The Big Steal by Emyl Jenkins

I read this book in about two days which is quick for me. Normally it takes me a couple weeks to read a book. This is a second in the series about Sterling Glass who is an antiques appraiser turned sleuth. It is most often described as a cozy mystery which means there are no dead bodies just stolen antiques with values that should generate dead bodies. We're talking $100,000 for a four inch teapot. Can you imagine paying that kind money for something you don't use?

Anyway, about the book. I liked the second much better than the first one. It seems more developed so that the character isn't walking in to situations rather she is seeking them out. She waits for the gatekeeper to be occupied so she can steal into the attic. Anyone who loves antiques would enjoy a chance to walk around in an ancient house discovering long forgotten treasures and this is just what happens. Oh the fun of it. Unlike my attic which has old toys rejected by yard sales, this one has a myriad of items that gives the reader a chance to learn a lot about antiques and why the people who collect them do so.

The characters too were a lot like the antiques they represented or should I say the house? The one phrase that came up in both books was when Sterling said something along the lines of "within ten minutes of being in a house, I can tell you all about the person who lives there." It makes sense. Rather like clothes or as some people point out shoes. We express ourselves according to our likes and dislikes and the house would be no different. This to me is the crux of the story because what happens is that a claim in put in for stolen antiques. Sterling is called upon to put a value on those antiques and as she walks into the house she notes they do not follow a theme, it's very eclectic. Already you know something about the owner within the first pages just by the description of the house. Emyl's talent here is creating characters not by describing their past but what of the past they chose to treasure.

Slipped in occasionally is Sterling's mother with her bits of wisdom. These I find to be more like proverbs and remember only that they exist. I don't recall any that made me stop and pause. Ironically it isn't Sterling's mother who offers up the greatest wisdom of the book or even Sterling herself. The best wisdom comes from a character that walks in like a tornado and vacuums up the treasures. "Funny how the hurts of our youth stay with us, and they cut so much deeper than later hurts. It's like they become embedded within us, grow, and harden our hearts. Who knows? Maybe that's why the later hurts aren't as bad. They haven't lived as long."

I absolutely loved that passage. Whether it touches other people or not, it really touched me because all I could think of as I read this was how true it is my own life. I still recall with vivid detail being on the end of the couch with a comic book pleading with my cousin to read it to me. She snapped at me. "You're four years old and can't read? Are you retarded?" She was a kid too so as an adult I wouldn't hold this against her but after forty years it still hurts.

It was an entertaining book and the story held together from the beginning to the end.

Writing Kernels

I suppose I might have trained myself to be a writer a little. While at the 4th of July celebration in Greenbelt Md. I was among a few hundred people laying in the grass near the lake. Someone had the bright idea to have a drum community. This isn't sarcasm, it really was a bright idea. The Romans were fond of fights to the death and murdering Christians to keep the populace entertained and happy. This organizer figured that might not go over too well these days so he or she opted for community drums to keep these several hundred people entertained for the hours leading up to the twenty minutes of fireworks. Everyone was invited to join in playing the drums. There were hula hoops, ribbons, and more for those not wishing to play drums. It was very well done. It made me want to write.

I wanted to convey that sense of pleasure that comes from a warm afternoon, family, expectation, the smell of grilling hamburgers, little children dancing with abandon and adults dancing while maintaining the hula hoops. I was impressed, do you know how hard that is?

I got two sentences written and they aren't worth transcribing. Yet, it reminded me that as humans we remember and tell stories about the days like these. My novel needs a celebration of life. My characters lives weren't lived around fires, floods, and eminent domain. There was also music, laughter, lazy moments in the sun and snow ball fights in the winter.

It's time to get to work. Maybe today I'll listen to a little period music while I write, see what happens.

4th of July

Celebrating what? Nothing really. It's just the 4th of July and we spent a nice weekend with the family. Mostly I'm saying that I'm still here in blog world just really busy in real world.

The Writing Show

Sigh, this will not be an informative post. I've reached the point now where the Writing Show is repeating itself regardless of the fact that the subject is always different. It isn't so much that the panelists are saying the same things over and over again, it's just that I'm becoming aware that the ones who end up somewhere as in published, acclaimed, whatever, are different. These people tend to take things over the top. Megan Holley mentioned that she sold her house to produce a movie that went nowhere. She lost her house and gained nothing. All I could think of was, "huh? you're kidding right?" Because you know what she talked about later in the show? She answered a woman's question about other (influential) people's input in her screenplay by saying that you have to allow them to have ownership in the movie. Accept their ideas and then convince yourself that it was yours in the first place and it is a great idea, you really really believe in this idea and yeah it would really improve the script so you write it in. There is the answer right there...people who go on to be successful learn from their mistakes and they aren't afraid to make colossal mistakes, they learn from these experiences, and they are ambitious enough to sacrifice ego in order to achieve the ego's ultimate goal, to be produced (published, whatever the goal might be).

Clay McLeod Chapman has perfected the art of impromptu. Having never been to New York and unfortunately missing the one time he brought the Pumpkin Pie Show to Richmond I honestly don't know if his shows are impromptu or not. All I know is that the moderator asked him a question. The simple answer was, "I don't know." He took ten minutes to say this and the entire room was clapping when he finally said I don't know because it was fabulously done. It doesn't sound the same when I write these words but you have to understand he threw in all the right cues. The question was whether it was more difficult to write a novel than a short story. He starts off telling us how he came to claim he could write a novel. He ends up telling us about how he stressed and wrote, deleted, changed, and had an editor tell him how to write the book. He entertained the audience with this story to the point that they were clapping spontaneously to say, "That was a well told story." The best writers, the ones who end up going somewhere know how to engage an audience, to tell a story, so that the audience is so vested in the story that they want more, they buy the book. I've done it several times for different authors because I think anyone who can talk that well must be able to write that well.

The other speaker I didn't like. I mean there were things I did like about him. He truly seemed to believe that there is a lot of talent in teenagers and he really wanted to be the one to discover that unique talent, the next I'll say Michael Jackson since he died the night of the Writing Show, and this is good. Believe in people. The thing is he seemed so down on theater itself and said things such as how it has changed to be more like movies. "You've got two people talking over a table," instead of the grand sets that are meant to be larger than life. All I could think of was Tennessee Williams and the Glass Menagerie, The Elephant Man, The Seagull, and a Fountain Bookstore was selling one, (blasted I can't remember the name) again it was a close set written and performed before movies took over, and it was a classic for it's timeless story about human nature.

I'll glance through my notes and see if I can't do a more journalistic post later. For the moment what I glean from the Writing Shows has changed. I don't listen the same anymore. I'm trying to build up the courage to take that leap of faith and risk it all.

On Writing

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” E. L. Doctorow.

I was processing swim team pictures and thinking about cropping, whether this one should go in the album, deleted, etc. Right in the middle I "hear" a conversation between two characters. Suddenly I am scrambling to find a piece of paper in order to write this down because I might forget it. So now the question is, "how many personalities do I have?"