culture | Bertram's Blog

Unreal Characters From Real Life

May 24, 2009 — Pat Bertram

In a couple of previous bloggeries, I spoke of finding ideas, and how many thousands of ideas need to be accumulated to create a story. Ideas for characters — both believable and unbelievable — can come from real life. And not necessarily your own life.

In the 1973 book Cecil B. DeMille by Charles Higham, Higham talks about DeMille’s problems with Victor Mature while filming Samson and Delilah. DeMille, who chose Victor Mature to be Samson because of his role in Kiss of Death, was horrified when he first saw Mature at a costume test. He was badly out of condition, with fatty, flabby muscles. DeMille sent him to a gym for weeks of severe training until he lost thirty pounds. But that’s not the interesting bit.

Once shooting began that fall, Mature turned out to be even more problematica. He was a victim of numerous phobias: fear of water, fear of lions, fear of swords, and practically everything else as well. His genial, charming personality was far too weak for DeMille’s severe and stoical taste. When Mature appeared in the battle of the jawbone in which a great wind swept through the studio, he took fright at a particularly violent, machine-made gust, and fled, hiding in terror in his dressing room. DeMille had him brought back like a naughty boy who had run away from school. He picked up his megaphone, and in a voice icy with disgust, shouted in full hearing of the immense cast and crew: “I have met a few men in my time. Soem have been afraid of heights, some have been afraid of water, some have been afraid of fire, some have been afraid of closed spaces. Some have even been afraid of open spaces — or themselves. But in all my thirty-five years of picture-making experience, Mr. Mature, I have not until now met a man who was 100 percent yellow.”

A few notes about John Wayne from the same book: John Wayne hated horses. He was a good chess player. He got straight “A”s toward the end of high school. The sand in the batch of cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater where John Wayne put his prints came from Iwo Jima. Also, John Wayne only had to read his lines one to memorize them. He was a voracious reader.

These are the kind of ideas I like, the ones that make us think of characters in a different light: the hero who is afraid of everything; the big, physical man who is a great reader.

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Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: Cecil B. DeMille, Charles Higham, fear, Grauman's Chinese Theater, John Wayne, Kiss of Death, phobias, Samson and Delilah, Victor Mature. 6 Comments »

The Living Language of Dying

May 22, 2009 — Pat Bertram

The language of death and dying is a fluid, living language because people are forever trying to blunt the cutting edge of grief by using new words. Here are the living origins of a few words about death.

Coffin comes from a Greek word meaning basket, which is a euphemism for casket.

Crypt means concealed.

Pyre means hearth or fireplace.

Dirge came from the “Office for the Dead” which included an antiphon that began, “Dirge, Domine, Deus meus,” meaning “Guide, O Lord, my God.”

Embalm means to anoint the body with sweet spices.

Eulogy means blessing.

Grave means to dig.

Hearse is a large rake. Turned upside down, it looked like a candelabrum, so the candle holder became known as a hearse. These elaborate candle holders became associated with the vehicle used to transport it and the corpse to the cemetery.

Morgue is French for “haughty superiority,” and was the place where new prisoners were grilled. This room was also used to dispay and examine bodies of persons who had kied under questionable circumstances.

Pallbearer comes from pall meaning a coronation robe. Because it covered the whole body, its name became used to designate anything that covered or concealed. For centuries, a pall was laid over a casket being transported to a cemetery. Four men walked in procession, each holding a corner of the pall.

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: coffin, crypt, dirge, embalm, eulogy, hearse, morgue, pall, pallbearer, pyre. 4 Comments »

DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories, My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor

May 11, 2009 — Pat Bertram

My remarkable guest today is Kristine M. Smith, author of The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley: Actor, Healer, Friend, and DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories, My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor. And she writes a blog with a perfect name: Almost Famous by De’s Fault. How cool is that? Kristine talks about writing a personal memoir:

It’s funny. No one showed me how to write a personal memoir before I sat down to write one. I hadn’t studied the genre, and although I had read numerous memoirs over the years, that hardly qualified (or qualifies) me as an expert in the field. So please accept everything I say with a grain of salt. What success I’ve had with my memoir may have had as much to do with “luck” (a sad, secular substitution for what is actually “unrecognized divine intervention”!) as it did with anything else.

The memoir I wrote had a built-in niche audience: STAR TREK.

The STAR TREK aspect of my story began in earnest on May 4, 1968 the day I met actor DeForest Kelley, who portrayed Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy on the original series. I was so impressed with his graciousness and appreciation for his fans that I went home and wrote an article about meeting him for my creative writing class. My teacher thought it was so good that he insisted I should send it to Mr. Kelley for him to read and enjoy. Oh, boy, that was nerve-wracking! I wasn’t in the habit of writing to TV stars.

When De and his wife Carolyn read it, they, too, thought it was exceptional and forwarded it to a New York publisher with a suggestion that it might make a good piece for their magazine, TV STAR PARADE. When the publisher agreed, De wrote me a letter letting me know I was about to become a published author.

My parents had to peel me off the ceiling for a week.

Over the course of the next thirty years, the Kelleys and I established an on-again, off-again correspondence, and I continued to flail away at my typewriter, since the Kelleys and the publisher had convinced me that I did, indeed, know how to string words together to good effect.

I kept notebook journals, of course. (Doesn’t every writer? If you don’t, start now. The reason will become clear momentarily.) As I accrued experiences with the Kelleys, every detail of our interactions went into scores of notebooks. Over time, I segued from a giddy fan to a point where the Kelleys began to encourage me to move to Hollywood and find a place in the entertainment industry where I might be able to utilize my writing skills in a major (lucrative) way.

They helped me get my foot in the door in the entertainment industry, helped me find a landlord who would allow me to keep my hand-raised serval “son” (a knee-high African wildcat) in the backyard of the house I rented, and continued to encourage me in every way, all without any thought of paybacks or rewards. (It took me a while to realize that they truly were as benevolent as they seemed. I don’t trust very easily, especially when it comes to denizens of Hollywood!)

Toward the end of De’s life, I became his personal assistant and caregiver. He was already hospitalized and would never again leave the hospital except for brief forays to visit his bank, doctors and home. Mrs. Kelley, his usual helpmate, was already hospitalized with a broken leg.

All of this, too, went into my journals, sometimes only in “talking points” because I was so exhausted (after fourteen and sixteen hour days near the end) from the stress and busy-ness of being their almost-constant companion, helper and confidant. My hours were my choice, not a demand of theirs. It was my way of paying them back in some small way for the thirty-plus years of devotion and encouragement they had extended to me.

A few weeks before De passed away, he gave me permission to write his biography, or a memoir, or anything else I wanted to do with the story of our association. I handed off the biography to Terry Lee Rioux, a tried-and-true historian (now a history professor at Lamar University) whom I had met at a STAR TREK convention several years earlier, because I’m an anecdotal writer, not a researcher or interviewer.

After De passed away, I served Carolyn for another eight months. I pondered writing a book, but figured I probably didn’t have much of significance to say except for how wonderful they were and how much I loved them. End of story. (?)

Then Terry Rioux came to Hollywood to do research at various regional motion picture libraries in preparation for writing De’s biography and to interview De’s co-stars, producers, writers, friends – and me. At one point she asked me, “How did you go from being a fan on the outermost regions of fandom to being at his bedside when he died?”

I was speechless. I had no answer.

I finally responded, “That’s something De would have to answer. I have no idea how that happened.” Terry insisted, carefully and pointedly, “You know the answer. Just connect the dots. I need to know the answer – and so do you.”

Wow. What an assignment!

Then she said, “I think you somehow became the daughter they never had.”

I started bawling, right there in the restaurant. “Oh, no! Don’t say that! If that’s true, I didn’t do enough for them.

Terry said, “You did everything you could, everything they would allow you to do for them.”

That was true . . .

Then I remembered the journals – six large plastic bins, sitting out in the garage, crammed with my journals, with the entire adventure, from beginning to end!!!

I dug them all out, laid them out in order, and began the journey anew, connecting the dots, following the crumbs. There were hundreds of small details I had completely forgotten about. It was like discovering a gold mine!

I watched as a cordial first meeting morphed into an association, then built to become a familiar, comfortable relationship. Then I watched as the relationship swelled into agape love, trust, and mutual support.

That’s when I knew I had to write the memoir, and that’s when I knew I could write it, that I had enough material for it.

Had Terry not asked me the one question about the Kelleys that I could not answer without researching and writing a book, I never would have written it – would never have remembered all those journals tucked away in the garage!

So I became my own historian. I became a memoir writer. It took three solid months of 12-14 hour days, six days a week. It took lots of guts to go over the last months again and put them down in a way that would inform without half killing the reader.

But it resurrected the man, and – in conjunction with Terry’s bio – it has extended his legacy far beyond what fans would otherwise be able to learn about him.

So, to me, writing a memoir is all about diving into journals we’ve written and culling from them the nuggets that resurrect a place, a time, and the crucial people who helped mold us into what we have become, whether for good or for ill.

If you do the task well, the person or people you resurrect don’t have to be TV stars and the times you depict don’t have to be historical in nature. All that needs to happen is that the reader connects, lives with you in your past for a time, and comes out changed in many of the same ways that your history has changed you. The reader “gets” you, your times and your loved ones (and others) in ways they never did before. That’s the essence of a good memoir.

Kristine has agreed to answer questions and respond to comments, so feel free to leave a comment for Kristine. And don’t forget to check back later for her responses.

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Posted in books, culture, writing. Tags: "Bones", Carolyn Kelley, DeForest Kelley, DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Dr. Leonard McCoy, Kristine M. Smith, memoir, Star Trek, Terry Lee Rioux, The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley. 47 Comments »

A Stranger on My Own Blog

May 3, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Sometimes I get to feeling like a stranger on my own blog. I know I’ve told you several times before that I’m going to reclaim it for myself, but I keep meeting fascinating people who have more interesting things to say than I do, so I invite them to write a guest post. Sometimes I don’t even know how fascinating the people are! I met Vince Gotera on Facebook when I added my Suspense/Thriller Writers group to his index of Creative Writing Sites on Facebook, and we struck up a sporadic conversation. (Actually, I think sporadic is being generous.) The upshot of the deal was that he would write an article for me about an editor’s pet peeves. How was I to know that Vince is the editor of the prestigious North American Review, the longest literary magazine in the U.S.? Actually, I should have known the magazine was a big deal — with Google, there is no excuse not do one’s homework. Still, it makes me seem as if I’m way more savvy than I really am. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Vince’s bloggery, “Submitting to Literary Magazines 101: Professionalism.” And don’t forget to read the comments. Vince was a perfect guest, responding to everyone who commented. Even more thrilling, this is just the first installment of a three-part series.

I’m doing it again — aren’t I? — talking about other people instead of myself. But I don’t know what to say anymore. When I first began this blog, I gave writing tips and suggestions, then somewhere along the way it began to seem presumptuous. Who was I to tell anyone how to write? Two hundred rejections is not an indication of a great writer! At least it’s not an indication of a writer who follows the rules she’s propagating. Then I got the idea that I should write that which only I can write. Again, a presumptuous idea. But I did talk of my WIP (poor stalled creature that it is) until I found a publisher who loved my books More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Then I started promoting. Or at least talking about it. I don’t have a clue how to get from here to selling the thousands of books I should be/could be selling.

Which leaves me to talk about . . .

I don’t know. At least I don’t have to figure it out for a while. Joan De La Haye is going to be stopping by here on May 5th as part of her blog tour. Then Steven Clark Bradley will be here shortly after that talking about the importance of perseverance in writing.

Meantime, I started a new blog — one just for me. I liked the idea of the WordPress P2 theme, (sort of a Twittery thing) and had to try it out. Stop by and say hi! Talking about presumptuous — I call my new blog The Mind of Pat Bertram. Sheesh. As if anyone cares what goes on inside my head.

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Posted in blogging, culture, internet, life, writing. Tags: blogging, Facebook, guest bloggers, Joan De La Haye, North American Review, Steven Clark Bradley, Vince Gotera. 4 Comments »

Conversation With Marshall Karp, Author of Flipping Out

April 12, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Marshall Karp, the author of Flipping Out, is an award winning former advertising executive, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a novelist. He has also written, produced, and executive produced TV shows for all the major networks.

Bertram: I enjoyed reading Flipping Out. I must admit, you do know how to turn a phrase. You have a marvelous ear for dialogue, and a knack for one-liners. One, especially, sticks out as being memorable. The cops, Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs, are ready to enter a house owned by a murdered celebrity. Terry looks up at the towering stucco columns and says, “Rather phallic. I think they’re art dicko.”

Marshall: Thank you for the kind words about my ear. That would be the left one. The right one is even more amazing. It can actually hear a tree falling in the forest even if I’m not there. Funny thing about art dicko. In my first draft, as they’re about to bust through the door, I wrote something that my editor felt was too close to what Terry had said the first time he saw that house. She told me to come up with something better. Who knew it would turn out to be one of the more memorable lines in the book. I just don’t want it on my tombstone. Marshall Karp, that guy who wrote art dicko.

Bertram: Is there anything in particular you’d like me to say my review of Flipping Out? Any particular passage you’re particularly proud of?

Marshall: Gosh, blurbers have asked me that, but never a reviewer. For sure, don’t mention art dicko. I wouldn’t want Terry’s lapse into sophomoric humor to define me. In fact, few lines from books do justice to the entire book, although an advance reviewer on Amazon picked up an exchange between Terry and Marilyn that tickled me.

My favorite reviews are those that capture what I hope to do best. My goal is to develop characters you just want to be with over and over again. Some authors have had success with worn down, burned out cynical cops, but I wanted real people. I hang out with real cops, and they are incredibly funny – in that business they have to be – it keeps them sane. So I made Mike and Terry human before I made them cops.

I write for people who want three-dimensional characters, real laugh-out-loud humor that is organic to the situation, and plot twists right up to the final pages. And while I make no guarantees, I’d say that a steady diet of my books can also help you lose weight, double your income, and improve your sex life.

I hope that helps.

Bertram: I’m going to use the last paragraph to finish of my review, if you don’t mind. It’s a great quote.

I am so sick of the stereotypical cynical, burned out cop that it’s refreshing to meet some fictional ones who aren’t.

Marshall: I’ve been reading some of your 100 word stories. They’re terrific. How do you do it? It’s an art form (literary form?) I had never heard of before. I was talking to JA Konrath today and saying that I’m not sure I know how to write a short story. I used to write 30-second commercials, but now I’m stuck in the long form. Plus once you wind me up, I tend to get going. That’s probably why my first book was 632 pages.

Bertram: I can’t write regular short stories, maybe because I don’t like to read them, but for some reason I can do the 100-word ones. They are called drabbles, and stemmed from sci-fi conventions where they developed from a novel writing contest.

With a drabble, you have to find the essence — which is why there are so few stories on my Mini Fiction blog. It’s hard to do. And then you have to have a beginning, a middle, an end and a change in the life of a character.

I think of it as a prose haiku.

Marshall: Well, you got me with prose haiku. Here’s an exercise I did at a conference. I don’t know if it fits the drabble parameters — the challenge was slightly different — but it’s only 95 words. So humor me, and tell me if you think it does.

When you work homicide in Southern California you see your fair share of dead celebrities, but this… this is the first one that ever really got to me.

There were deep ligature marks on his white skin, and his once perfect body had been gracelessly dragged to the side of his private pool and left to be further ravaged by an unwilling accomplice 93 million miles away.

“Who,” I sputtered, as the hot Pacific breeze greeted me with the aroma of my first morning cup of death, “who the hell would want to murder Shamu?”

Bertram: It is an excellent blurb that caught my attention, but it’s more of a scenario than a story.

We don’t know who Shamu is, so the last sentence isn’t much of a punch line. And drabbles seem to need a punch line at the end.

Marshall: Shamu is a pretty famous whale. You’re forgiven for not knowing. Damn those pop culture references. They don’t always work.

Bertram: Then I stand corrected. Your story works for a drabble. In fact, it’s very good. But use those extra five words to show that it’s a whale for us ignorant people. Thank you for talking to me. It’s been a pleasure.

Marshall: And thank you for helping support my life of crime.

See also:
Titles: What Makes a Good One by Marshall Karp
Review of Flipping Out review by Pat Bertram
How to Do a Blog Tour by Marshall Karp

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Posted in books, culture, writing. Tags: drabble, Flipping Out, interview, Marshall Karp, Shamu. 3 Comments »

Steel Waters by Ken Coffman — a Sort-of Review

April 10, 2009 — Pat Bertram

When I first saw the movie Lone Hero starring Lou Diamond Phillips, I wasn’t impressed. It seemed trite — a retelling of High Noon with outlaw bikers set against the background of a wild west show. Yet the next morning, as the story slowly sank into the backwaters of my mind, one scene after another percolated to the surface, and I found myself smiling at the sly humor and wry nuances I was discovering. Lone Hero is now one of my favorite movies, one that gets richer with each viewing.

This retrospective appreciation has happened with a few other films, but I until recently I never read a book that became better with aging. Most go in one synapse and out the other before sinking into oblivion, but Steel Waters by Ken Coffman refuses to stay there.

Coffman’s wry humor and gritty descriptions immediately captivated me, but his hero didn’t. I have no use for characters (or people) who bring about their own miseries. Glen Wilson walked away from his wife and farm for no other reason than because he thought needed to. When he ended up in a Bolivian jail, I didn’t care. And neither did he. He seems to have a great capacity for accepting the status quo until suddenly he wants something else. (Usually without knowing what that something else is.)

Still, Glen Wilson was unique and compelling enough for me to keep reading. He is a mixture of opposites: hard-boiled and quixotic, opportunistic and idealistic, down-to-earth and impractical. And I enjoyed the book.

As Steel Waters percolates, however, I see much that I missed. Sure, Glen Wilson brings about his own predicament, but he is a victim of his own unresolved wants. They pull at him, buffeting him from one wild adventure to the other. The book has an episodic feel to it, but all mythic journeys do, and in the end, that is what Steel Waters is: mythic.

You are familiar with the mythic journey template. It’s the basic format of Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, The Hunt for Red October. An ordinary person answers the call to adventure. Meets mentors, allies, enemies. Passes tests. Undergoes the supreme ordeal, seizes the reward, and finally returns home — a hero in truth. Or not. Coffman doesn’t follow the format exactly. Glen Wilson may or may not be a hero. He may or may not be changed. This is the beauty of the mythic journey template — it is infinitely changeable without ever losing its power.

So now I have to go back and reread Steel Waters with this percolation in mind, see the layering of the nuances and the humor. I’ll let you know if it’s as good the second time around as it is in memory.

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Posted in books, culture, fiction, writing. Tags: Glen Wilson, High Noon, Ken Coffman, Lone Hero, Lou Diamond Phillips, Star Wars, Steel Waters, The Hunt for Red October, The Wizard of Oz. 8 Comments »

On the Eve of Publication…

March 25, 2009 — Pat Bertram

After seeing my article, “A Book Reviewer’s Lexicon,” where I mentioned that I’d read 20,000 books, author Ken Coffman asked what books stuck out in my mind as premier ones, what authors consistently pleased me, and which books I’ve read more than once. Off the top of my head, I posted a list of books. Premier? I don’t know that they are, but for some reason, I remember the title and author years — sometimes decades — after finishing them:

Sakkara by Noel Barber
Sarum by Edward Rutherford
The River God by Wilbur Smith
The Left Hand of God by William Barrett
The Balance Wheel by Taylor Caldwell (for many reasons, both good and bad)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (because of the irony)
The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin (non-fiction)
The Gods of Eden by William Bramley (non-fiction)
The Twelfth Planet by Zeccharia Sitchen (non-fiction)
Story by Robert McKee (non-fiction)
most books written by Antony Sutton (non-fiction)
most books written by Stephen J. Gould (non-fiction)
a few books written by Hank Messick (non-fiction)

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend any of these books. I read them so long ago, I was a different person. That I remembered titles and authors shows what an impact they had at the time. In recent years, the only book that had any impact on me was Duma Key by Stephen King. I’m ashamed to admit it, but he did get me with that one. During the past couple of decades, the only other books that have completely pulled me in are The River God and Sarum, both of which I intend to reread. The River God is a story based on scrolls found in an Egyptian tomb, and Sarum is a Michener-type book about the Salisbury Plain in England. I don’t agree with a lot of Rutherford’s history, but the book fascinated me. I want to reread Sakkara if I can ever get it again, though I don’t remember much about it except that it’s a sort of North African Gone With the Wind. (Interestingly, I don’t like Gone With the Wind, though I did when I was very young. I tried rereading it a while back, and got bored.) I did reread Tanamera, (also by Noel Barber, and a sort of Singapore Gone With the Wind) and liked it the second time, too. In fact, I will reread all of Noel Barber’s books some day. Maybe even some of Nevil Shute’s books. And David Westheimer’s.

I read The Balance Wheel during the Vietnam era. Now THAT made an impact — reading a book about the war-to-end-all-wars during a later war. If I ever come across a copy of the book, I’ll reread it. (I lent it to someone who promised — actually swore — that she’d return it but never did.)

One book that got left off the above list is The Killing Gift by Bari Wood. I read it many years ago, and always remembered it. Reread it a few years ago, and it still had the same impact. It’s one of the few I’ve kept to re-reread.

I’ve also kept a copy of The Proteus Operation by James P. Hogan, so I can reread it someday.

One author who consistently pleased me was Kate Wilhelm until she stopped writing science fiction. On my wish list would be a newly written Kate Wilhelm science fiction novel (Are you listening, Kate?), but so far she’s sticking with mysteries. (They’re mostly published by Mira, which seems like hiding a diamond in the mud.)

Interestingly, I started rereading some of the classics, and couldn’t do it. Nicholas Nickleby, Sense and Sensibilty, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. AAGGHH!!!

For about fifteen years I got so sick of the pap put out by the major publishers that I stuck with non-fiction. Read everything — history, quantum mechanics, string theory, health, archeology, etc, etc, but that got old (or I did) so now I’m back to fiction.

I’ve decided I need to get rich so I can start buying indie books. I feel like the man who kept shrinking and shrinking until finally he shrunk so much he ended up in an entirely different universe, a microscopic one. For me, the publishing world has shrunk so much that the only hope for finding the sort of books that interests me is to find another world. Which I have. The indie world. I guess I’ll just have to get people to send me books to “review.” Yes, that’s it. I’ll tell people I’ll do a review if they send me their book.

I thought that it would bother me posting this for anyone to see — it does say something about me, though I don’t know what — and I half-intended to delete it, but then it dawned on me: this is the eve of my becoming a published author. I’ve approved the proofs, so More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire will soon show up on Amazon. (They are already listed on the Second Wind Publishing site.) If a list of books I’ve read exposes me, then the books I’ve written will expose me even more.

So, here I am.

For what it’s worth.

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Is Genre Writing an Endangered Species?

March 17, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’m sure you’re all getting sick of me and my comments about the publishing industry, so today I thought I’d let someone else write about it. Andrew Vachss is guest blogging here blog today, though “ghost blogging” would probably be a better word for it. He doesn’t know he’s a guest and might not be happy if he finds out, so don’t be surprised if this post disappears.

I found this bit by Vachss in the foreword of Act of Love by Joe R. Lansdale, which might be the book that started the serial killer genre. (I always thought Thomas Harris started it, but this book predates his by several years.) I wasn’t impressed by the book (sorry Joe and Andrew) but I did find Vachss’s words interesting. He wrote:

Genre writing is an endangered species . . . for all the reasons any species starts to run out of road. Overpopulation, in-breeding, lack of natural predators, limited food supply. Words don’t work as stand-alones; they gather their power from juxtaposition . . . from context, from precision placement. But, in our game, words have become de-valued currency-you can’t count on them anymore. Our field is overdosed with flab: take some gratuitous, implausible violence, throw in some unrealistic sex, splatter some guts and hair on the nearest wall, sprinkle in a touch of mystical reference . . . and you’re walking on the “dark” side.

Sure.

The genres . . . horror, crime, fantasy, whatever . . . all have their built-in places to hide. Write something stupid, it’s a metaphor. Write something mean-spirited and small, it’s satire.

Getting published is pretty easy today. And that’s good. I’m all for an open admissions policy. But the sorting-out phase, the natural, organic process by which the strongest survive . . . that’s not happening. What we have instead is favor-trading, networking, and other sordid forms of insulation from the culling edge of the evolutionary razor. When the awards outnumber the candidates, we’re heading for the Wall. With no breaks and the steering locked.

Remember I told you that the genre market was in trouble? A dragon’s coming soon . . .coming down hard. It’s going to walk through the jungle, clearing out the dead vines with its breath, stomping on those that can’t get out of the way. A hard, cleansing wind is going to blow.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in blogging, books, culture, life, writing. Tags: Act of Love, Andrew Vachss, genre writing, Joe Lansdale, publishing industry, serial killer books, Thomas Harris. 17 Comments »

A Two-Ton Ice Cream Cone

February 26, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I am having an online discussion about description based on my article “An Image Fit Only For a Horror Movie.” We’ve been talking about simile and metaphor, and how to create vibrant images. As you know, I’m not fond of similes and metaphors, so I look for the significant detail, the one detail that will give the whole, such as crayon scribbles on a wall to show . . . well, whatever the reader thinks it shows.

Sometimes this significant detail transcends mere description and becomes a metaphor. One participant in the discussion is Bruce DeSilva, the writing coach at The Associated Press in New York City, whose agent is shopping his first novel, a crime story set in Providence, R.I. Bruce told a wonderful story that immediately captured my attention. Bruce wrote:

In my experience, the best images spring not from the imagination but from careful observation. Let me tell you a story.

Several years ago, I went for a walk with a young reporter I was thinking of hiring. As we strolled through Times Square, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and said: “That’s amazing!”

What was? I didn’t see anything.

I watched as he whipped out his digital camera and started snapping pictures of a six-foot-tall, two-ton, concrete ice cream cone, painted up pretty, standing on the sidewalk in front of an ice cream parlor.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s amazing about that?”

“Bruce,” he said, his tone indicating he was disappointed in me. “Look at it!”

“I’m looking,” I said, ” but I still don’t get it.”

“Bruce,” he said, “it’s chained to the wall. We live in a city where you have to chain a six-foot-tall, two-ton ice cream cone to a wall so no one will steal it.”

Well, yeah. That was amazing.

But how many millions of people, me included, had walked passed it without ever noticing the chain, or, more importantly, what the chain represented?

You don’t see the chain unless you are a careful observer, and it takes a poet’s sensibility to make the leap from the chain to what it represents.

We never did write a story that used the ice cream cone as a symbol of crime in our city — but we could have.

I hired the young man on the spot.

See? Significant detail and metaphor all rolled into one. If you are on Facebook and would like to participate in the discussion, feel free to stop by the Suspense/Thriller Writers group discussion.

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Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: Bruce DeSilva, description, metaphors, similes, The Associated Press. 7 Comments »

Deception Detection: The Truth About Lie Detectors

February 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I am proud to welcome Dr. Katherine Ramsland as a guest on my blog. Dr. Ramsland has published 33 books and teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University, where she chairs the Social Sciences Department. Among her books are Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, The Human Predator (a history of serial murder), The Criminal Mind, and The Unknown Darkness, with former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary. In April, she will published The Devil’s Dozen: How Cutting Edge Forensics Took Down 12 Notorious Serial Killers. She has also written a series of books to clarify facts about investigations, notably The Forensic Science of CSI, the Science of Cold Case Files, The CSI Effect, and True Stories of CSI. Later this year, she offers The Life of a Forensic Scientist, with Dr. Henry Lee and The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds. Dr. Ramsland writes:

The New York Times ran a commentary recently that noted the use of psychological evidence in serial procedurals. “The Mentalist” is one of the most popular shows on TV now, and “Lie to Me” has an intriguing premise about rare people who are “naturals” at spotting liars. Yet research indicates that there’s no simple formula for catching a liar. Even many people with repeated exposure to deception perform no better than chance when judging deception, but they can slightly improve their skills with solid observation and sophisticated techniques.

A popular notion is that lying requires more effort than truth-telling, so it produces such physiological signals as a heightened pulse rate, dilated pupils, twitches, and certain facial expressions – especially when the stakes are high. However, truthful but anxious people may also display such symptoms, while lying psychopaths may not.

Accuracy lies in questioning persons of interest long enough to observe their default behaviors. People who feel anxious usually either freeze or defend themselves, thus displaying behaviors of discomfort. While there are no hard-and-fast rules, the types of behaviors that can signal discomfort, and thus potential deception, include:

overgeneralizations, deflections, and increased vocal pitch

speech hesitations and pauses, a lack of spontaneity

an increase in number of shrugs, blinking, and nervous habits

changes in the eye pupil

venting the body, like pulling a shirt or collar away

feet pointed toward an exit

blanching, flushing, sighing

reduced use of hand gestures

These behaviors occur more often in those with motivation to deceive–possibly because they are trying to plan and control what they say.

Statement analysis is a common tool for interrogations. An investigator asks an open-ended question, “What happened?” and leaves the person to fill in all the blanks. The subject picks the starting and ending point. Statement analysis focuses on several things: what’s said about events leading up to a crime, the crime itself, and what’s said about the aftermath. Investigators watch for the distribution of detail in each area, and note whether subjects provided more information than requested or skipped something crucial. Also, a change in tone or speed of delivery can reveal their comfort (or not) with what they’re saying.

A similar method called Criteria-based Content Analysis closely examines how an incident is retold, comparing it against the typical method of recall in a truthful session vs. fabricating a supposed recollection.

Computer software known as Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analyzes written content, derived from the statement analysis approach, and looks for three markers: fewer first-person pronouns, more words that convey negative emotion, and fewer exclusionary words (except, but). The software has been more effective than human judges, but the accuracy rate is still only about 67 percent.

The polygraph in use today is a compact portable device that measures three or four key involuntary physiological responses to questioning: skin conductivity, abdominal and chest respiration, blood pressure, and heart rate. Some questions are designed to establish baseline responses, some are neutral, and others attempt to register “guilty knowledge,” or at least a sense that the person knows something that confirms him or her as a suspect. However, despite claims by examiners, the accuracy rate by disinterested evaluators is not high enough for admissibility.

Even less accurate is the Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE), sometimes referred to as a Voice Stress Evaluator. Supposedly, during a lie, the voice reaches a higher pitch than when someone is telling the truth. While the PSE does measure variations in emotional stress, that’s not necessarily indicative of deception.

Psychiatrist Lawrence Farwell developed the Brain Fingerprinting process, based on the notion that all experiences, including a crime, are stored in the brain. The electrical activity of a suspect’s brain is monitored with sensors on a headband attached to a computer, while the subject is exposed to words or images that are both relevant (“probes”) and irrelevant to the crime. Certain information would be meaningful only to the actual perpetrator and would include such items as what was done to a victim, where the victim was taken, items that were removed from the victim, and items that might have been left at a scene. The subject would not see this list until the test itself was performed. Irrelevant stimuli might include a different type of weapon, the wrong landscape, a different MO, or acts not performed during the commission of the crime.

Probes are known only to the investigators, the test-maker, and the perpetrator. If the brain activity shows recognition of relevant stimuli-a distinct spike called a MERMER (memory and encoding related multifaceted electroencephalographic response) – then the subject has a record of the crime stored in his or her brain. Innocent people will display no such response to crime-relevant stimuli. To strengthen the results, Farwell might test the suspect’s alibi for the time of the crime, by devising a scenario to test to see if the brain has a record.

At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, fMRI scans are used to detect differences in neural activity between lying and truth-telling. In the experiments, subjects were paid to perform a “theft” of one of two items (either a ring or a watch) and conceal information from the researchers. First, each was asked neutral questions while being scanned, as well as questions about minor wrongful deeds commonly committed. This way, the researchers could identify typical neurological patterns during truthful responses. Then each subject responded to questions in a way that was truthful about an object he or she did not steal, but deceptive about the stolen object. The rate of accuracy for the fMRI was around ninety percent. Apparently, the trick lies in scanning brain regions that activate to suppress information and resolve internal conflicts; these regions are quiet when the person is telling the truth.

There is as yet no “one size fits all” signal in the neurocircuitry that a person is lying, but it does appear that brain scans are better at revealing “tells” than is watching someone fidget and sweat under questioning. Identifying the right combination of brain signals for a high rate of accuracy when a person lies or hides the truth is still in the future, but possibly not far away.

Some researchers believe that certain people with high levels of emotional intelligence have a knack for spotting a liar; in fact, they can see certain signals that others cannot. Dr. Paul Ekman and Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan float the notion that a few rare people are “naturals,” i.e., are highly accurate at knowing when someone is trying to deceive them. (In fact, these researchers consult for Lie to Me.) Often, these lie-detectors have jobs where it’s an important skill, such as law enforcement or psychotherapy. When the stakes are high, such as with a violent crime or a threat assessment, they’re even better at it, because they’re more vigilant. Ekman believes the best cues are found in the voice and face for deception about feelings, and find the best “hot spots” in gestures and words when a person lies about beliefs and actions. Extremely slight gestures can “leak” emotional states that a person is trying to hide, providing a “tell” to a skilled and observant detector.

However, other research contradicts the notion that certain select people are human diving rods. Psychologists Charles Bond, Jr. and Bella DePaulo ran a large-scale study and found that lie detection is not about the observer but the observee. A person’s perceived credibility plays a strong role in whether someone judges him or her to be deceptive. That’s not necessarily because a person is honest; it’s because they comport themselves in a credible manner. Participants in the study more often believed liars with high credibility ratings than truth-tellers who were perceived as low in credibility. When Bond and DePaul evaluated numerous other studies about deception, they realized that individual differences among judges of deception hovered near the same rate as chance (50%). No one appeared to have an innate advantage. No “naturals” stood out.

In the real world rather than a lab, lies are often identified in context, when compared over a period of time to other behaviors or narratives. The judgment generally involves a number of factors taken together, not just a person’s response to some questions at the time a lie is told, or their pupil contractions or fidgeting.

See also: Serial Killers and the Writers Who Love Them: Facts about Popular Myths by Dr. Katherine Ramsland

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