Mystic Mah Jong

It Seems to Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

Mystic Mah Jong is no longer just a computer file, but a book, with a front and back cover, and printed pages in between!  It is also an Ebook–still a file, yes, but a file that is out there in the world, a new story to be read by mystery lovers on their various electronic devices.  From my imagination to yours. Yeah!

Each book, from the initial spark of an idea to today’s finished product is quite a process.  Like before giving birth, there is a period of gestation, development and maturity.  Details shade each scene, and pacing is of utmost importance.

A writer must never fall in love with her/his own words.  Sometimes, a truly inspired depiction needs to be axed, for the making if a better book, so you can never fall in love with your words or you become self-defeating.

So, when I’ve spent hours of each day composing and then comes the time when I know I have finished the story, well, that’s just the beginning.  I wait a couple of weeks; I leave the “scene of my crime” to do other things in my life.  I go back to the manuscript, and read it over, like it’s the first time I’ve seen it.  As I often forget what I’ve written, in the sense that I don’t recall all of the dialogue or the exact sequence of scenes once I’ve gone on to the next, I am sometimes surprised at what I wrote.  It’s new again for me.  As I am reading on my computer monitor, I usually pick up the oddly turned phrase, and turn it back into a better position, make it read better.  I fix inconsistencies, make a note or two where I may find story flaws for fixing later on, making depictions more clearly drawn for the reader, re-working an entire paragraph.  Then I put the book out of my head while I search for the accompanying photographs, as all my books are enhanced with photos.  I spends days, weeks, looking for just the right shots, and for each, I write a caption.  These I file away and go back to the manuscript, trying to read it uncritically, but always failing, because there is always another, perhaps better way to phrase this or that.  I do this five to ten times.  One’s own work can become tiresome on the tenth read, of course, and I find I keep changing, adjusting, “tweaking” until I have got to let it go.

The book now is sent to several important critics–My sister and brother-in-law my friend, Lisa, and Eric, my designer and book production man.   People I trust.  I take their comments seriously, and apply their suggestions when I feel they are right, which is mostly always.  There is no ripping apart, just requests for clarification, here or there, and their general feelings about the pacing.  Then I send my file to Shelley, my copy and style editor.  She will tell me where I went wrong or right, and as she edits the copy, she sends her queries, and I send the replies back and forth through emails.  I trust her opinions completely.  When she is satisfied on her end with her work, the manuscript comes back to me.  I read her fixes, her re-wording.  I say, yea or nay–mostly, again, she is right on!  And then I send the book to Eric to typeset.  This can take him some time, and he will be sending the file to Shelley for her edits of his typeset.  “Widows”, “ophans” and all kinds of visual fixes must be applied to the book block.  When she and he are satisfied, the book is returned to me!

Here’s the fun and challenge:  Where to put the photos?  Twenty-five or thirty pictures, and their placement must be thought out carefully, and placed  at the end of chapters.  This can be maddening!  I send the book back to Eric, and he puts the photos in their places, and that is not always easy for him to do.  There are technical issues, here.  Book now is sent to me and Shelley for her final edit, and my final read, to catch anything either of us may have missed.  I have caught a couple of doozies, let me tell you!  Once it was a plot tangle, another time I attributed an historical event to the wrong person!  Now we go on to the cover design, which is Eric’s department.  He works his graphic magic, and then we conference over the Internet to decide the details.  This is fun, for I am seeing his rendition of the cover for the first time.  A few days go by and I get the finished cover as a jpeg.  If Shelley agrees and I agree and Eric is happy with the finished work, it is now time for publication, an approval of the proof (sent to Eric for approval) and then, voila! it is ready for the public to purchase.  Ebook files are being prepared in India (by an American firm whose employees all have Indian names and sound like they’re residents of Calcutta), and are available about a week later for Eric to upload the formats to the various providers.  It’s out of my hands now, while I continue work on the next book.

Now, my real work on the book begins.  The marketing.  You really don’t want to hear about that, I’m sure!

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems To Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

Friday morning:  I lift pants off the bed and I feel that little strain in my back, and I know what is about to happen as I straighten up.  I hobble to my car and go to my chiropractor’s office, and by the time I arrive, the disk has slipped.  I am helped to the examination room, onto the table, and with a swift push by The Miracle Worker, I feel the disc pop back into its preferred position in my spine.  A day of icing, resting and a ton of ibuprofen, and I am better to return to work the next day.

Cost:  $45.00 Chiropractor plus one vacation day wasted.

Saturday morning:  Bathroom sink stopper stuck.  It detached from its whateveryoucallit that lets you lift and plunge the darn thing.  Need butter knife to pry it up so the sink can drain.

Cost:  Aggravation, now; pay, later.

Sunday:  I am preparing sea scallops to pan fry while risotto is absorbing the chicken stock at a simmer.  But the wooden spoon to stir the rice is in the sink and needs a rinse-off, which I do, but the hot water tap will not close off completely, leaving an undesirable  dribble .  Press a little harder, and the handle shoots off to the ceiling, and a geyser erupts to soak me and everything in its path. As a flood flows to the kitchen floor, and water pours down into the heating duct, I try turning the valve to shut off the water, can’t, search for a wrench, can’t get it around the wheel because a waterfall is causing it to slip its grip, so I run out of the house yelling the names of all “my neighbor husbands” on my block.  They come a-runnin’,  and with a strong wrist, Tim shuts off the water line under the sink.  Thank goodness it is Father’s Day, I think, and all the big fellows on my street were at home.

Cost:  $150.00 to replace faucet and bathroom sink stopper.

Monday:   Car in repair shop today to charge air conditioning, after it started blowing hot air on Friday.  Rear stabilizer clips need replacing because I am sick of hearing a clunk every time I turn a corner, as if I am about to leave my exhaust system on I-87.  Need alignment and engine mount.

Cost:  $510.00

Tuesday:  We all get restless at times, and sometimes my washing machine likes to nervously walk around the basement, but it’s been balanced and if you don’t do too heavy a load of laundry, it just skips in place a little.  Today, my favorite pair of sheets (800 thread count Egyptian cotton), have been separated for good when the top sheet becomes entangled in whateveryoucallit spinner during the spin cycle.  Cannot pull the darn thing free!  Nobody can, and strong men have tried.

Cost:  New washer $600.00

Wednesday:  While searching the pantry for a late night snack, one door of the four feet tall wall cabinets becomes loosened from its hinge screws, and the mighty weight of the thing pulls free to nearly knock my noggin.  Good thing I know a little bit about the oriental arts of self-defense,  and am quick when attacked.  I temporarily put off searching for the Pepperidge Farm cookies in favor of wrestling the monster door to the floor.  It’s been up there for one-hundred-and twenty years, but chose this night to break free.

Cost:  $55.00 to repair and re-hang.

It is Thursday morning,  and so far the only thing that’s snagged, snapped, cracked, popped, or come off its hinges is my bank account.  But the day is young.  I suppose I should be grateful, really, considering what’s going on around the country.  My house has not been burned to the ground by wild fires; no floods have carried me, my house or my car downstream to another county.  But, when it’s all falling apart in little pieces around you, saying, “I am grateful it wasn’t worse” is small comfort.  “Kids are starving in China”, never made me feel grateful that I had Brussel sprouts on my plate instead of pizza.  My luck has to turn.  Time to buy a lottery ticket!

Until next time, Agata

Skirt chasing Ben

It Seems To Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

Does it never end, the American’s obsession with sex?  Other people’s sex lives, that is.  Not necessarily one’s own sex life.  All right, the truth is, most people are very interested in their own sex life.  But it seems like every couple of months a congressman is discovered having sex.  Surprise!

Why is anyone surprised?  Why these discoveries were newsworthy was beyond me, until I realized that our country’s security could be placed at risk! Why would a little hanky-panky between a congressman and an intern, let’s say, threaten the welfare of the nation?  Because while these jerks were enjoying their extra-marital affairs, their skills at cover-ups were so slip-shod that it only shows that they should never be trusted with secrets of national security!  (Note my outrage through my abusive use of exclamation points!).

So I ask, do we really need incompetent leaders who can’t even keep a little secret in their pants–pocket?  If they can’t keep their affairs under wraps, can they be trusted not to leak state secrets?  (I know, this posting is loaded with double entendre.)  I mean, do we want these men—for I haven’t heard about any women senators involved in these fiascos—do we want the pride of our nation to be men incapable of conducting a simple covert cover-up as should be expected from our elected officials?  I mean, look at Dick Nixon:  He didn’t play around because he knew he couldn’t do two things at one time—have an affair and conduct a decent cover-up.  So he concentrated on Watergate and made do with Pat.  Do we want our politicians exposed by (excuse the pun, which is intended), the Julian Assanges of this world?  In all senses of the word, I do not want to see them exposed! Covert Affairs classes should be a prerequisite study before any elected official is sworn in.   Heck, JFK managed to keep things quiet, as did FDR before him.  Ike may not have fiddled around while in the White House—if he did, the secret was kept—but we now know about his dalliance during the war.  It may have been why the D-Day plan was so brilliant.

We can go back to Harding and his mistress, and Honest Abe may not have been that forthcoming about his interest in women or a certain type, and let’s not talk about Jefferson, the horny rascal, or that skirt-chaser, Benjamin Franklin!  All right, Benny may not have been president, but he might have been.  Those men were great men, all.  They didn’t go around sending pictures over the Internet of their inflated shorts, or buff torsos, no!  Beside the fact that none of the aforementioned packed a set of spectacular abs, they didn’t have the Internet, of course.  But they did have the midnight ride of Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere (egging the British on with squeaky-voiced taunts that our militia was armed, thanks to the Second Amendment, and itchin’ for a fight, “Come ‘n get us you Limeys, and watch out you bad fellas”);  I don’t want the British to know our secret maneuvers, do you?

Still, without the internet a hundred years later, the dropping of leaflets over occupied cities from low-flying planes might have spread the titillating facts about FDR’s trysts, had he not taken great care to keep the secret concealed!  Our Founding Fathers and their successors weren’t stupid.   O K, as much as I admire Bill Clinton, he did slip-up—that one time.  These great fornicators understood that revelations about their sex lives were not meant to be disclosed until generations after their deaths, and only to add a little spice to otherwise lackluster biographies, penned by otherwise lackluster biographers.   It’s all become such a public event, hasn’t it, the same old news item, congressman so-and-so having sex; just change the name and photo and keep the same old news copy for more trash to feed the reading public.

Robert Benchley had had enough of the tiresome theme of sex on display in so many Broadway plays at the time, just as I have had my fill of the adventures of imbecilic congressmen. Here follows his comments which reflect my own weary observations of the tedious news cycles exploiting political sex scandals:

“I am now definitely ready to announce that sex, as a theatrical property, is as tiresome as the Old Mortgage, and that I don’t ever want to hear it mentioned again.  I’m sick of Victorian parents, and I don’t care if all the little girls in all sections of the United States get ruined or want to get ruined or keep from getting ruined.  All I ask is, don’t write plays about it and expect me to sit through them!” – RCB

I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote The Sex Life of the Polyp, from the same frustrated  and perverted spirit that I have written about The Sex Life of the Pol-itician.

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems to Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

Memorial Day.  A national holiday marking the beginning of the summer season, celebrated with picnic fare, parades and fireworks, after which it is appropriate to wear white linen trousers and white shoes.

I was reminded a couple of years back, when my daughter returned from Iraq, (she was with the second wave of troops after the invasion) that Memorial Day is not a celebratory holiday, but one of remembrance of our dead soldiers.  That’s why, at the end of the big parade, a wreath is placed at the base of every towns’ war memorial.  Of course I knew that, but it’s easy to forget, when you are rushing to make the potato salad and get the baked beans into the oven for the afternoon’s barbeque.

Now, I’m not trying to put a damper on the day.  But, I realized that I have been very fortunate not to have lost a loved one to war.  Not directly, that is.  My father was an Italian cavalryman serving close to the end of the War in Europe—the First World War, that is—and he didn’t see combat, and by WWII he was too old, and my brother too young to serve.  My brother missed the Korean War by five years, and was out before Vietnam took our boys away.  All my boy friends (friends who happen to be boys!), beat the draft for Vietnam because they all went on to college.  It was my daughter who went to war as a National Guardsman, and it was she who saw what war could do, what it could take from us, and where it could get us.  She came back home, thank God, but there remains a part of her heart left in Iraq where she saw her friends die, and missed sacrificing her own life .  A very close friend who celebrated his 85th birthday last winter fought the Battle of the Bulge—before it was named such.  He was a gunner, and survived being caught by the German soldiers one terrifying night by hiding under the dead carcass of a cow.  His greatest regret?  Shooting a German soldier who sat smoking a cigarette in a lit doorway one night.  No one was shooting at him or his fellow soldiers in a battlefield, so it felt . . . unjustified, if killing can ever be justified.  This haunts him.  He became a pacifist.  My brother-in-law, Anatole Konstantin, was a child when he and his family were caught up in the crossfire between Hitler and Stalin, and his memoir, A Red Boyhood: Growing Up Under Stalin, reminds one that it is not only American blood that has been shed for political power and control of land and resources.  The futility of war is such that the human race keeps on believing, after every great conflict, that the war they just fought is the war to end all wars. Didn’t they say that about WWI?

An adolescent Robert Benchley lost the big brother he worshiped, Edmund, to the Spanish-American War.  Dorothy Parker felt the damning effects of war on her marriage when her husband, Eddie, came home from the Front of WWI mentally as well as physically wounded, addicted to morphine and alcohol.  Their close friend, Robert E. Sherwood, suffered injuries to both legs, and the longer lasting, devastating effects of being gassed.  I’m currently writing about the anarchists of the 1920s, the pacifism of Sacco & Vanzetti, and it seems as if war destroys more often than it ever triumphs.  Thus began an age of disillusionment, and the big party that followed called the Roaring Twenties.  But, before I bite into that hot dog and butter the corn on the cob, I will remember with gratitude and sadness the men and women for whom this holiday is celebrated in remembrance of their great sacrifice.

Until next time,

Agata

Second Fiddle?

It Seems to Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

Just returned from Manhattan, where I lunched with School of Performing Arts Alumni.  I wrote a little bit about my years at the high school in an earlier blog entitled, Walking Past the Algonquin: http://dorothyparkermysteries.com/journal/journal-2/?p=282 This was our third luncheon of the year, and our number of attendees are growing!  After lunch at Jewel of India on West 44th Street, we ambled down the street to the Algonquin, where we took over the lobby, paid outrageous prices for cocktails and toasted the memories of Mrs. Parker, Mr. Benchley and the rest of the Round Table crowd.  I have to say, we were a bit boisterous, because a few of our group had not seen each other for several decades, and we always were a bunch of extroverts, and I wondered if we were going to be asked to leave, when I remembered that the Vicious Circle was far more rambunctious, and they weren’t thrown out.   Matilda the Cat (probably the twentieth generation of the stray that wandered in and was adopted by the hotel in the 1930s) made a brief appearance.  Actually, she turned her tail up at us.  We were snubbed!

Until next time,

Agata

Writing a humorous novel is a damn serious business. 

There are funny words—words that begin with “B”, “K” and “P” provoke laughter, whereas “A”, “R” and “C” are weak.  The number 3 is not funny, but 33 is hysterical.  Imagery, the set-up, must be done quickly, with thrift—unless you are Garrison Keillor talking about the news from Lake Wobegone.  But, have you noticed that while reading his books you’ve got to hear his particular voice in your head delivering the story to hear the funny?  Bill Bryson doesn’t need a voice.  It’s built in to the narrative.

Alliteration may get you a giggle, but for a guffaw you need a surprise attached to a hard punch.  The arrangement and choice of words in a sentence can make or break the “punch “line.  The next time you hear a comic delivery, think about the sentences’ construction.  There are innumerable ways to say the same thing, but only one way will make you laugh.  There is a rhythm of short and long spurts of words, sentence after sentence, and leading up to the surprise conclusion that renders laughter.  Neil Simon says he needs to see the sequences written—laid out sentence by sentence on the yellow writing tablets he scribbles on to know if the form is right.  Successful sitcoms get their laughs not for their storylines which have been repeated thousands of times since I Love Lucy set the standard, but because their main characters spit out rejoinders that, if we were to speak them to our friends, family or co-workers would not get laughs, but a trip to the emergency room and a court date.  We laugh because we wish we could say such clever, cutting things to the people we love and to those who annoy us.  In my books, such funny, if caustic, comments are reserved for my main characters to speak to each other, members of the Round Table, never or rarely to outsiders, unless in “asides”.   If they did, they’d just ring mean.

To keep the laughter coming, you’ve got to give the audience a chance to rest, to breathe, to shift towards the next wave of comedy—unless you are Rodney Dangerfield, who could go on non-stop for two hours plus, bringing his audience to their knees from exhaustion.  As with tragedy, the brain can just take so much misery before turning off in search of distractions.  That’s where the smart writer adds a moments of levity known as “comic relief”.  And so, in a humorous play or book, there have got to be included moments of transition in order to rest the brain.   It is only then that the audience can resume a state of suspension of disbelief in order to receive the next wave of lunacy to knock them off their feet.

Little Eva Stanford

It Seems To Me. . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

My dog died yesterday.  I had to have her put to sleep.  She meant so much to me.  Funny, how a four-legged creature could become so much a part of your life, and for thirteen years she saw me through some very hard times, and proved to be my very best friend.  I tried to be her best friend, too.

We mellowed together as we aged.  The puppy that teethed my hands raw, who was a compulsive sock stealer, whether dirty or freshly laundered,  would mischievously  set chase when caught; that puppy who could leap like a pole vaulter to catch a ball soaring above her head, who would steal the tissues from the sleeves of old ladies at the senior residence where I once worked as an activities director, who, for her excitement and enthusiasm might dribble pee on the shoes of those new arrivals entering through the door when she was three month old, who ate my letter from Stephen Sondheim that I carelessly left on the edge of the kitchen table, who got me out of my husband’s recliner after he had died by demanding a walk or a game of “ball”,  grew into a gentle companion who rarely barked, never snarled,  never hung out the car window,  but sat like a dignified, cultured lady in the back seat of the car, facing forward, while I played chauffeur to her Miss Daisy.   Through her I learned how responsive she could be to a quiet and gentle tone of voice, and so it is true with people in the world.  She was my shadow, a non-judgmental witness to my daily joys and my troubles, and her silence was not without content.  She spoke to me in so many ways, without the heavy burden of words, but through a soulful connection.  Those of us who have, or have had, a cherished pet understand how poor in comparison and often ineffectual words can be in the light of that kind of communication.  I was truly blessed when I picked her out of that litter of seven at the shelter.  The house feels empty without her here. I won’t be asking, “Where’s my Sweetie-girl” or “How’d you get so pretty?” I would answer for her: “Because God made me that way, Mom.” I will miss my Little Eva.  

This morning I was saddened to hear about Elizabeth Taylor.  My husband, Richard, always said she was a knockout.  Literally.  Because many years ago, Liz pushed through a hotel entrance door, on the other side of which stood my husband until he was knocked to the ground by said door.  When he looked up, there was that pair of startlingly violet eyes staring down at him, helping him to his feet, afterwhich she fussed and fretted over his condition.  No, he wasn’t fine.  How could he have been fine?  He was exalted!  Liz Taylor was a knockout, all right, and he was ever grateful for the experience.

Until next time,

Agata

It Seems To Me . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

“Land’s End” on Sands Point, the glorious estate of Herbert Bayard Swope is set to be demolished.  Makes me want to cry.  All right, I am crying. 

Why hasn’t it been designated a landmark?  Why have the owners of seven years allowed the magnificent  mansion to decay?  

This is the American Palace which inspired Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, a place where Winston Churchill watched the likes of the Marx Brothers, Dorothy Parker, and Alexander Woollcott play croqet from a lawn chair.  This mansion is historically important, and to see it fall is a travesty as great as, well, as great as the possibility of losing the Keats-Shelley Memorial House in Rome.  I am pressed for time, but I’m sure you can think of scores of other great places.  The Hotel Crillon in Paris?   Isn’t there a rich person out there to take this on and save this landmark?  Here’s an article from the times about the house.  The current owners have applied for demolition permits. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/nyregion/01gatsby.html

Agata

Martin and son

It Seems to Me. . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s column in The World.

Charlie Sheen is a bore. 

Well, Dorothy Parker and her friends would most certainly agree.   Such a person would never have been allowed to sit in at lunch with her fellow Round Tablers.  Where is the humor?  Whine, whine, whine, and his rants evoke no pathos, just brings to mind, “Pride cometh before the fall.”   Such a puffed-up character would have been cut down to size, had he been allowed to stay past the appetizer.  After all, let’s face it: Does a man who makes two million dollars an episode for speaking the clever lines written by talented writers deserve sympathy?  It’s hard to feel sad for such a man in the face of his arrogance, even if he is mentally disturbed and a drug addict.  Charlie Sheen has always been a heavy-handed bore.

It’s Martin Sheen I feel bad for.  A father watching the unraveling of a precious child.  Martin Sheen fought addiction, and survived.  I met Martin Sheen when I was a teenager and he was a young man appearing on Broadway in The Subject Was Roses.  He spoke with a group of us Performing Arts kids who belonged to the Newman Club, a Catholic youth group that met at St. Malachi’s Church (The Actor’s Chapel), every Thursday afternoon.  I had seen his wonderful performance, and realized I had witnessed the birth of a great actor.  He has never disappointed me.  My respect for him is great.  He conquered his alcoholism, he became a powerful political activist, while honing his craft, and through it all, he maintained dignity and faced his challenges with humor.  Parker would’ve loved him!

It’s often hard for the son to live up to the example of such a father, and a natural rebellion of youth to reject that example   But it’s time for Charlie Sheen to finally grow-up and stop behaving, as Alexander Woollcott would probably have called him, “A fawn’s behind.”

 Until next time,

Agata