One more NaNo under the bridge

This year's National Novel Writing Month effort seemed much harder than in past years. For most of the month, I was far more behind on word count that I've ever been before. It was only through a heroic effort in the last week that I got to the finish -- I hit the magic 50K mark on the 28th, took a rest on the 29th, and then cranked out another 2278 words on the 30th.

Here, on record for posterity, are the last 1000 or so words I officially registered this year.

Hannah arrived at the park about ten minutes early. The park had only a few cars in the parking lot, and only a few visitors strolling on the beach, basking on beach towels, surfing, or otherwise enjoying the out of doors, in spite of it being a beautiful (at least compared to the past few days) sunny day in late spring. She parked at the end of the parking lot closest to the fire pit, shut down the car engine, and waited. She hoped Walton would be in his personal car, and not one of the white SUVs the newspaper owned – even though they were unmarked, everyone on the police department knew what the Capitan’s reporters drove. Not that there would likely be any police officers around specifically looking for someone having a clandestine meeting with a reporter. But Hannah wanted to keep things as secret as possible.

A car pulled up next to Hannah’s, an older sports car, with slightly fading purple paint, and Hannah recognized the driver as the reporter she had followed out of the newsroom on the way to the incident at Callahan’s. He got out of his car, and she got out of hers. She noticed that the badging on his car had been slightly altered – it was no longer labeled “Probe” but rather “Prose.” Hannah pointed to the car. “‘Purple Prose,’” she commented. “Seems a more appropriate car for a sports reporter than a news jockey.”

“I used to be a sports reporter,” Walton said, “back in my home town where the newspaper came out twice a week. I got put on the city desk when I moved up to the big city with the daily newspaper. Not as much fun, but hey, it pays the bills.”

“So did your editor clear me as a confidential source?” Hannah asked.

“Yes, she did,” Walton said. “She also tentatively gave me permission to use that other person – the one you were talking to while you were on the phone with me – if he has a good reason to keep secret that he talked with me.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Hannah said. “I know everything he does, maybe even a bit more.”

“Let’s take a walk along the beach path,” Walton said. “We shouldn’t let this good weather go to waste.”

“Amen to that,” Hannah said. The two set out strolling along the concrete pathway, almost undisturbed. Again, Hannah was surprised at how few bicyclists and skateboarders had to be dodged. It was as if, even in daylight, this stretch of beach was haunted and nobody wanted to go there.

“So you have information about another crime that was committed last night?” Walton asked, pulling a small voice recorder out of an inner pocket of his windbreaker.

“Well, it’s not exactly a crime,” Hannah said, “at least not yet. It’s not even anything officially reportable yet. A man’s gone missing, and the man who has been his father figure thinks foul play is involved. Based on what I know, I have to agree with him. And the time frame puts the disappearance in the same window as the other incidents that are being pinned on Harry O’Malley.”

“Interesting,” Walton said. “Tell me more.” He leaned in closer with the voice recorder, shielding it from the view of anybody who might look closely at him and Hannah. Anybody who didn’t look closely would simply assume they were two people who were very fond of each other, taking a sunny Saturday walk together, Hannah reflected. At least Walton was fairly tall, so Hannah was only slightly taller than he was – there wouldn’t be people taking note of any great disparity to remember them by later.

Hannah went on to tell Walton about Igor Krumski and his disappearance from the lab the night before, and of Professor Egglehoffer’s insistence that foul play had been involved. She described how Igor had pulled the prank of getting her and Harry thoroughly lost in the hallways of the photography building on Thursday, and the incident she had witnessed between Igor and Katrina M’Bomo Friday afternoon. She also mentioned the pages torn out of her notebook and the key that had been moved on her key ring.

“You know, some of that evidence really does point to Harry O’Malley,” Walton said.

“But there’s other evidence that points away from him,” Hannah said. “His assistant, the guy who took him home from Callahan’s, left him passed out in the bed at home. When I got home, he was still in that bed, still passed out. It stretches credibility that he would come to, drive to the university, do something to Igor, drive to the bridal shop, set fire to the place, crash the truck into the fire hydrant, flee the scene – so nimbly that he could get away from the witness who tried to chase him – get home, and once again be passed out in the bed when I got there.”

“How do you know he wasn’t faking being passed out?” Walton asked.

“He was practically drowning in his own vomit,” Hannah said. “He partially regained consciousness while I was cleaning him up – he was literally stinking drunk – and began to sing Irish ballads off-key. That’s standard with Harry when he gets seriously drunk.” She decided Walton didn’t need to know about the other activity that accompanied the off-key singing.

They arrived at a park bench alongside the path, facing the ocean. Walton gestured to Hannah to sit down, and they sat side by side, watching the surf that was nearly devoid of surfers.

“So does he get drunk often?” Walton asked.

“Almost never,” Hannah said. “Yesterday … well, let’s say that he had a serious shock to trigger the binge – something that doesn’t really need to get published in the paper.”

“I heard what he was shouting at you at Callahan’s,” Walton said. “I take it at least some of that was true.”

“It was,” Hannah said. “But we really don’t need to go into details. Harry and I are trying to work it out.”

“Now that he needs you to help defend him on criminal charges,” Walton said. “Are you really that sure that he’s innocent, and that you’re willing to go back to him?”

“I know that he’s innocent,” Hannah said. “And I know that I love him. And I know that he loves me. And now, I think I’ve told you enough. What can you give me about the witness to the truck crash – the one who tried to chase the driver but couldn’t catch him or her?”

“I have a name,” Walton said. “I have an address and phone number. And I have an interview that I did with him earlier today.”

“Great!” Hannah said. “What did the witness say?”

“It’s all on here,” Walton said, tapping the voice recorder. “And I have a transcript in my car for you. But there’s one hitch.”

“What’s that?” Hannah asked.

Long and winding road update

One detour I wish did not have to be ...

A major section of the last route shown in the previous post is currently off-limits, and once it is no longer off limits, it may no longer be as scenic as it used to be.

The Las Conchas Fire in northern New Mexico began early Sunday afternoon, and within hours, it had consumed several thousand acres. This section of the road is now closed:

View Larger Map

The fire started at one of my favorite picnic spots in the mountains, the Las Conchas recreation area just past where Highway 4 (westbound) leaves the vast grassy area called the Valle Grande, a crater caused by the collapse, about a million years ago, of a huge volcano.

The fire has spread mostly eastward but also outward in other directions. The thumbnail photo above was shot by Lupita L. Tom-yepa at Cochiti Pueblo, about 20 miles southeast of the blaze, Sunday night. Pat and I were on the way south from Heron Lake to Albuquerque, and we went through thick smoke from Española through Pojoaque and on to Santa Fe. From Pojoaque on, we could see the flames erupting from the ridgelines. We were getting gas at Santo Domingo, near Cochiti, about the same time Lupita took her photo -- alas, that tiny picture does little justice to how scary it is to see such a huge portion of the mountains on fire.

As we were driving, we tried to get news on the radio about the fire. We tuned in to KRSN, Los Alamos' local radio station. The signal was poor; the smoke plume from the fire caused a lot of interference. But there was a live interview with one of the people in charge of fighting the fire, and he was reassuring -- while there were mandatory evacuations in parts of the mountains, people in Los Alamos and White Rock with respiratory problems should evacuate, but everybody else could stay put but be prepared in case of mandatory evacuations. I had a mental flashback, to the La Mesa fire in the late 1970s, with the late, legendary Bob Burns, patriarch and owner of KRSN, reassuring everybody with his gravelly but comforting voice. The station normally signed off at 11 p.m., but during that crisis, it was on the air all night. Bob is long gone, but he is fondly remembered.

We got fed up with the poor signal and decided to change from KRSN to Albuqueruque's all-news station, KKOB. We were just in time to hear an official Emergency Broadcast System alert that there was a fire emergency in Sandoval County. Well, duh.

Just over 11 years ago, I was cleaning out the guest room in case my folks had to evacuate because of the Cerro Grande Fire. They did have to evacuate a couple of days later. Now, we're cleaning out the guest room in case they have to evacuate again. This time around, there shouldn't be as much danger, since the Cerro Grande removed much of the fuel that would take the Las Conchas into the town. But still, the flashbacks happen.

Spam tombstones

When headlines collide, 21^st century style …

Way back, eons ago, when I was taking journalism classes in college, one of the courses I took was in page design. In that class, I learned about the dread “tombstone,” when two adjacent headlines on the page seem to merge into each other, conveying an unintended, often humorous and/or macabre meaning. With modern page-layout software, tombstones seldom happen anymore, since page designers have considerable flexibility and can make sure that two headlines are offset enough not to appear connected. But in the old days, that was not always the case. The headlines were written by copy-editors, who often knew only what typeface and size the page designer had specified, not where on the page the particular headline would appear. And if the newspaper was large enough to have more than one copy-editor, two adjacent stories could easily have headlines written by two different people.

Nowadays, tombstones don’t happen so often in a newspaper. Most often, it’s not two adjacent news stories, but the juxtaposition of a news story with an advertisement, since the news and advertising are produced in two different departments with little, if any, coordination between them. The most memorable such tombstone that I can recall came in late 2008. On the day following the election of Barack Obama, the Albuquerque Journal had published a front page making note of the historical nature of the event. A few days later, the Journal ran a reproduction of that front page, on page A4, in full, glorious color. On that same day, Macy’s ran a full-page, full-color ad launching its Christmas sales. Because of the way newspaper printing presses are set up, only some pages in a section can have full color, and the result was that the Macy’s ad was on page A5, directly facing the front page reproduction. Thus, page A4 had the headline “Obama Wins!” while page A5 had the headline “Yes, Virginia, there Is a Santa Claus!”

All of this is a roundabout way of announcing the newest addition to the links over in the sidebar on the left, naked in public and other things I didn’t know I’d be when I grew up. This is a blog by Harlean Carpenter, the Poetic Pinup, who is a fiction, but who is still somewhat associated with my brother Jer, of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas.

Harlean often comments about the vagaries of the English language, as well as about how people misuse it. I am afraid I will have to agree to disagree with her on punctuation associated with closing quote marks (she insists on being logical, while I must stick with the rules of American Standard Written English, even if said rules are illogical, if for no other reason than that I have to make sure my students produce writing that conforms with the standard). But most of what she says, I do agree with, and her observations go beyond mere grammar. I found myself especially amused (translated into tweetspeak, that means ROTFL) with her recent post on Why I Love Spam. No, she doesn’t enjoy junk emails any more than anybody else does. But she does look in her spambox on a regular basis. Maybe she originally did it to make sure that her email filter hadn’t accidentally sent some non-spam there, but now, she likes to look for the juxtapositions in which the subject lines of two adjacent spams accidentally make a humorous phrase. She calls these juxtapositions “chunks,” but really, they’re the same thing as the old tombstones. Here are some examples that she cites:

“Want those stretch marks to vanish?
Conquer the language barrier”

“Improve Your Sex Life!
Nursing Assistant Courses Online”

“Your kidney failure may
Earn generous revenue online”

“men have experienced bigger
Sprouts in as little as 5 days”

“Begin a rewarding career with
Secrets of scoring with women”

“When Wall Street crashes
We can keep your male instrument”

“Asbestos exposure is shown to
Enlarge your penis in a safe way”

“Express your feelings in an elegant way
Quit talking and start shagging”

So what’s in your spambox?

Chile vs. chili revisited

Coming back to a hot topic

A couple of years ago, I posted a lengthy explanation of the semantic distinctions of two words, Chile vs. chili. In particular, I focused on the New Mexico definitions (drawn from the Albuquerque Journal style guide), which differ from the definitions in the rest of the world. In most places, the word chili is used interchangeably, but in New Mexico, chile with an e at the end refers to the fruit of the capsicum plant, while chili refers to a stew made using chiles. I also posted a recipe.

Of course, there are discussions also about the composition of chili (the stew). Some people disagree about whether the meat in it should be beef or pork, or whether either is acceptable (I prefer coarse-ground pork, but I’ll use beef if that’s what’s available). And then beans are a huge area of contention. Some people say that chili should not have any beans, while others say chili must have beans, and among the bean proponents, there is disagreement about what sorts of beans are acceptable – pinto beans only, or other sorts, such as kidney beans, black beans, or navy beans. (I like kidney beans myself.)

And then there’s that other form of chili found in Cincinnati, which doesn’t have so much chile in it (but does apparently include cinnamon and – surprise – chocolate?) and which is served over pasta and topped with grated cheese and chopped onions. I remember watching a Monday Night Football game during which John Madden gave Cincinnati chili a resounding endorsement. I’m going to have to try it someday.

One update on the recipe in the link above: Since I wrote that post, the Chimayo chile production plant has been bought by Bueno Foods, and the former Chimayo brand is now available as the Bueno Select product line.

November approaches

Prepare to do without me for a while

Those of you who know me know that I participate in National Novel Writing Month every year. This is an exercise in simply cranking out the words – 50,000 of them in 30 days.

I have been participating in NaNo since 2004. Since 2005, I have written a murder mystery every year, focusing on Hannah Montgomery, a community college English instructor who has a Jessica Fletcher-like habit of stumbling upon dead bodies everywhere she goes. The series’ inspiration was an unusually stubborn malfunctioning photocopier in the faculty workroom at the community college where I teach. It gave me the idea to write a mystery using a photocopier as a murder weapon, and presto, Murder at the Community College was born! In that mystery, a particularly unlikeable faculty member was offed by a booby trap set at the point in the copier’s paper path that always jammed.

Since then, Hannah has solved murders at the yacht club (vice commodore killed by an unusual subspecies of venomous snake), a family reunion (obnoxious great-aunt stabbed with a Sikh knife at Hannah’s fiancé’s family’s lake house), the little theater (the actor playing Sir Lionel in Camelot didn’t come back to life the way he was supposed to after the joust), and the sports desk of the local newspaper (an intrusive photographer clobbered to death with a hockey stick). Along the way, Hannah has fallen in love with a police detective, suffered a traumatic brain injury, been involved in a race riot, developed a fascination with racing sailboats, performed on a low-budget recording that went viral on the Internet, been raped, and met all sorts of interesting people.

So what’s next for Hannah? As she and fiancé Harry O’Malley plan their upcoming wedding, where will the next body turn up? I’m open to suggestions.

Getting back to true meanings

Caution: scholarly content ahead

Here's one word that's been misused just about everywhere I've seen it: Platonic. Over and over, I hear people say something like, "Oh, my relationship with [insert name here] is strictly Platonic." When people say that, they usually mean that they are "just friends"; that there isn't a romantic relationship involved.

To see just how seriously wrong this definition is, it is important to go back to the original work from which the term derives, Plato's "Phaedrus." If you want to follow along, you can read the entire text of the work here, in a translation by Benjamin Jowett. "Phaedrus" is considered a defining document for two reasons: It is a superb description of the ideals of classical rhetoric, and it also contains an excellent explanation of the concept of Platonic love.

I'll start with the structure of the piece. "Phaedrus" is a dialogue between Socrates and his pupil Phaedrus. Phaedrus has just come from hearing a speech by Lysias, one of the more popular sophists of the day. Phaedrus is enthusiastic about the speech, and it doesn't take much persuasion to encourage him to recite it for Socrates. Lysias' main point is that, if given the choice between the attentions of a lover or a non-lover, one should choose the non-lover.

Socrates at this point facetiously comes out with his own speech in favor of that position, but then he makes another that completely refutes this idea and comes in solidly on the side of favoring the lover. We'll get more into the details of that speech later, as it contains the meat of the ideal of Platonic love.

Next, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss the three speeches. Through dialogue (there is nothing else in this work, no stage directions, no "business" aside from that which is spoken of directly), Socrates leads Phaedrus through the reasoning behind the speeches and develops principles of rhetoric which we still use today. He points out that Lysias' speech is poorly organized, full of platitudes, incompletely and sometimes fallaciously reasoned, and, in general, not good rhetoric. He also points out that his own speech in favor of the non-lover has its own shortcomings, such as reasoning from false and unsound principles.

Socrates then leads Phaedrus through many of the classical concepts of rhetoric: The speaker must know the truth of the matter spoken of, must organize ideas into a head, body, and feet (reflected in the modern terms introduction, body, and conclusion), must define terms for the audience, must follow rules of correct diction (grammar and tone), must understand who the audience is and what its needs are. Not only that, while some orators begin with a natural talent, all can improve through practice, and even the best talent will not produce great rhetoric without practice. More than 2300 years later, I'm still teaching the same principles to my students. Some things just never go out of style.

Meanwhile, it's not possible to talk about rhetoric in the abstract, but rather, a discussion of rhetoric must use examples of rhetoric, and those examples have to be about something. In "Phaedrus," the subject matter is love. In Socrates' second speech, we have not only an example of a well crafted argument; we also have a thorough explanation of the virtues of love, especially the sort that is now known as Platonic.

Love, Socrates contends, is a form of madness, not caused by human weakness but rather, by the gods and, therefore, divine. The human soul, meanwhile, can be compared to a charioteer driving two winged horses, one good and one evil. Souls aspire to be like the gods, and the souls of philosophers and lovers come close – especially lovers under the influence of divine madness. However, the horses pulling the chariot can prove to be a hindrance. When the soul sees the beauty of the beloved, the good horse behaves itself in a noble fashion, but the evil horse lusts after physical pleasure and makes trouble for the good horse and for the charioteer. It is only with a great struggle that the soul can keep control of the impulses of the evil horse, but when such a struggle is successful, the relationship between the lover and the beloved becomes something of great beauty, and the pair can enjoy true joy in a way that is not possible otherwise, on a blissful path heavenward. This is certainly not the status of "just friends," but rather, a relationship that, if anything, is deeper and more rewarding than the sexual kind.

This type of relationship is demonstrated throughout "Phaedrus" by the actions of the characters. The teacher and his pupil are walking through the countryside. At one point, they wade barefoot together in a clear stream; then they settle down on the soft grass under a shade tree full of sweet-scented blossoms. Socrates often addresses Phaedrus with terms of endearment, such as "my divine darling" and "my sweet Phaedrus." This, then, is the Platonic ideal, in this case a relationship between the teacher and the student that remains lofty and divine.

Every so often, a news story comes to light, in which a teacher has crossed the line and engaged in sexual activity with an underage student. In a recent case here in the Albuquerque area, a female middle school teacher had a relationship with a 13-year-old seventh grader; when she was questioned over the issue, she said, "It was what he wanted." No, probably that was not what the kid wanted. Based on other information in the story, I can infer that this child's parents neglected him, emotionally if not physically. What this child wanted, what would have served him best, would have been a Platonic relationship with a teacher who truly loved and cared for him, who held his best interests to heart, who kept sex out of it – not one whose evil horse took over and dragged the chariot into treacherous territory.

Of course, the relationship between teacher and student isn't the only one in which Platonic love can occur. It can be a relationship between coach and athlete, or between employer and employee, or simply between very close friends of either gender. The lover and the beloved find something of the divine when they are in each other's presence, even if they don't have a name for it. These are special relationships, deep ones that go beyond merely liking each other, far beyond "just friends." If Plato is to be believed, these are the most heavenly relationships of all.

NaNo: The marathon is over

As usual, I’m not finished yet

So November is over, and so is National Novel Writing Month. This year, my final total at the end of the month was 64,030 words.

This time around, Hannah Montgomery and her friends are trying to solve Murder on the Sports Desk. The victim is a photographer whom nobody much liked. There’s an irate hockey goalie who’s the prime suspect, but things look awfully fishy – even if he’s not the brightest bulb on the string, he wouldn’t make all of the dumb mistakes that make most of the evidence point straight at him.

Hannah and her fiancé, Harry O’Malley, have finally set a wedding date. But somebody’s blackmailing Hannah, apparently thinking that she’s stepping out with her best friend, Flash Duran. The photographer who got murdered is (or was) apparently one of the blackmailers. There’s the added complication that the victim of this murder was the brother of a previous murderer … or rather, a previous killer who was found not guilty by reason of insanity and is now in a mental institution.

So Harry’s working the late shift at the cop shop, and Hannah’s gone to Flash’s place to share a pizza with him. The pizza came with an unexpected extra tucked under the round piece of cardboard underneath the pie itself, a CD-ROM with a compromising video.

Flash’s face was pale. “How did they get that disc into my pizza?” he asked.

“How often do you order pizza from this place?” Hannah asked.

“About twice a week,” Flash said.

“Well, they clearly have a camera pointed at my boat,” Hannah said. “I’m betting they have one pointed at your house, too. They’re probably well aware that you have a habit of ordering pizzas from this particular pizza place. All they would have to do is find an employee to bribe into slipping that disc into your order.”

Flash pulled out his phone and pressed a speed dial number. “Hello … This is Flash Duran … Yes, it was good … I just realized I didn’t tip the delivery boy as much as I had planned … Yeah, next time he’s out, have him stop by here on the way back … Oh, yeah, he’s good; you ought to give him a raise … All right, thank you.” He hung up.

“Well, if the delivery guy was the person who got bribed, you’ve got a chance at getting something from him,” Hannah said. “But if it wasn’t him, you’ve just made a kid very happy for no good reason.”

“That’s the very best reason for making a kid happy,” Flash said. “Random acts of kindness were always fun when I was a kid.”

“Well, I guess while we’re waiting, we can watch the rest of the movie,” Hannah said. Flash complied and switched the discs in the player. Just as the movie was ending, and Bob Hope was watching Bing Crosby getting the girl, the doorbell rang. It was the pizza delivery guy.

“I’m so glad you showed up,” Flash said, handing the kid a $10 bill. “I had decided to give you an extra large tip this time because you’ve always been so good – on time, always polite, all the things a pizza delivery boy should be. But then I got distracted and forgot” – he glanced over at Hannah, who was stretched out languorously on the sofa – “and I left this on the table when I meant to give it to you. But anyhow, here it is. By the way, I noticed there was something extra in the pizza box.”

The pizza delivery kid’s face turned red. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “This has really been my big night. This guy came into the shop just after you ordered your pizza, said he was a friend of yours, said he’d pay me $20 to put this disc in the box with your pizza. I thought it was weird, but twenty bucks is twenty bucks … and now I got thirty!”

“Do you remember what this guy looked like?” Flash asked.

“Well, he was sort of … average,” the kid said. “Average height, average build, maybe a little more fit than average.”

“What about hair and eye color?” Flash asked.

“I don’t know about any of that,” the kid said. “He had on a baseball cap and a hoodie and dark glasses. He was white, though, very fair skin. Probably sunburns easily. That’s why he was covered up, I figured.”

Flash pulled another $10 bill out of his pocket. “Thanks, kid,” he said. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Joey,” the kid said. “Joey Rodriguez.”

Flash handed Joey the money. “Thanks again for everything,” he said. “Just be sure never to mention these extra tips or the other guy, or anything else about this, to anybody. And I mean anybody.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Duran,” Joey said. He gave a half-wave, half-salute, and walked back to his car with a spring in his step.

“Well, that gets us something,” Hannah said. “But it doesn’t get us all that much. We already knew we were looking for a guy of average height and average build in the flower case; now we have the added information that he’s a fair-skinned white guy who maybe works out some.”

Flash gestured toward the disc that was now lying on the coffee table. “I wish we could get that thing tested for fingerprints,” he said. “But if we take it to the police, the police look at its contents, and the police include Harry.”

“There probably aren’t any fingerprints on the thing anyway,” Hannah said. “These guys aren’t careless.”

“I guess I could take the disc to my studio and use the computers to look for digital signatures,” Flash said. “But like you said, these guys aren’t careless. They probably wiped their tracks.”

They both slumped back on the sofa, tired and dejected. Suddenly, Hannah sat upright. “My column!” she exclaimed.

“Your what?” Flash asked.

“I need to submit next week’s column to the Capitan tomorrow,” Hannah said. “But I haven’t even thought of a topic yet. Quick, what’s your biggest grammar bugaboo?”

“My what?” Flash asked.

“The grammar issue that causes you the most frustration,” Hannah said. “The one that you’re dying to see a clear explanation of.”

“That’s gotta be which ‘there’ to use,” Flash said. “I mean, I never can figure out whether I’m supposed to use T-H-E-R-E or T-H-E-I-R or that other one with the apostrophe in it. I’d love to see a Grammar Goddess column on that.”

“Your wish is my command,” Hannah said, pulling her laptop out of her satchel and shoving the now empty pizza box to the floor to make room on the coffee table. Half an hour later, she had a column written. “Here you go,” she said to Flash, turning the laptop toward him. “See if this clarifies things.”

Flash scrolled through the article, reading it. When he finished, he turned the computer back to Hannah. “Wow,” he said. “You really can explain things. I especially liked the bit about apostrophes, how you use those when you have something that can be spelled out. I didn’t know that before.”

“I’ll take that as a ringing endorsement,” Hannah said. “I’ll be taking this to the Capitan tomorrow.”

“Before or after we go sailing?” Flash asked.

“Before,” Hannah said. “Once I get this out of the way, we can have the rest of the day unencumbered.”

“What about Harry?” Flash asked.

“I don’t know what his plans are,” Hannah said. “He officially has the day off tomorrow, aside from being on call. Even if he doesn’t feel Avenger the way you and I do, would it work for him to come sailing with us?”

“Sure,” Flash said. “Maybe eventually, he will get to understand that boat, or at least understand what she does for the two of us. And even if he doesn’t ever get to that point, maybe … well … if he does ever see that video, maybe he will understand what caused me to … what caused, well, what happened.”

As previously disclaimed, this is pure fiction.

NaNo update: made 50K

And I’m on a roll …

This evening (Wednesday), just before midnight, I crossed the 50,000 word line with my National Novel Writing Month novel, Murder on the Sports Desk. It’s not anywhere near finished, as the first dead body didn’t even turn up until nearly 43,000 words into the novel, but I’ve made the goal that NaNo sets every November.

I’m feeling good about this one. It’s a repeat of 2005, which was my most successful NaNo ever. In that year, I reached 50K well ahead of the end of the month, and I actually managed to finish the novel. My other novels have all reached the 50,000 word mark, but haven’t been taken all the way to the end.

Part of my 2005 success was that November that year had five weekends and so had more writing time, and the Thanksgiving weekend gave the final extra time I needed to get things done. That’s happening this year.

This excerpt involves how the Siete Mares Capitan reported on the death of the photographer.

Hannah unrolled the newspaper and looked at the headline at the top of the front page: “Sports Photographer Slain.” Beneath that, in smaller, italic type, was a line that read, “Award winning photojournalist covered local events; police seek Seagulls goalie in case.” Hannah read on.

Sports photographer George Spencer was found dead Tuesday night in the Capitan newsroom, his body stuffed underneath a desk. According to the medical examiner’s office, the cause of death appears to be a blunt force trauma to the head.

Police announced that they are seeking Siete Mares Seagulls goalie Pierre LeFevre as a person of interest in the case. LeFevre has been involved in several violent events in the past few days, including one in which he assaulted an off-duty police officer; Spencer had been present at that incident and had taken photos of it.

LeFevre subsequently assaulted another officer and then came to the Capitan newsroom, threatening Spencer. In that incident, LeFevre was injured; he escaped from police custody while being treated in the emergency room at Siete Mares Medical Center.

Police warn that LeFevre is to be considered armed and dangerous, and caution anybody who sees him not to confront him but to notify authorities immediately.

Spencer, who had won many awards for his work over the years, had been working for the Capitan for the last eight years. He shot primarily sports events, but he had also worked news stories and features.

Prior to working at the Capitan, Spencer worked for newspapers in Memphis, Pittsburgh, Miami, and Cincinnati.

Spencer was unmarried and had no children. He is survived by his parents, Wanda and Bruce Spencer, of La Crosse, Wisconsin; a brother, Bruce Spencer Jr. of Seattle; and a half-brother, Douglas Sterling, currently an inmate at Mid State Mental Hospital seven miles east of Siete Mares.

“Harry, look at this,” Hannah said, handing him the newspaper. “Look who George Spencer’s brother is!”

Harry took the newspaper and read. “So George Spencer is – was – the brother of the guy who tried to bash your brains in, and now George is dead with his brains bashed in. You don’t think there’s a connection here, do you?”

“I think it’s just coincidence,” Hannah said. “But maybe somebody should check with Mid State to make sure Douglas Sterling hasn’t escaped.”

“And maybe the medical examiner should check whether George’s fatal head wounds are consistent not just with a hockey stick but with an AK 47,” Harry said.

Honestly, I did not know about the relationship between the two characters until I wrote that news story.

NaNo update: cruising

More than a quarter of the way through …

I’ve had a couple of good days of cranking out the words for National Novel Writing Month. Between yesterday and today, I’ve produced nearly 5000 words, and I feel like I’m on a roll. I’m at least getting some interesting characters set up, and some interesting conflicts, one of which will eventually lead to murder (still not at that point in the story yet).

In the last post, I gave a novel excerpt involving a sailboat, presumably of interest to those of you who arrive at my blog via the sailing corner of the blogosphere. This time around, I’m focusing on the scene of the crime-to-be, the sports desk. Hannah has arrived at the newspaper to file her column for the following week – as a newbie in the world of journalism, she wants to come to the paper instead of filing online until she gets the hang of what she’s doing. As she enters the newsroom through the back door, she has to pass by the sports desk, which, the previous week, she had compared to a zoo. This week, it’s even worse.

When Hannah entered the newsroom, she found the state of chaos that she had expected, except this time the feeling was more intense. Somehow, there seemed to be an underlying layer of anger, and all of the people at the desk were cursing at each other and generally fuming. Soon, she realized why – they were short on staff. Most particularly, Agatha was missing, and the hole represented by her empty desk resembled the gap of a missing tooth in a hockey player’s mouth. Then Hannah stopped to wonder, why had the hockey image come up in her mind? The game on the television wasn’t hockey; it was another college basketball game. She quickly dodged around the sports desk and took refuge behind the partition that protected the features desk.

“The weather seems stormier than usual,” Hannah said to Etta as she sat down to upload her column.

“Oh, yeah,” Etta said. “We’re talking near riot conditions here. Watch out; Abernathy has decided Dean can’t handle things, and he’s come to take charge.”

“Abernathy?” Hannah asked.

“Oh, you probably haven’t met him yet,” Etta said. “He’s the real sports editor; Dean’s just the second in command. He doesn’t usually come in on Saturdays, except in times of crisis.”

“So what’s the crisis this time?” Hannah asked.

“Agatha Chin, the agate clerk – she’s the one who puts together all the box scores – well, she called in sick,” Etta said. “Now, normally, we’d have enough others around to answer the phones to cover for her, but two of the stringers also didn’t show up. Dean tried calling everybody on his list, but so far, no good. That’s when he called Abernathy.”

“So there’s a lot to do and nobody to do it?” Hannah asked.

“You might say that,” Etta said. “They’re all busier than a one-armed paper-hanger over there. I’m expecting them to start recruiting people off the street any minute now.”

Hannah plugged her thumb drive into her workstation and uploaded her Grammar Goddess column for next week. “It’s all yours,” she told Etta.

“Thanks, hon,” Etta said. “Let me give it a quick look-see …” She pushed some keys on her keyboard. “Yep, it looks good.”

A sudden roaring noise erupted on the other side of the partition, and somehow Hannah guessed that it probably wasn’t a great play on the game on the television. This sounded more like a barroom brawl, although without the breaking glass. “What was that?” she asked.

“I don’t wanna know, and I don’t think you wanna know either,” Etta said.

Dean Michaels came staggering around the partition. “You gotta help me,” he said, to nobody in particular.

“Help? How?” Etta asked.

“Abernathy’s gonna have my ass if I don’t get a warm body in Agatha’s chair in the next five minutes,” Dean said. “You got any reporters you can spare?”

“It’s Saturday, honey,” Etta said. “Ain’t nobody here but me.”

“Wait,” Dean said. “Hannah’s not nobody. She can help!”

“Who, me?” Hannah said. “I don’t know anything about box scores.”

“You don’t have to,” Dean said. “We have templates for them all. All you have to do is answer the phone and type in the numbers.”

“That’s all?” Hannah asked.

“Oh, well, not quite all,” Dean said. “You also have to monitor the wires for the national boxes and add them to the file, and you also have to add the box scores that other people leave. But it’s really not hard.”

“And I would want to do this … why?” Hannah asked.

“To do us all a really big favor,” Dean said. “And to make a few bucks. OK, very few bucks. But you’d be saving my life.”

“A moment ago you said you needed to save your ass,” Etta observed. “Now it’s your whole life?”

“Whatever,” Dean said. “Hannah, could you please help? Pretty please?”

“I suppose I can try,” Hannah said, wondering what she was getting herself into.

“You serious?” Etta asked. “I think you’ve flipped your lid.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” Dean said. “Lunch is on me tonight.” He led Hannah around the partition and escorted her to Agatha’s chair. Settling into it, Hannah felt a bit like Gulliver in Lilliput – the chair was jacked up high, the keyboard was set low, and there was a footrest under the desk. There was probably at least a foot difference in height between her and Agatha. She set the chair lower, raised the keyboard tray, and kicked the footrest aside, then adjusted the angle of the monitor so it pointed at her face rather than her chest.

“OK, here’s how it works,” Dean said, pulling his own chair over next to Hannah’s. “You’re already familiar with the basics of the system. Here’s the templates folder; when a call comes in, you pick the template you need – high school basketball, college basketball, hockey, you’re not going to need football or baseball – open it, save a copy to your working folder, then just enter the stats in the right spots in the template. The folks who give you the numbers already know the routine – it’s usually an assistant coach or a parent volunteer – so they’ll be giving you the numbers in the order you need them. Got that?”

“So far, so good,” Hannah said. “Then what?”

“So then, when you’re not answering the phone, you’ll be scanning the incoming wire,” Dean said. “When a score comes in, it’s usually already formatted correctly; you’ll just copy it to the working directory. You aren’t going to need all of them, just the NBA, NHL, top twenty college teams, Pac-10 college teams, and Pacific Hockey League.”

“OK, I think I get that,” Hannah said. “You said something about adding something to a file?”

“That’s when you work on the finished product,” Dean said. “First, you’ll collect all of the box scores for each sport into a file for that sport. Again, we have templates for the headers for them all. Then you’ll put all of that together into one big file that you send over to the copy desk right before deadline for each edition.”

“Sounds like a lot,” Hannah said.

“Once you get into the swing of things, it goes pretty easy,” Dean said. “You can even tailor the content for each edition – put the high school basketball scores for the little places out in the sticks into the regional edition, city scores in the metro edition. Those small-town coaches love it to see their itty bitty team’s score in the big high-powered newspaper.”

The phone rang. Hannah took a deep breath, put on Agatha’s headset, and answered the phone, “Capitan sports.” Over the next 30 seconds, a fast-talking assistant coach from a small town somewhere inland read off a bunch of numbers that Hannah put into a basketball score template. It was a good thing she was a fast typist, she realized, so she could keep up with the chatter on the other end. When the call ended, Hannah saved the box score in her working directory.

“There, you’re getting the hang of it,” Dean said, as he returned to his own desk.

For the next twenty minutes, Hannah alternated between answering the phone and scanning the wires. Sometimes more than one phone call would come in at once; if Hannah was already on the line when a new call came in, it would ring, seemingly randomly, some other phone on the sports desk, and whoever got the call would take the box score and add it to Hannah’s working directory.

Denny Damon came in, slightly less animated than usual. “Seagulls got skunked,” he said. “At home. Again.” He looked at Hannah, sitting at Agatha’s desk. “Oh, I see we got a new agate clerk.”

“Just temporary duty,” Hannah said. “I’ve already got a day job.”

“Give me a couple minutes,” Denny said. “I’ll have that box score for you.”

Two minutes later, the hockey box score appeared in the working directory, and Hannah took a look to see just how bad the carnage was: Sierra Gold Miners 7, Siete Mares Seagulls 0. The other statistics were not so bad; both teams had had about the same number of power plays, and … “Wait, Denny, is this for real?” Hannah asked. “The Seagulls had three times as many shots on goal as the Gold Miners?”

“Afraid so,” Denny said.

“Did we even have a goalie in the net?” Hannah asked.

“I think he was made of ectoplasm,” Denny said. “The puck went right through him every time.”