Tony Gwynn, and a writer's work...

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you've probably noticed that I posted a lot of articles and photos about Tony Gwynn, one of the greatest hitters in baseball, after his untimely passing.

Tony formed a great friendship with Ted Williams, who considered Gwynn the best hitter since, well, Ted Williams

Tony Gwynn was Mr. Padre, the face of a franchise that often -- well, mostly -- has underperformed. On a team with a history of mediocrity, he was excellence personified. He was also Mr. San Diego. For a city that hasn't always had a strong identity, other than, "We're not LA!" he was the perfect hero. Hard-working, loyal -- he stayed in San Diego for his entire career, though he could have made much more money elsewhere, and he could have been a lot more famous, too, if he'd taken the big bucks and gone to a big market like New York or Boston or Los Angeles.

He loved San Diego, and San Diego loved him back.

And get this. He was a genuinely good guy, too. Great family man. Wonderful to fans. Had a laugh, a gleeful cackle, and a smile that lit up the room. If anyone had a negative word to say about Tony Gwynn, I haven't read it yet. Instead, after his death, tributes poured in from all around the country. I'll just link to one, "I was Tony Gwynn's bat boy." It will give you an idea of the rest.

Tony's statue at Petco Park

It was a crazy thing, being in San Diego when Tony Gwynn died. He was too young, too nice, too good a person. I don't know how many sports figures there are these days whose passing would be felt by as many and as deeply, who was so linked to a particular city, a place that doesn't have many heroes. As a lifelong Padres fan (which is another term for "masochist"), I was, like many San Diegans, mourning a man I didn't know, and you know, I generally don't get all that involved in the lives of celebrities that I don't know. 

Of course, I had to go to the memorial. Decked out in my Tony Gwynn retro jersey, wearing my new Tony Gwynn 394 Pale Ale T-shirt (yes, he collaborated on a signature beer with Alesmith Brewing Company. And it's delicious).

It was really a lovely event. There were a lot of emotional moments, but one of them came when former Padres shortstop Damian Jackson talked about how he didn't have a father growing up, how Tony would have been a great father to have. 

Yeah, that kind of guy.

The memorial at Petco Park

One of the things most remarked upon was Tony Gwynn's incredible work ethic. He was a pioneer in using video tapes to study hitting, a practice that is now universally used in baseball. He showed up earlier, practiced longer, than just about anyone. He analyzed hitting constantly, down to the smallest minutia. He rarely struck out. He was all about putting the bat on the ball, hitting that 5.5 hole.

He wasn't a great fielder at first, so he worked his ass off to become one and won five Golden Gloves. 

He worked very, very hard, and this is something that was greatly celebrated here. It fits in with that hazy San Diego civic culture: Work hard, don't be flashy, get the job done. 

Somewhere around the 100th iteration of Tony Gwynn's work ethic, I realized that there was an element of wishful thinking involved. Basically, if you work hard, you too will achieve and be rewarded. While that's not UN-true, it's not the entire picture, either. He had incredible natural gifts. He had a loving and supportive family. 

Plenty of people could work just as hard as Tony Gwynn and not achieve what he achieved. 

Why am I going on about a beloved baseball player on a blog dedicated to fictional mayhem set in foreign countries?

One of the things I kept thinking about was how Tony Gwynn's career resonated with me as a novelist. 

Baseball can be a real grind. It's a long season, and baseball players play a lot of games. It requires stamina, discipline and the sheer, dogged stubbornness to show up and play whether you feel like it or not. 

Writing novels feels a bit like that at times. 

Novels are…long. Writing one takes sustained effort over a long period of time. You research. You struggle through the first draft, and then you rewrite. And revise. And rewrite and revise some more. You deal with editor's notes. You revise and rewrite. You do your line edit. Your copy edit. Your page proofs. You try to craft the thing as best as you can, down to each single sentence. 

And like most things, you get better with practice. You work hard, and it's reflected in the work. 

But so is your individual talent. Your voice. That spark and gift that you can't explain and you can't always will into being. 

Respect your own gifts by working hard and treating people well. And by being loyal to the thing that drives you to create in the first place. 

You don't cheapen your Muse by selling out and becoming a damn Yankee, or a stinkin' Dodger.

Lisa…every other Wednesday…

Summer farm-style

The last few weekends we've visited my friends 'farm'. Or maybe it's a zoo since several of the goats and Jenny, the cow, come from a petting zoo. 

 Clifford is the white goat.

 My friend harvested the hay from her field for the horses.

 This should get the horses halfway through the winter feeding.

 Bentley the pig thinks he's a dog.

 Not only are geese good watch 'dogs' but the goat Alfred attacks if he doesn't get celery.

 The miniature llama takes a look and runs away.

 Rasmus is milked and provides incredible goat cheese.

 The duck couple watch the cock.

 Who helped provide these eggs.

That's life in the farm/zoo.

Cara - Tuesday

On Hearing Someone Else Read It

Almost all of us here at MIE have had our stories published as audio books.  I am bringing up this topic in the hopes of starting a discussion on how we and other writers feel about the experience of listening to our own work coming out of someone else’s mouth.  And how readers of this blog feel about “reading” with their ears.

The only MIE author I ever heard from on this subject was Leighton Gage, who advised me about this, as he did about so many other things that a published author needs to know.  He told me that mid-list authors like me almost never have any input whatsoever on who and how the books are recorded.  He complained that the man who read his stories screwed up the pronunciations of the Brazilian names—people’s and places.  But all in all he thought it was better to have the book recorded than not.  As in almost all things, I agree with his assessment.

I am a book addict.  I take them any way I can, and that includes listening.  I prefer to sit and read, but like most New Yorkers I walk as a means of transportation.  Getting from one place to another gives me time to tune in to great stories on my phone, increasing the number of books I can “read.”  I particularly like doing this with books I have already read, as I did recently with the brilliant John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  I could not have taken the time to reread it while sitting in a chair, but I was mightily glad to experience the work again while plowing my way through the throngs of tourists in midtown or strolling back and forth to the grocery store.

When I was reading Lisa Brackmann’s brilliant Rock, Paper, Tiger, I was in a particularly difficult and busy period of my life.  The book was a wonderful escape for me, and once I got into the story it made me want to stay in it, but I just couldn’t put together enough time to satisfy the intensity of my curiosity about how it would turn out.  So I downloaded it from Audible and read part of it and listened to part.  I really liked it in both formats.  Now her Hour of the Rat has been nominated for an Anthony for Best Audio Book.  I have read it sitting down but now am in the process of listening to it too.  My take: the narrator does a wonderful job of portraying the edginess of the story and of communicating Lisa’s riveting combination of wonder, wry commentary, and anxiety.  I hope Lisa will weigh in on her reactions to this.  Ditto for my other blogmates.

I was not able to find audio versions of Caro’s stories.  That might be a blessing for her as a writer.  Because there is that chance, as Leighton warned me, that one’s story will be mangled.  The first two Audible versions of mine—Invisible Country and Blood Tango—were less than successful from my point of view.  With Invisible Country, the first of my recorded books, I did not expect to find the Guarani names pronounced correctly.  I tried to keep my expectations low.  They were not low enough.

The voice-over artist is a man, an understandable choice since it is an anti-war novel and is certainly as much a man’s story as a woman’s.  My difficulty was in the voices the reader gave to my characters.  The Paraguayan townswomen all speak in breathy whispers.  Even the ultra-religiously devout Maria Claudia sounds like a bad imitation of Marilyn Monroe.  The lector gives a foreign-language accent to only one character: Tomas Pereira da Graça, an aristocratic Brazilian.  The text says he has an accent.  He speaks Spanish with an upper class Portuguese accent.  In the audio version, he speaks in English, of course, but with a cheesy, comical Spanish accent.  Think “My name Jose Jimenez.” UGHHH!

The reader of Blood Tango is a woman with a Spanish accent.  She does a good job, except for the fact that she almost invariably puts the greatest emphasis on prepositions.  (In my mind, I was saying, “TROUBLE was closing in on Buenos Aires.”  She read: “Trouble was closing in ON Buenos Aires.”)  I am not sure a non-Spanish speaking listener would even understand that she is saying “Buenos Aires.”  She speaks the names of the places and people in the story very quickly in Spanish.  An American person experiencing the story only audibly will not have the advantage of the seeing, for instance “Campo de Mayo” spelled out.  If she had pronounced it distinctly—Cahm-po day Maio, it would not have been a problem, but she slurs it.  Imagine the FedEx commercial guy trying to say this: cmodmyo.  I imagine that the sense of place pretty much disappears from the audio version of that book since there would be no way for people not intimately familiar with the landscape to get what I am talking about.  Can people listening in English even identify the characters’ names clearly enough to distinguish them from one another?  Hard to tell.  Ah well.

BUT NOW: the audio version of Strange Gods came out last week along with the book.  I am delighted to say that the voice-over artist does a wonderful job. He’s a South African named Dennis Kleinman.  I looked him up.  He was easy to find.

He speaks the narration with a more or less neutral British accent, in which I picked up a tiny note of the South Africa here and there.  He absolutely aces the dialog, doing upper class English, Scots, and tribes people.  Sometimes the cadence of the narrative is not exactly how it sounds in my own head, but all in all his reading is quite wonderful.  My characters sound so real in his voice.  One of them is a bombastic District Commissioner, whom the narrator makes every bit as authoritarian, patronizing, and obnoxious as I imagined him to be.  My story was safe with Dennis Kleinman.

So what about you?  Do you listen to books?  Do you listen to your own work?  If so, what’s your take on hearing your words read aloud by a stranger?  If you listen to audio books, how do you feel about the skill of the people who read them?  Let’s talk.

Annamaria - Monday

Guest Blogger: Beate Boeker––"Florence."

Every other Sunday is our day for Guest Author Postings by mystery writers who base their stories in non-US settings.  We think it a great way of introducing our readership to new experiences and places.  We’re pleased to have with us today Beate Boeker, whose name literally translates into “Happy Books,” leaving her little choice but to write works that have been shortlisted for the Golden Quill Contest, the National Readers' Choice Award, the 'Best Indie Books' contest, and the RONE Award.  Beate lives in the north of Germany with her husband and daughter and her website is http://www.happybooks.de

Welcome, Beate.

For Expected Death, the fourth novel in my mystery series,  “Temptation in Florence,” I decided to throw the victim from a tower. It shouldn't be too difficult to find a nice tower for murder in Florence, I figured, after all, the ancient town with its century-old buildings offers plenty of choice. The first that came to my mind was the world-famous Campanile, of course.

However, I had two obstacles to overcome – first, I only had two days to find the perfect tower because I don't live in Florence (something I really have to remedy one day!), and second, I had to find a place without tourists. Particularly the second condition turned into a huge problem - because a murder that's being filmed and watched by an international multitude is not a good base for a good mystery yarn with some nice complications along the way. And in a city like Florence, finding a spot without tourists is almost impossible. This also ruled out the Campanile straight away – I mean, how likely is it that a murderer and the victim will both line up for hours before going up the tower together? I already knew that my main protagonists (the murderer and the victim) were no friends, so I could not count on them standing in line next to each other in perfect harmony.

I asked around among author friends who knew the city and even contacted the tourist information, who were probably slightly alarmed by my request. I searched the Internet, poured over maps, checked out pictures and calculated heights, but I knew I had to see the place first hand before I could take a decision.

When I arrived in Florence, I first tried my luck with the tower of the Pallazzo Vecchio, but a bored guard at the uppermost platform put a hold on any murderous intent. It would be foolhardy for any author to push someone from that tower – because it would leave nothing to do but a quick arrest.

Remembering a recommendation from a friend, I then turned to the “oltrarno” - the other side of the Arno – to check out the Torre di San Niccolò. It has only been re-opened to the public in 2011, so it's not quite as well-known and overrun with tourists as many of the other spots in town. It also has a very satisfying height if you're looking for murder – sixty metres with flagged stones at the ground create a pretty good drop. The Tower San Niccolò was built in 1324 as a gate and part of the town wall. When centuries later, cannons were introduced and used to bombard the town, the high towers suddenly presented a good target, and so most of them were lowered, or decapitated, as the Italians say. The Tower of San Niccolò, however, remained at its original height because the hill right behind it protected it from the cannons.

I thought that was providential until I stood on the top platform of the tower San Niccolò. The breathtaking view toward the historical city barely impressed me because when I turned into the other direction, I was ready to stamp my feet in frustration: I had overlooked that the hill behind the tower is topped by the famous Piazzale Michelangelo, which is one of the busiest places in the whole of Tuscany. Why, you ask?

Because from the top of that hill, you don't only see Florence in all its splendor, but you can also park dozens of busses at once – with the result that every single tourist bus in Tuscany stops at the Piazzale Michelangelo for ten minutes or less to allow tourists to take a hurried picture before moving on to the next national treasure.

I was devastated. Murdering someone on that tower would be like enacting a stage play, covered by the latest in Japanese filming technology. The picture shows that you're almost eye-to-eye with the tourists, particularly if you consider the strong zoom many cameras offer.

Besides, the space between the merlons was secured by sturdy steel bars that made it terribly difficult to push the victim over. You really had to heave someone over the edge (and that someone had preferably be dead or unconscious already), otherwise, it would be way too difficult. A simple push wouldn't get you anywhere.

My time was running out, and I still hadn't found a perfect tower. In the meantime, I had realized that planning murder at public buildings is “difficultissimo,” to say it in Italian, i.e., very difficult. However, I was not yet willing to give up. Being an author, I was at liberty to tweak some other details. As a first step, I made the victim very slim and small, so it would be easier to heave her across those bars. I also created a very foggy and rainy day with no view at all for the murder – to stop the tourists from seeing any details. And so I managed to get away with it after all, and the tower of San Niccolò will be a focal point of Expected Death coming out later in 2014.

Guest Blogger Beate Boeker—Sunday.

On Keeping Greece in the Game.

Samaras is a hero.

No, not Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

Greece Prime Minister Antonis Samaras

Greece national team player Georgios Samaras

I’m talking about Greek soccer player Georgios Samaras, a striker on Greece’s World Cup soccer team who scored the winning goal on a penalty kick in the injury-time additional three minutes of Greece’s Tuesday match against Ivory Coast to send his country into its first ever Final Sixteen stage of FIFA World Cup play. That elimination-round match takes place at eleven o’clock tomorrow night, Greek time, against Costa Rica.

Greece’s victory brought joy to its beleaguered populace, just as Georgios Samaras said he hoped it would do in his post game remarks attributing success to a team effort.  But alas, there’s an ironic twist to this hero.  He came to Greece to support its national team, but earns his living elsewhere, playing for Scottish Premier League Team Celtic.

Celebrating winning goal against Ivory Coast

And that my friends just about exhausts my knowledge of Georgios Samaras, World Cup play, and soccer in general.  Though I must say I’ve grown to enjoy watching it…at least the well-played games, to the extent I can tell which ones they are.

But what about the other Samaras? Many in the media say he, too, is in the final minutes of play, and absent a screw up by his opponent, not likely to make it into another round.  Here’s a bit of the view of one journalist, Alexis Papachelas of Greece’s newspaper of record, Ekathimeri:

There are plenty of people who voted the current coalition government into power two years ago that feel they are being given no choice but to choose the opposition SYRIZA party in the next general election and resent it. They are angered by a number of political decisions made by the [Samaras] government following the cabinet reshuffle [three weeks ago] and especially by the removal of certain politicians who got things done and defended their choices openly. Even before the reshuffle, these voters were angry at decisions that showed the political system is incapable of changing its tune regardless of the mess it has made of the country.

These voters constitute the backbone of what used to be the middle class in Greece and it is they who have paid one of the highest prices for the crisis. They have been bled dry by taxation and driven to near-insanity by ludicrous measures such as allowing any tax official to freeze their bank accounts at the slightest hint of a misdeed….

The prime minister…was seen as a leader who could be relied on, who would get the country to the other side of the river. All of a sudden, however, two-thirds of the way across and with the waters calmer, they feel that something has gone terribly wrong. Someone has sowed panic, the crew is starting to argue, the compass is spinning, and the passengers are frightened….

Many battles still need to be fought before we will know with any certainty where things are headed and the government will come under a tremendous amount of pressure in the next few months. How it deals with this pressure will depend of whether the prime minister will tolerate destructive politicians.

Hmmm, if a game plan that elevated commitment to national goals above personal interests, encouraged creative teamwork, and inspired diligent preparation for such opportunities as good fortune might present worked for one Samaras, perhaps the other should take heed.

Player Samaras consoling losing team's goalkeeper.

Jeff—Saturday