other with the customary one-to-one smacking of those dyed-red eggs for good luck to the winner (mine always cracks first) and devour the traditional mayiritsa soup (made from parts of a lamb you may ask me about if you really want to know), fluffy tsoureki easter bread, and salads to break the forty-day fast leading up to Easter. 

But the big feast, the one everyone looks forward to, comes on Sunday.  That’s when all the work of the week and all the spring lambs find their purpose.  There is church, too, of course, but this day is more about celebrating with family and friends.  And eating.

The star of a Greek Easter Sunday (center)

Dieting starts Monday.  Kalo Paska 

--Jeff

Conservation and tech

 Michael - Every other Thursday

In a world where modern computer technology is becoming regarded as a threat, it’s interesting to see AI, drones, and photo recognition being put to purposes we can all agree are worthwhile and useful. What’s more, a lot of the research being done for these applications is happening here in South Africa.

We’ve become used to the idea that drones carry bombs – often aimed at civilians; AI is out to take jobs and steal books, and perhaps suck up all the electricity; and automated photo recognition is designed to spy out sites to destroy and follow people who may be troublesome to authoritarian governments.

The thing about AI is the emphasis is on it doing things humans can do well (e.g. writing mysteries) rather than on focusing on things humans can’t do.

However, a recent article in South Africa’s online newspaper, The Daily Maverick, shows how these are tools that have some very valuable roles to play. Since my own research interests were in image processing and remote sensing, I was intrigued (and a little skeptical) and so I had a more detailed look. I concluded that although it’s early days, all these technologies have promise to assist with wild life management and conservation.

A drone picture of an elephant helping himself to Sisal plants at night.
The picture is in the thermal infrared showing the animal
very clearly against the background.
Picture courtesy Conservation Through Tourism

For example, take elephants in areas where borders are lines on maps and fences are designed to keep in cattle. Probably more than lions, they are a danger to people and so indirectly to themselves. Elephants are smart and know that it’s best to break into crop lands at night while people are asleep, and a herd of 100 elephants can do an enormous amount of damage in a few hours. Electric fences with alarms are well and good. So you know you have 100 elephants in your crops. Now what?

A herd wonders through the bush - easily identified in the TIR
Photo courtesy Conservation Through Tourism

A group called Conservation through Tourism has been experimenting with drone and remote sensing technologies. The drones have cameras that take high resolution images but also thermal images. One can see the elephants clearly against the vegetation even on a dark night and through trees. Even better, the elephants don’t like these drones. They make a noise and can buzz you, so you move off. A couple of them can actually herd you. They know where you are, they know where they want you to go and not to go, and there’s not much you can do about them as long as they keep their distance. Once you start to move off, it’s just a matter of steering you back home. That can be done by a human watching a computer screen in a Land Rover, or, even better, by an artificial intelligence system analyzing the scene using GPS location information.

Another potentially valuable application is remotely counting species populations in conservation areas. This has been done for many years by people in the Kruger park area at least once a year. The technique is to use helicopters with human spotters counting everything they see. By having multiple counters on the aircraft, the data can be averaged and then a clever model predicts what’s been missed species by species. If you saw 10 Impala, you probably missed 2.3 and so on.

Gaia drone. Not one of the toy variety...
Photo courtesy Daily Maverick

How about if the whole thing could be done automatically at a much lower cost? Once again you need a drone outfitted with a high resolution camera that takes multispectral images. That means its photographs are at different wave lengths of light (some that we can’t see in the infrared) so that the AI system that afterwards analyses the images can distinguish not only between different individuals but also between different species. Because of the different wavelengths, animals could be recognized even under cover. Of course, there will still be individuals missed, but now the spotter is always the same so there’s consistency. Absolute numbers are usually less important than trends in wildlife conservation. (I’ve been one of these aerial counters, and it’s really hard to be consistent.)

Herd of buffalo drinking.
They have to be correctly separated from the hippos
Photo courtesy Timbavati Nature Reserve

That is just what Project Gaia is. In a recent survey to the West of the Kruger National Park, the drone flew 20,000km (12,500 miles) and took nearly 3 million photographs. No way humans could even imagine analyzing that, but a specially trained AI system can – first identifying the animal species and then adding it to the count.

One of the appealing advantages is that the drones fly quietly at 100 meters’ height and don’t disturb the animals. Helicopters are noisy and often scare animals. Apart from the distress that may cause, it may also result in the animals running far enough to be counted twice…

Of course, these are niche applications. It’s the military and the big tech companies that have the money. Regrettably, the AI, drone, and aerial survey companies will follow the money. At least other applications can pick up the scraps.

I Don't Like New Things

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

I like the idea of them and I admire (and envy) people who embrace them and plunge in (Thank you, Stan!) But when it comes to actually stepping into something unfamiliar—like this new Substack—I find myself hesitating, resisting, wanting figure it all out before I begin.

And no, I don’t like this about myself. And I don’t like things changing.

These were my darling doglets, Princess and Hermione ten years ago.

They’re gone now. For a long time I was sure I could never have another dog because no other dog could replace them. And I didn’t want to let them be replaced.

I felt that way before— When I was in primary school and they started clearing jungle and moving people out of the hillside farms in what I’d thought of as wilderness behind our home.

In those days the ‘jungle catchment area’ extended all the way across to Bukit Timah Hill. It felt like the green on granite heart at the centre of Singapore island had always been there and would always be there. It was full of jungle chickens, monkeys, snakes, and the occasional wild pig. There were treks worn to the wild durian and chempadak trees and children would compete with monkeys for ripe mangoes, bananas and rambutans. When the construction began, we used to climb up the slope and walk along the levelled earth, not understanding what it was becoming and assuming it would soon go back to ‘normal’.

Today, that stretch is part of the Pan Island Expressway.

There are no more jungle chickens and no way (for people or pangolins) to cross over on foot.

And when they opened up that stretch of the expressway I remember realising that things would never go back to ‘normal’. And that what I’d thought of as ‘normal’ was just how I’d seen things from my limited (in place and time) POV.

I’m also thinking about letting things go because we’ve just had the sea burial—

Burial urns being released into the elements.

Another reminder that we have to let things go.

Writing is also particularly challenging now because I’m trying something new there too. I can’t talk about it because of I want to figure out what I think of it on the page. I’ve got to where I have a kind of structure I like but am clearing out stuff that’s no longer useful or relevant given how the story turned out (for now) and I need to cut a lot of stuff--which always hurts.

At about 30,000 words now, possibly less tomorrow depending on how much gets culled.

I started writing for theatre and now, when shaping a book, I feel like I’m trying to be the director, scene, set and lighting designer, manage the sound system as well as act all the parts.

And now, trying to step into Substack, I feel like I’m walking into a new space with a producer I’m not familiar with.

It’s like trying to figure out characters (especially the unpleasant ones whose nonsense has to make sense to them) while hosting a complicated gathering and figuring out who gets invited into the VIP room (because Sponsors) and will they be happy with Prosecco and dim sum and how to make sure those who come because they love you (and are quietly hoping there won’t be anything too activist, alternative or otherwise alarming) are comfortable with what they find within your pages.

And I always feel I’m not ready yet.

The problem is, the expressway gets built whether you’re ready or not. The wilderness changes and the story moves forwards.

Singapore is always changing and remaking itself because we are so short of land. It’s like living in a Minecraft scenario where the landscape is always changing.

And yet the past never quite disappears either.

And maybe my discomfort and resistance to change is part of the whole process.

When Princess and Hermione died it felt wrong to even consider another dog. But now we have Sophia.

She’s not Princess or Hermione but entirely herself—but with echoes of them both.

Our Scruffy Sleepy Sophia.

And I’m coming to understand what I didn’t when I watched the roads being carved through our jungle spaces: things don’t come back, but new things come as you let go and move on.

One Thin Dime

 Sara E. Johnson, 1st Sunday

I mentioned in a previous post that I enjoy teaching my Exploring Mysteries class. One session is on the history of mysteries, and in researching that wide and deep topic, I learned about dime novels and how they caught on like a California wildfire and broke ground for many of the genres we enjoy today.

Dime novels debuted in the United States during the Civil War era. Named for their cheap price, they began as lurid Westerns, and later branched to romances, adventures, and detective stories. Their straightforward plots combined sentimentality with violence and introduced readers to new vistas much like books set in a foreign locale do for me.

The first known dime novel, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter by Ann S. Stephens, was published by Irwin and Erasmus Beadle and Robert Adams in 1860. It’s a tale of an interracial romance between a white hunter and Malaeska, a Mohawk woman. Their son is raised in the white culture. When the son learns of his parentage, his reaction is melodramatic, a common element of dime novels. Here’s the section when the son learns of his parentage: "Great God!" he almost shrieked, dashing his hand against his forehead. “No, no ! it can not — I, an Indian? a halfblood? the grandson of my father’s murderer? Woman, speak the truth; word for word, give me the accursed history of my disgrace.”

(No surprise: dime novels perpetuated racist stereotypes of Native Americans, Blacks and Asians.) Stephens was paid $250 for Malaeska. It reportedly sold over 300,000 copies. You can read it in its entirety; it is in the public domain.

Civil War soldiers tackled the boredom of camp life by reading and trading dime novels. According to one book historian, dime novels were “sent to the army in the field by cords, like unsawed firewood.”

Prior to the Civil War, reading was an upper class or upper-middle class pastime. Books were expensive. In the 1850s, the average book cost $1 to $1.50. The creation of dime novels slashed those prices so that virtually anyone could afford to have their nose in a book while, at the same time, literacy rates were growing.

Dime novels were mass produced on cheap paper. They averaged one hundred pages and were small: 6.5 x 4.5 inches, perfect to fit in a pocket or pocketbook. To keep costs low, the books were printed on paper similar to newsprint. Any dime novel you come across in an antique store is likely to have brittle or crumbling pages. The print was often fuzzy and with odd space breaks.

Updated shipping methods – though no comparison to Amazon’s next-day delivery – brought the dimes to almost every newsstand or dry good store. People – largely of the working class – went crazy for them. In the five years following Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, Beadle and Adams published more than five million dime novels. ‘Books for the millions’ was proclaimed on the covers. Dartmouth Libraries said, “Enormously popular and critically maligned, the dime novel was one of the first forms of mass culture in the United States.”

Detective stories soon replaced Westerns. One of the earliest was The Two Detectives; or, The Fortunes of a Bowery Girl. This was actually a nickel novel because it was short. The Bowery Detective series focused on gritty city crime. A funny aside: Typical dime novel detectives were old. Their names often reflected their advanced ages: Old Bull’s Eye, Old Sleuth, Old Neverfail, and Old Spicer.

Women became writers and readers of dime novels. The plots that attracted them dealt with romance and marriage. Many readers were ‘working girls,’ so a repeated story line was a love between a working class girl and a noble. (Sound familiar?) All for Love of a Fair Face, The Story of a Wedding Ring, The Unseen Bridegroom, and The Charity Girl are titles of dime novels marketed for women.

The dime novel’s counterpart in the United Kingdom was the penny dreadful. Subjects were Gothic – hence the name – and included tales about vampires, highwaymen, murderers, and ghosts. They were also know as penny bloods, penny awfuls or simply ‘bloods.’

The years 1870 to 1900 were the dime novel’s heyday. Not many dime novels were printed after World War I. Pulp fiction magazines nudged them aside and going to the ‘motion pictures’ was more exciting and cheaper than one thin dime.

Dime novels are a thing of the past. Today, mass-market paperbacks face a similar extinction. Remember how you could pick up a copy of Jaws or Carrie at the airport or drug store for a cheap price, and slip into your pocket? Mass-market paperbacks, like dime novels, were touted as making reading accessible for the masses, including me. Trade paperbacks, hard covers, Ebooks, audio books, and Netflix are dancing on their graves.

Which mass-market paperbacks do you have yellowing in your book case? Happy reading and I'll see you next month.

Sara Johnson, 1st Sunday