The Last Post: So Long and Thanks for Stopping By

Get It Write, the Perseverance Press blog, began in the fall of 2011. For me, that was two jobs and one retirement party ago.

The blog began when several PP authors and I emailed back and forth about the possibility of starting a blog. We got several necessary people onboard: Editor Meredith Phillips and Susan and John Daniel, the guiding lights of Perseverance Press. With the assistance of web guru Sue Trowbridge, of Interbridge, we set up a platform and drew up a blog posting schedule.

I served as administrator, which at times felt like herding cats. However, I really enjoyed working with this group of authors.

We decided we’d blog about whatever came to mind. In my case, I wrote about everything from my writing process, my research, my cats, my ongoing battle with clutter and downsizing, and my experiences serving on the jury for a murder trial. We also did a couple of Round Robin blogs where all the authors would chime in on various subjects.

It’s been interesting, over these past four years, coming up with something to write about once a month. Some months my blog posts would very nearly write themselves. Other months it was a slog to come up with something.

Now Get It Write is at an end. A consensus of the authors involved is that blogging was fun but like many things, it has a shelf life. It’s time for us to move on to other writing projects.

In military tradition, the last post is the bugle call that signifies the end of the day’s activities. It’s also used at military funerals, to honor the service member who has passed on.

This is the last post for the Perseverance Press blog, but you may see the PP authors posting in other locations, on other blogs. And this site will stay live for a time, just in case someone encounters it and enjoys reading what’s there.

Thanks for stopping by this blog. We appreciate it.

I’m Outta Here

This will be my last post on this blog because it’s being shut down. I’ve enjoyed writing these pieces over the last couple of years. They’ve given me a chance to reflect on my writing or on other facets of my life. In some cases the need to come up with a topic once a month has forced me to look around and expand my horizons.

I’ve always written on the assumption that I had an audience, but Perseverance Press’ research has shown that the only people reading this blog are other PP authors. So, a big shout-out to you guys. I’ve enjoyed reading the other blogs and I have learned some techy things from posting my own contributions to this blog—adding pictures and links—so I don’t regret the experience at all.

I wonder how many blogs get a wide readership, even if they follow Lev’s recent suggestions. I did a guest blog on another site several years ago. Right now I couldn’t tell you where, or when, or what it was about. I sent the link to members of my writers’ group and asked them to leave a comment if they were so inclined. The woman who ran the blog was ecstatic that she got eight comments on that piece. It was more than she’d ever gotten on anything on her blog. I didn’t have the heart to tell her they were all friends of mine who had never read her blog before and most likely never would again.

So, I guess this has run its course, as all things eventually do. I’ll leave you with a couple of my favorite good-byes. The first is from Jack Kerouac: “What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

The other is from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

The Mystery of the Right Rear Gunner–and Merry Christmas!

by Nancy Means Wright

For Christmas this year I’ve wrapped up for my book-loving son Kate Atkinson’s novel, A God in Ruins, about Teddy Todd, an elderly man thinking back on the World War 2 experiences that colored his life. His British bomber he called J-Jig was caught by flak as it approached the French coast and a shell blasted through the fuselage, almost knocking it out of the skies. Smoke was coming out, though no sign yet of flames. As pilot, Teddy did a crew check and heard from everyone but his rear-gunner, huddled at the very back “in a cold and lonely nest,” a distance from the rest. He always worried about Kenny, an usually cheerful Australian, in that “cramped, claustrophobic space.”

Because there was already a good deal of damage to the plane, it was flying lower and slower with each mile and he felt they should abandon ship. But no one wanted to ditch, especially over the sea, and they struggled on, overshooting the runway, smashing through hedges and ploughing up the field where they finally landed. The aircraft filled with smoke and Teddy urged them to be “as quick as you can, lads.”
When most of the crew got out, he saw that the rear-turret was still attached, but the rest of the plane was in pieces. “J-jig had left a trail behind her—wheels, wings, engines, fuel tanks, like a wanton woman divesting herself of clothing.” The fuselage was burning fiercely, and not a word from his rear gunner, who appeared to be trapped.

Oh my! The story brought me back to a memoir by my older brother Donald who was a 19-year-old flight navigator in that war. I was too young at the time to know much about his life, flying B-29s over the India “hump” to bomb the Japanese. But I recall the story he told and retold through the years about Sgt Oren, the rear gunner in the aircraft they’d named “Bachelors’ Quarters.” In 1944 they were flying over China when they lost #3 engine, fell behind their formation (like Teddy’s fictional plane), but carried on, dropped their bombs, made a 180 degree turn toward “home”– when #1 engine quit. They were still flying through flak, over Jap-held territory. Flight engineer Shoales had been desperately transferring fuel from one engine to another (today was his December birthday). To conserve fuel, they threw everything they could out of the plane: a chopped up radar set, a bomb sight, an empty bomb bay gas tank. It became obvious that they’d have to abandon ship by bailing out of the bomb bay in the rear.

It was a tight squeeze, according to my brother, because they were wearing parachutes with jungle kits, shoulder-holsters with a 45 pistol filled with ammunition, and leather flying jacket. On the back of the jacket was a silk flag with words in Chinese noting they were friends helping with the fight against the Japanese. Pilot Malone gave the order to bail out, and my brother had the gunners and others standing on opposite sides of the bomb bay. Through an open bulkhead door he saw Sgt Oren at his gunner’s position, head set on. Looking down, Donald, who would be the last to jump, saw bodies floating in the air and chutes opening. He signalled to Oren in his rear turret, but no response. The plane was already in flames–and no time or way to yank him forcibly out of his hole. So Don jumped,too, with a last shout to Oren, hoping he’d follow.

Don landed on a grave marker in a peasant farmer’s field, coming up with a fractured ankle and leg. Greeted by a group of suspicious men, he gave a thumb’s-up, saying the only Chinese he knew: ‘Ding how.” And they fed him soup and chicken. The next day he discovered the plane had crashed into a tea house, killing several people. And the rear gunner went down with it.

Why didn’t Sgt Oren bail, the only married man with a wife and young children? Or was it because of that family—afraid he’d be captured on the ground and leave them abandoned? Or was he frozen with fear, a panic attack that kept his legs from moving, his voice from calling out on his intercom? Perhaps he’d swallowed poison to avoid what he felt “the very worst”? Or was it a moment of acrophobia, a desperate fear of heights that wouldn’t let him even look at the far-off ground? No one will ever know the truth. Later his fellow crew members held a funeral service in Kunming where they buried his remains, and after the war, they met with his grieving family.

As for the rear gunner in Atkinson’s novel, I won’t be a spoiler. Except to say that he got out alive–but only after a crazy, explosive escape. I wrote a “Sgt Oren flight situation” into my new historical novel, Queens Never Make Bargains—based on reality, but nevertheless fiction. For young Oren, though, it was one more tragedy of a real war, and the sick minds that had started it.

May this be a Christmas of peace across the world, and may the new year be one of brotherhood for all–with no need for gunners, wherever they may be seated in a war plane. Wishful thinking perhaps, but we’re all fiction writers here. And so, farewell to the old year.

Christmas At My House

Lea Wait, here, wishing everyone a Happy Holiday! In my house, it’s a Merry Christmas. And it’s celebrated, first and foremost, by my unpacking some of my collection of Santas, hand-crafted, antique, or just fun, that I’ve collected over the years. The small Christmas tree (actually, the top of an artificial tree I used in a Christmas safety movie I made decades ago) decorated with small ornaments. The “jingle bells” on the front door. My grandfather’s velvet-covered copy of “The Night Before Christmas.” Wreaths. Candles. And ... but, come on in. See for yourself!

Another Year, Pffht!

By Wendy Hornsby

How can it be that another year is finished so soon? I was hardly used to writing 2015, and now it has slipped away, like butter off a hot ear of corn. A good year, a terrible year.

This will be my last post on the Getitwrite blog, so I want to tell you about a couple of things coming up in the new year. The big one is, DISTURBING THE DARK, the tenth Maggie MacGowen mystery, will be released by Perseverance Press in April. For the second time, Maggie is in Normandy, discovering skeletons in the family closet when an actual skeleton is unearthed. Seventeen skeletons, in fact. Who were they, and who planted them in her grandmother’s carrot field? This was a fun book to write. There’s adventure, suspense, some mayhem, a soupcon of history, a dash of romance, and some fine French meals. While I’m looking forward to the release of number ten, the big question is, what’s next?

The next thing in the offing is a new book in progress. It isn’t a Maggie MacGowen, and it’s the first book I’ve written since the very first one that wasn’t under contract before I wrote it. Where it will end up is a mystery at the moment. But who doesn’t love a mystery?

So, bye for now. Enjoy the holidays, all of them. And do your best to have a very happy 2016.

How to Get Your Blog Noticed

The best way? Write something that will really stir people up.

One approach is to be super negative.

For instance, Adele’s new album has been breaking sales records and she has zillions of adoring fans. Imagine writing a blog that says 25 is crap, she’s over-rated, and not remotely as good as Lana del Ray or any other singer of your choice.

You’d be sure to get lots of hits and people would RT like crazy in their rage. But then among the crowd would also be lots of people who actually agreed with you–so you’d get those readers, too.

Another approach: Defend a common target of ridicule.

Example? Blog that the Kardashians have been misunderstood. Say they represent the best in family values. Say they stand for everything that makes America great. Given their high profile, one way of another, anything about them is likely to generate hits, and that’s what you’re after: click bait.  A sexy title and photo or two helps.  And some funny gifs.

Now, what do you do in either case about the badly spelled emails from people who think you’re a total moron and should be put down like a rapid dog? And the tweets that vilify you in worse terms? And the comments pointing out the smallest typo and trash everything from your writing skills to your sanity?

Ignore them.

You’re not blogging to start a conversation or prove you’re God’s Gift to Blogging. Your aim is publicity, and the best way to generate that is by posting a controversial blog.  But beware, this can happen even by accident.

So.  Are you tough enough to handle it?

Lev Raphael is the author of The Edith Wharton Murders and 24 other books in genres from mystery to memoir.

Where Research Leads Me

I write fiction – to date eleven novels in the Jeri Howard series, two in the California Zephyr series, and one standalone. I have two works-in-progress.

I make this stuff up. But when it comes to details, I like to sound as though I know what I’m talking about. So I research a variety of subjects, depending on the plot, setting and characters that feature in my books. Sometimes this involves a lot of reading but other times it involves getting out of my office. The research takes me down twisty paths and I find out things I didn’t know, information that makes its way into my writing.

As a longtime fan of Dick Francis, I always wanted to write a horseracing novel, but when I started A Killing at the Track, the ninth Jeri Howard novel, it quickly became clear how much I didn’t know about the Sport of Kings. Watching the Kentucky Derby on TV is one thing. So is watching live racing from the grandstand. Writing about the day-to-day life on the backside of a racetrack is another.

How to solve my research dilemma? A friend of a friend knew someone who trained racehorses. Which is how I found myself at Bay Meadows racetrack in the early hours one morning, for a day of following a trainer around the backside. I met jockeys, a vet, a jockey’s agent, and the Clerk of the Scales, who gave me a tour of the jockeys’ locker room. The last was unexpected, and it made its way into the book.

When I was researching Death Rides the Zephyr, the first book in the California Zephyr series, I took a special excursion train up the Feather River Canyon, the route of the old California Zephyr, not the Amtrak version. That gave me the experience of traveling on a Pullman car. I also rode Amtrak’s Zephyr several times back and forth to Colorado, during the winter, seeing the frozen and isolated landscape of the Colorado Rockies, and getting a sense for what my characters would see out the window of the train, because that’s where much of the action takes place.

I visited the Western Pacific Railroad Museum, where I drove a locomotive under the watchful and patient tutelage of one of the museum volunteers. My main character in the Zephyr books is a train employee called a Zephyrette. I was fortunate to interview two women who had worked as Zephyrettes and the information they gave me was invaluable in writing the books.

Right now I’m working on the twelfth installment of Jeri Howard’s adventures, a book titled Water Signs. Jeri’s back on her familiar Oakland, California turf and the research involves looking at the city’s waterfront and the development that’s going on now. Who knows where it will lead me? Maybe out on the estuary, in a boat!

A Farewell to Blogs, or A (Last) Shot in the Dark

Happy holidays, whichever you celebrate.  I do the solstice myself.  Be sure to check out Newgrange (Co. Meath, Ireland) on December 21.  Sunlight is supposed to shine along the interior of the passage tomb and hit the back wall at sunrise on the shortest day of the year.

When we began this Perseverance Press blogspot, I had my doubts.  Now I’m convinced of the truth of the English teacher motto:  anybody can write five paragraphs about anything.  I suppose the reverse is also true.  Nobody can write five paragraphs about nothing.

Be that as it may, I somehow passed the fifty blogs mark and only screwed up my appointed time once.  I never did figure out how to import photographs to the text.  Pity.  I had some good ones.  And I never did figure out whether we were supposed to write about creating mysteries or about whatever struck our fancy.  By and large I tried to keep the focus on writing, since my life is not dramatic and I am a rather private person.  However, I enjoyed reading about everyone else’s life.  You will all appear in my next fantasy novel since I have your back stories.

Looking back at all the blogs, I found the variety of styles and responses stimulating.  The quality of the writing was what might be expected of talented professionals, but there were a few disappointments.

Getitwrite was not a news blog.  Even so, more acknowledgement of what was going on in the real world–maybe just in the real world of writing–would have given the blogs greater intensity.  Also, apart from the mostly laudatory comment, there was very little sense of interaction between the writers.  It’s hard to structure that without having to watch the discussion degenerate into a sword fight, but it might be possible to engineer, say, three writers’ responses to the same topic with accompanying comments.  Or each blogger could be asked to comment politely on a specific point made by the previous blogger.  Or a topic could be thrown out for a general melee.  I’m too inexperienced to see the pitfalls here.  There are bound to be some.

I was glad I agreed to participate.  My special thanks to Janet and Meredith for making it happen.

Confessions of a TV Addict

By Camille Minichino

I know—so many books, yada yada, and I have five or six books going at any given time: one each of crime-related, science, general nonfiction, general fiction, and theology or spirituality.

But, while I’m waiting for the next Mo Hayder, Richard Russo, or Joseph Kanon; the newest on quantum entanglement; and more from authors like Eric Larson or Elaine Pagels, I watch TV. A lot of TV.

Here’s an embarrassing moment.

My husband and I are watching Blue Bloods on TV (embarrassing already, right?) and an actor appears in the ADA’s office.

“That guy looks familiar,” my husband says.

“It’s Dan Hedaya,” I tell him. He was the crazy guy on NYPD Blue who thought he was a werewolf, and he was one of Carla’s ex-husbands on Cheers, and he’s been in movies, like Blood Simple, The Usual Suspects—”

“I got it,” my husband says.

I’m disappointed, because I’m just getting started on Dan Hedaya.

But I’ll have another chance, because soon we’re watching another show, a new one called The Inspectors, about a group from the USPS Inspectors Office. (BSP: This one is research, to go along with my new series that debuted November 3, The Postmistress Mysteries) A main character on this show had died in a car crash, but he makes brief ghostly appearances, dispensing sage advice to his family.

“That guy looks familiar,” my husband says.

“It’s Carlos Bernard,” I tell him. He was Kiefer Sutherland’s main guy on 24, and he’s been on Castle and Madame Secretary, and—”

“I got it,” my husband says.

And so on.

I can’t help it—stories that come to life on the television screen can grab me like no other, and I feel like I know the characters better than some of my friends, better than some of my own characters. I’m depressed when bad things happen to the good guys (Did Will really have to die? Let me know if you know who I mean.) And I’m thrilled when a bully gets it (a whole season of Revenge).

A TV addict should never marry a television engineer. It’s like a giving an alcoholic a job as a bartender. OK, it worked for Sam Malone on Cheers, but that was fiction. My husband’s latest achievement is providing the means (schematic on request) to record 16 different shows simultaneously. And, of course, we have the brand new gadget that lets him skip commercial blocks at the touch of the green button. It’s a wonder we have room in the house for books.

Here are my current shows—never mind that I pretend it’s research that every crime fiction writer needs to do.

The Can’t Miss Shows, roughly in order:

1. Homeland, it’s like having 24 back, with slightly less torture.
2. Ray Donovan, because who doesn’t love a Fixer with a Boston accent?
3. Hawaii 5-0, to pretend James Caan is back, and therefore, so is The Godfather.
4. The Americans, because the Cold War never ceases fascinate me.
5. Criminal Minds, for the philosophical wisdom as they fly to the scene.
6. Law & Order, SVU, because it’s the only L&O left.
7. The Good Wife, because I need a courtroom between John Grisham books.
8. Blacklist, for James Spader, and more torture than Homeland.
9. Blue Bloods, in spite of Tom Selleck, who still SIGHs as if he’s Jesse Stone. Frank Regan wouldn’t last a minute in NYC, uniform or no uniform.

I’m lucky I don’t like comedies, and I won’t watch talk shows, vampires, scifi or fantasies, reality shows, or any dancing or singing amateur talent. I got that last category out of my system with Ted Mack in the fifties.

If only David Baldacci, Brian Green, and the like would write faster, I’d be able to pull myself away from the 58–inch screen.

Happy Thanksgiving

Wendy Hornsby

This year, as I sit down with my family, prepared to tuck into an opulent meal, I am reminded how fortunate we are, how very much we have to be thankful for.  384 years ago, depending on the most accepted account of when the first Thanksgiving took place, a ragtag group of immigrants, religious refugees from a far shore, sat down to share a meal with the local, American born, people who had helped them to survive the Starving Time, as their first year in the new land came to be known.  I know there are many versions of what that first feast signified, but for now I want to stick to the mainstream message we have chosen to accept as the meaning of Thanksgiving.  That is, the feast was a sharing of bounty between the natives and the newcomers.   The United States, as F.D.R. reminded us, and we should all remember, is a nation of immigrants.  Let us celebrate that legacy of diversity, and let us always welcome the pilgrims who come here hoping for a better life.

I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.