Is it in their blood?

                                         

                                                       Thompson and Venables

In 1968 Mary Bell killed Martin Brown and Brian Howe. In 1993 Robert Thomson and Jon Venables killed James Bulger who was only 2 years old at the time. The murderers in the above cases were all under 12 years old. 

It's fair to say that the perpetrators of these crimes had upbringings that were far from ideal. They are all examples of why sociologists believe that parenting, a family, a sense of belonging and examples of the 'good moral compass' will tend to keep children on the right side of the tracks. That’s a generalisation, but one that is often true.

Much has been said about the murders and the tragic victims, but I do confess to be interested in what happened to the children who committed the crimes. Given the chance of a clean slate, what happened to them.

                                        

                                                              Mary Bell

Mary Bell was released in her early 20s. She's married and she has children, and probably grandchildren and has never committed another crime. Neither has Robert Thompson. He has been free since 2001, he lives a quiet life and is reported as being well integrated into the community he lives in.  

Jon Venables has taken a slightly different path, found with child pornography on his computer and is now re-incarcerated. His parole hearing ended in refusal.

The paperback of my book, In Her Blood, is published on the 1^st August and is not the first novel to explore what happens to children who have killed children and have then grown up, received therapy and molded their personalities into that of a responsible adult. 

I suppose we are interested in nature versus nurture. Can they be 'cured' or is it in their blood?  

And the book looks at the success of that in the context of the power of social media and how easy it is to track people down nowadays. 

Obviously In Her Blood is a total work of fiction. The initial crime that brings her to the attention of the authorities happens in the family house during a great storm. The neighbour's children and the children of the house are put together in a safe bedroom as they seriously suspect part of the roof of the semi detached building is going to be blown off. In the morning, one of the children, the baby who was screaming all night is found dead and the blame for that is put at the feet of Gillian, the eldest children present. Maybe 8 years old at the time.

And then, two years later, there’s an incident where the kids are playing on the train track on the main  line from Glasgow to Oban and this time the authorities are a wee bit more severe on her as there's the eye witness testimony to who shoved who. When she’s released, she is given a flat in England and obviously told to never tell anybody of her true identity.

As realised child killers do in real life, she was living in witness protection conditions. 

When I was writing it, I remember always being quite empathetic towards adult Gillian, a  young women who makes herself unapproachable and she comes across as a rather horrible human being. But it doesn’t take a psychologist to see the damage behind that. 

Of course there are others out to take revenge and see such actions as justified. 

                                                    

There’s understandable moral outrage when a child kills a child. But the killers themselves are, after all children with immature brains by definition and maybe it's society that feels the outrage the most as these things just should not happen. Yet they do.

                                                             

In the book Gillian inevitably becomes the hunted on social media  as somebody has worked out exactly who she is. So, as the authorities are now failing to protect her, she goes back to the one place she feels safe.

She goes home.

Right back into the lions den.

 And the book starts off with a body falling off the Connel Bridge near Oban and is caught in the falls of Lora underneath. The body of course turns out to be that of a child psychologist who was looking into the past of Gillian as one of the subjects of a book he was writing, and he found out things nobody ever expected to find.

                                                             

Writing it, the narrative took the turn that the locals in the small village where Gillian was born are rather protective of her. They had known her since she was a baby, knew her mum and dad, and maybe have a bigger picture of the tragic events that took place.

Even fictionally, writing a child killer seemed to carry a heavier weight of responsibility. I was glad that my fictional detective has a daughter roughly the same age as Gillian, and took a 'but there for the Grace of God' approach to the media storm around the case.

But in the end Gillian, as a character, grew into a young woman of responsibility with good social values. I think she also swears more than any other character I've ever written.

 

The Popcorn and the Pen

Wendall -- every other Thursday

Before I was a novelist, I was a screenwriter. I still teach screenwriting in the Graduate Film School at UCLA, so I still think about movies. A lot. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how all those hours watching every thing from The Wizard of Oz to The Verdict to Parasite have helped—and shaped—me as a mystery author. 

 

 

My Cyd Redondo series started out as a script—my homage to the film Romancing the Stone—and eventually turned into Lost Luggage. 

 

 

During my first draft, I stumbled onto Stephen King’s On Writing, which insisted authors “. . . must do two things above all other: read a lot and write a lot.” 

 

 

I loved that advice, because it rationalized the pleasure and purpose I felt adding to my TBR pile. I’m no Stephen King, and movies and books are very different animals, but here are three reasons you can rationalize heading back into a dark cinema or picking up your remote as part of your ongoing education as an author.

 

# 1 CHARACTER BEHAVIOR

 

Over fifty percent of genre and commercial novels are written in the first person. Even in second or third person, novelists are allowed, and even encouraged, to describe what their characters are thinking and feeling. Screenwriters are not. Barring a constant voice over, a script must externalize thoughts, feelings, and backstory into concrete moments you can see or hear onscreen. Doing this well can be the hardest thing about film writing.

 

 

Luckily for us, screenwriters have actors to manifest these gestures, behaviors, and dialogue, so we can learn from them. In films, we can watch unspoken moments of commitment (Sally Field raising her “Union” sign in Norma Rae or Ingrid Bergman palming her Nazi husband’s key in Notorious), unrequited love (John Cusack holding up his boom box in Say Anything), friendship and compassion (Mahershala Ali teaching “Little” to swim in Moonlight), or the nervousness of attraction (Paul Giamatti babbling about Pinot in Sideways). 

 

 

Breaking down what actors do in a scene—underneath and between the words—can inspire more use of action, variety, and subtext in our own fiction writing.

 

Sometimes we forget that always having access to a character’s inner thoughts can create stasis, particularly if the character is always telling the truth. A steady stream of truth might be a relief in real life, but in fiction, it can lack modulation and suspense. If you can let some of your characters’ internal thoughts hide in behavior and subtext, the truth—when it appears—can be twice as shocking, heart-wrenching, hilarious, or powerful.

 

# 2 THE VALUE OF SEQUENCES

 

Often what we remember about a film or show we love is actually a sequence—the bicycle chase in E.T., the christening/massacre in The Godfather, the wedding dress store/food poisoning sequence in Bridesmaids, or the opening Winnebago/underwear sequence in Breaking Bad.

 

 

Sequences—a series of scenes arranged around a central idea, location, or event—become “mini movies,” held together by repeated phrases, objects, characters, and backgrounds. They give us ups and downs, crises and resolutions, in the midst of the larger experience of the film. Most of us make a real effort to end a chapter on a cliffhanger or a great line. But how much do we really think about the interior construction of the chapter, all the reversals and connective tissue that come before that payoff? Sequences and chapters aren’t the same things, but the principals behind these “mini movies” can improve the pacing and the impact of your chapters as well as your overall book.

 

 

One of the most important elements of screenplay structure and of sequence writing is the Midpoint. In a script, the Midpoint destroys a character’s initial plan for dealing with their problem and necessitates a different approach or focus. Structurally, this energizes the story and re-engages the audience. Sequences work the same way.

 

There’s a famous one in Bringing Up Baby, which begins with Cary Grant’s entrance in a top hat and ends with his walking out attached to Katherine Hepburn. It’s a masterclass in sequence writing. The piece is held together by the recurring use of the top hat, olives, handbags, and pratfalls. But it’s most impressive for its Midpoint, in which a psychiatrist informs Hepburn that “the love impulse in man frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict,” turning her irritation with Grant into a romantic obsession. The power struggles between them from that point on escalate the comedy and lead to the climactic decision which ends the sequence.

 

 

To see whether you’re getting the most out of your chapter structure, you might pay attention to the sequences in Three Days of the Condor, The Shape of Water, Sicario, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Get Out, Parasite, or your favorite film, to see how great screenwriters use this principle to their advantage.

 

# 3 CLEAR, IMPACTFUL ENDINGS:

 

An executive at Disney maintains the last ten minutes of any film are the most important. No matter how good the rest of the movie is, if the ending is unsatisfying, that’s what the viewers remember and talk about. Fiction may be more forgiving, but I do think great films can teach us not to linger too long after the central question of the story’s been answered, to go out “with a bang, not a whimper.” 

 

 

Whether the ending is a freeze-frame image of the characters’ final, climactic decision in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Thelma and Louise, a single, memorable line after the heartbreaking goodbye in Casablanca, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss paddling home once the shark is dead in Jaws, or one heartwrenching look between teacher and student at the end of the defiant drum solo in Whiplash, films teach us to deliver an ending the whole story has been working towards, and not to diminish that moment by hanging around too long to wrap things up.

 

 

So, go ahead and watch your favorite movie. It might be the stuff novels are made of. 

 

---Wendall

 

 

 

A Pause Between Woods and Water

Sujata Massey

 

It’s just after six in the morning, and I’m sitting outside with my coffee watching a morning mist flowing across the top of Lake Kawaguesaga. 

It seems like a spectacular illusion straight out of a movie’s computer animation department. But this is real, and I am here, spending a wonderful week in the cool misty climate of Northern Wisconsin. I'm fortunate to be staying with family members and even my dog, Daisy, with my friend Marcia Tingey at her longtime summer home—a place she and her husband built out of the ruins of a 1920s fishing camp house on a small island that they bought, part and parcel, and carefully brought back to habitable life. If this story sounds like it should be a summer beach book--perhaps the Wisconsin version of Under The Tuscan Sun--I agree.

 

Marcia owns Fiefied Island in Lake Kawaguesaga, one of the five lakesin a scenic chain named Minocqua that are about 26 miles north of Rhinelander. The town and lake chain’s name were possibly inspired the name of a Chippewa band chief, Noc Wib, who headed the community through the 1880s. In the 1860s, U.S. government surveyors had found the lovely area, noting its lakes and beautiful old-growth forests. Chippewa people were first discovered in the area in the 1860s, when government surveyors came and saw the magnificent chain of 5 lakes, and the beautiful old-growth wood forests. Naturally, the government could not walk away from this bonanza.

Chippewa woman, late 19th century

 

By the 1880s, the Indians were pushed out of the Minocqua region to the existing Flambeau reservation. And the lovely land became both a source of lumber and a haven for summer tourists, many of whom came on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway line built in the 1880s. The original, late 1800s downtown was burned in a 1912 fire and then rebuilt for generations of tourists to come. At one time, there were hundreds of summer homes and resorts dotting the shores of the five lakes in the Minocqua chain. Today it’s still touristed, but in a low key way, with the downtown of Minocqua comprising about three blocks of souvenir shops. From a dock near downtown, Marcia can pontoon herself 8 minutes to her island home.

The island has stayed natural, with no other housing than the Tingey place, and no pavement or way of moving about except by on foot. This makes it very possible to imagine Minocqua back in the times of the Chippewa people. Pine, birch, maple, balsam and hemlock trees rise high and happy. The spongy, sandy earth is carpeted with ferns, moss and mysterious mushrooms of varying hues. 

Marcia's late husband, Jim Tingey, carved fantastical sculptures out of island wood. Jim's mysterious beings and mushrooms sited all over the island, along with wooden chairs placed in ideal spots for meditation and contemplation of scenery. I felt the long ago indigenous presence on the island. It's a very special, spiritual place.

A few bald eagles live on the island; I was lucky enough to see a juvenile touch down on the path in front of me, although little Daisy regrettably barked, and the magnificent raptor flapped its wings and exited. Does nurse their fawns here before the young deer are strong enough to swim alongside their mothers to the mainland. As far as other animals go, mice, chipmunks and raccoons are present. Bears also swim. Marcia spotted a brown bear on the island four years ago, but she thinks the bear was on a walkabout and not at home.  Loons have long bred and relaxed on the island's marshy side. The waterfowl are  currently absent because their protective platform broke in a storm. Marcia plans to have it rebuilt so the gorgeous waterfowl will return to their sanctuary.

 

My days here have been spent walking narrow trails, looking through the tall pines at the shatteringly blue and tranquil lake Kawaguesaga, whose silence is occasionally cut by jet skis power boats. But for long spells, one can sit in utter peace. 

 

Recently I’ve longed to be more mindful: chiefly, noting what’s around me and what sensations I’m feeling. It’s been challenging for me to slow my mind and not jump off to different places. While staying here, it hit me that the practice of fiction is entirely about being in another imaginary place. Telling stories set in another time and place only escalates being inattentive to the present. It's necessary--but it takes a toll on the writer.

 

Lying on the house's deck, which was thoughtfully built to include the pre-existing tall pine growing there, I feel different. My eyes go straight up into the heart of the tree’s gorgeous crown. Or I’m sitting on the deck, watching the water’s natural slow current. After I’ve admired the lake, my eyes travel across the water to a pulsating movement in the air in front of some faraway trees. Are they a flock of thousands of insects, or hundreds of small birds? What is going on with so much energy in one place? Even Daisy, who never goes off leash, threw herself into new freedom and speed as Marcia's dog, Blondie, showed her the way.

 

And that is the truth about being stuck in the woods for a week. It seems like nothing’s going on, yet the reality is you aren't alone. Everything is alive and in some kind of growth or motion. This is the world that matters more than the noise.

How I Became a Historical Novelist

 Annamaria on Monday

I am up a deadline and unable to write something new.  But here is past post the got to where I came to write the story that is keeping me 100% occupied today.

Anya Seton

I was fourteen when my mother borrowed Katherine by Anya Seton from the Paterson Public Library.  I was about to graduate from elementary school and until I entered high school, allowed only books from the children's section--all of which I had already read.

My mom had long-since given me permission to read the books she borrowed. So that Saturday, after finishing my chores, I was lying on the living room floor reading a historical novel for the first time.  Mom's friend Carmel came in for what they called, "Coffee and."  As she passed into the kitchen, Carmel said to my mother, "You know, Ann, that girl is never going to find a husband if she always has her nose in a book."

Little did she know that I had, within the half-hour, read the line, "Her lips were drawn to his like a moth to a flame."  The Katherine of that great book (on the BBC's list of the 100 best British novels of all time) was Katherine Swynford--the mistress of John of Gaunt.  From their children (legitimated after their later marriage) descended the Tudors, the Stuarts, and the current British royal family.

Aside: The past weekend's big wedding was hailed as a huge departure from the post-Victorian marital niceties.  But like all royalty, the English throne sitters have always had some pretty sexy skeletons their closets.  But let's get back to my first historical novelist heroine.

Anya Seton was born in 1904 not on that sceptered isle she wrote about, but on the one where I now live--Manhattan, New York.  She grew up in toney Cos Cobb, Connecticut.  I guess her novels get to be called "British" because her father was English-born.

Her historical romances were best sellers.  Two of them--Dragonwyck (1944) and  Foxfire (1951) were made into Hollywood films.  Her novel Katherine is a classic of the genre.  That one historical novel got me hooked for life.  Whenever I have mentioned it at a library or conference as one of the books that influenced me, it always gets a big round of applause.  I still own a copy--one that I bought at a library books sale when I was in high school.  It is held together with rubber bands.  I will never part with it.

Sigrid Undset 

My High School English teacher recommended Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter to me for my summer reading.  The trilogy is comprised of three novels, originally published individually.  They all tell of Medieval Scandanavia--the life of Kristin from birth till death.  The writing is so vivid that decades after the last time I read it, I can still picture the landscape, the buildings, the bed built into a closet that Undset described.

Born in Denmark and brought up from the age of two in Norway, Sigrid Undset began her writing career after the death of her father when she was just sixteen.  Her first attempts at historical fiction garnered rejections from publishers.  At age twenty-five, already a member of the Norwegian Authors' Union, she turned her pen to contemporary novels--almost all, stories of women adulterers.  She gained notoriety and high sales figures.  But in her heart she still wanted to write of history.

She made her way to Rome, married, and lived there for a number of years, achieved her writing heart's desire, and eventually returned to Norway.  The three novels of the Kristin Lavransdatter series were published between 1920 and 1922.  Undset won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928.

Depressed, in the wake of the devastation of WWI, she incurred the wrath of her countrymen by converting to Catholicism.  In the face of the occupation of Norway during WWII, she--an avowed anti-fascist--escaped to the United States, where she lived in Brooklyn Heights.  She returned to Norway after the war.

I still have my copy of Kristin Lavransdatter, the one I bought secondhand when I was in high school.  It is 1069 pages--three novels in one volume.  I will never part with it either.

  

These two brilliant women converted me once and for all.  I still read contemporary fiction.  But when my hand reaches out for a book, much more often than not, my soul directs it to stories that will bring me into the past and make me feel as if I am there.  And when my imagination wants to make up a story, it is always drawn to the long ago and far away.  Always. 

My Re-Introduction to Greek Hand Gesture Cursing

 

Jeff––Saturday

 

Summertime this year on Greece’s Aegean Cycladic islands is so hot that I’ve noticed an abnormal number of tourists struggling with what to wear.  Some choose too little, some too much, some nothing at all.

 

To each his/her/their own is fine with me. But being the naturally helpful fellow I am, I sometimes can’t resist offering a bit of unsolicited advice to the clothing-impaired passing beneath my seaside balcony.  I’m aghast, though, at how a simple shouted phrase like “take it off” is so often misconstrued by the object of my heartfelt concern.

 

Worse still, I’m receiving a re-education into the vagaries of silent Greek cursing.

 

To elaborate, please allow me to provide you with this quick course on quiet coarse cursing.  

 

Greeks have a host of far different, more colorful methods for expressing displeasure than the simple middle finger “shooting the bird.”  So, as a public service for those seeking a less than politically correct guide to Greek hand gestures, here are my top five or so obscene ones…as illustrated by my capable ancient Greek assistant, an A(n)donis in his own right. 

 

Let’s start with the “waving hand” gesture. 

 

If you happen to see two Greek men waving at each other—hands extended straight out from their shoulders—it’s not a “Howdy, my friend, how you doing?” moment.   It even has a name, the moutza. You’ll quite often see it serve as the precursor to a road rage incident when flashed by the victim of a driver’s incomprehensible decision, such as passing a car in the face of on-coming traffic only to cut back in line barely inches from the soon to be moutza flashing other driver’s front bumper, running a stop sign, turning without warning, or otherwise demonstrating that the common sense rules of the road don’t apply to that driver. 

 

The moutza is the classic, non-verbal Greek method of expressing that you are the dumbest S.O.B. to walk the earth…or have done an award-winning stupid act.

 

And for the really stupid (acts and people), there’s the double moutza, though that’s rarely expressed in a driving situation except by a driver deserving of the double moutza himself… or herself.  For, yes, even women are known to flash the moutza on occasion.

 

Another gesture, one rarely expressed by a woman, is the one-handed chop in the direction of your own genital area or, if really incensed, a two-handed chop.  I say rarely by a woman because the dialog accompanying the act generally includes a reference “to my balls,” and is meant to convey, “I don’t give a damn about your opinion. Don’t waste my time with nonsense.”

 

There is a unisex version available for those so inclined.  It’s a one- or two-handed chop in the direction of the bottom of your shoes accompanied by a phrase roughly meaning “I write your words on the bottom of my old shoes because they’re so meaningless.”

 

Though you’ll often see in modern Greece the “up yours” sign of one hand clasping the inside of the bent other arm at the elbow, or admittedly, the middle finger salute, but purest Greeks regard them as coarser gestures corruptive of the classic Greek. “Up yours is Italian,” said my expert, and “this” flashing of the finger “is now part of America’s political culture” despite its Greco-Roman origins.

 

For the really hard-core classic Greek gesture equivalent to our revered middle finger, my friend demonstrated the time honored…drum roll…open handed, bent middle finger. 

 

I hope by now you appreciate the spicey repertoire of gestures I’ve been subject to these past several days…while recovering from an unexpected bout of heat exhaustion; an experience that might explain any sense of dementia associated with the creation of this post.

 

A CLOSING WORD OF CAUTION BEYOND STAY HYDRATED.  Though many of these gestures are exchanged among friends in a teasing, playful way, the indiscriminate use of them can be hazardous to one’s health.  To paraphrase Jim Croce’s great lyric, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t flash the finger at the old Lone Ranger unless you want to end up skinned.”

 

—Jeff

Barnard Castle Part 1

I was going to blog about Barnard Castle, the castle that gives its name to the rather charming and pretty market town. The place  has always been known for being aforesaid pretty and charming. It's also famous for the private boys' school ( it might be co ed now )  of the same name which is adjacent to the village.

It came to the public eye last summer during the covid enquiry when Boris Johnson's right hand man, Dominic Cummings, said that he had driven to Barnard Castle to test his eye sight.

That's a distance of 270 miles.....during lockdown.

Anyway,  more about that next week.

The castle has been there since the 11th century and was finally abandoned in the 17th century. As ruins go, it's fairly spectacular. It used to belong to Richard the 3rd. 

It sits right on the River Tees, high on a hill, next the village. A path surrounds it, the gardens and greens nearby are carefully tended with many viewpoints and benches.  You can tell that tourists are very welcome. The place is not big- and parking is free for two hours!  That's time to do the walk, have a coffee, look for your pals' books in the bookshop and then set off for Harrogate a few miles to the south- I was going to a publisher's party there.

I wanted to see the castle because I need to borrow it for a book.  So we were wandering around. Three times men stopped to tell us where to go. And they were all the same type of man; male, slim, very tanned, late 60's, wearing shorts with a folded up carrier bag under their left arm.

I noticed it. Then He noticed it and for Him to notice anything, it must be very obvious.

By the time the 4th one stopped us, asking if we wanted to know where to get the best pic of the castle, I asked, bluntly, if they worked for the tourist board as an undercover agent or something. He laughed, his name was Bailey ( a very unusual name here, usually given to golden retrievers ) and he said that they were just friendly people in the north of Englandshire. And retired. And bored. And it was a good way to make friends. He said that the previous week, he had met two young Swedish women and they had wanted to pay him for a guided tour. He said no, but they could treat him to a bit of lunch instead.

Not the sort of thing to say to a crime writer.  I explained what I did and that I was on my way to Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. And he said, something like, 'Oh my goodness, they were in no danger from me.'  'Yes,' I said, 'but who would know if you had disappeared, into the boot of their hire car with the bin bags and the Gaffa tape.'  Then he told us the story of his friend who lived in the middle terrace over there - he gesticulated..... and we chatted for another twenty minutes while He ( my He) kept checking the time on his phone as his cake was in jeopardy due the free parking time constraints.

What was the story?  Well, you will have to wait until  the book after this next one to find out what that was all about.

Stories everywhere, eh?

Meanwhile, here's some pics of the castle.

The beautiful lawns

The terrace house he was talking about!!

That's a very narrow, very ancient bridge. Traffic controls in use to get across.

The view of the river from the bridge

It's very impressive from the path down here.

Apart from rivalries for the crown, the castle was used to protect the border area from the hooligan marauders to the north.... 

Very lovely, tourist friendly.

The entrance gate in the main wall.

We were too late to go in.

The main castle defence, looking out over the flat land around.

This pointy bit is going in the book!

And somebody is going off the top!

New defence flying over the old defence.

The river still has its dangers.

This would be the view of any attacking army.

That line in the wall shows a flood line from 1621, I think it says.

Lovely pointy bit....

Him, hands clasped, desperate to get to the cake!