Joe Landsdale's Novel, The Thicket - Review

Okay, so it's Lonesome Dove meets A Game of Thrones ...

Well, no, not really, even though if you've read those, you'll understand why I said that. It's more like ... um, actually, it's not more like anything. Nobody writes quite like Joe Lansdale, and The Thicket isn't anything else, the similes and metaphors kinda don't apply.

Let me give you a quick hit as to the plot: After their parents die from smallpox, a teenaged brother and sister see their grandfather murdered, get caught in a tornado while crossing a river on a ferry, and the sister is kidnapped by bad fellows. Her brother goes after her, and along the way, picks up a crew that includes a black alcoholic gravedigger and bounty hunter; his best buddy, a well-read and off-handedly cruel dwarf, also a bounty hunter; a prostitute, a sheriff-cum-bounty hunter with his own storied history; a jail cleaner named "Spot," and a large, quick-tempered hog. Those are the good guys, and just barely so.

Ever read that one before? 

Me, neither.

Lansdale fans know what to expect when they pick up any of his work, and the ride is always worth the price of admission and then some. Nobody does this kind of thing like Lansdale does, and if they did? he'd still do it better.

Man can write circles around most of us, and that is a fact.

It's funny, but also brutal, populated by robbers, murders, and rapists, and all of that happens along the way in some gruesome detail. I'd rate it a fairly hard R, for language, violence, and sex. It is, in places ugly, not a book for anybody with a queasy stomach.

I have one niggle with Lansdale's writing, and that is, he is loath to reveal the specific historical time a story happens. He did it in The Edge of Dark Water and he does it again here.

A quick lesson from the how-to-write department as I learned it: The defaults when one picks up a novel are, that unless there is a big clue on the cover or blurb, showing a scene from some  historical past, a fantasy world, or rockets and ray guns, hinting that we are maybe skying off into the future, the time and setting of the book are now, and somewhere on Earth.

That's what readers will assume, that the tale is contemporaneous with the present. If it's different, you have to tell them. 

East Texas is on Earth, more or less, and the setting and characters pop right up, but the when of things arrives in small doses. People are riding horses, mostly, or in wagons behind mules, so you figure it is in the past, but that covers a lot of territory. 

It seems that making the reader figure out the era is part of Joe's intent. He gives clues, and if you are a history buff or close to Google, you can figure it out, if you can suss the fact from fiction and look up the pertinent information. 

I kinda like such exercises, but I'm not your usual reader. The simple solution is a tag under the opening chapter's number:

East Texas, 1913

Joe doesn't go there and I have to assume that's on purpose. I don't know why.

There's nothing a reader is apt to spot in the first 18 pp that tells you within  a hundred years when the story is taking place. 

19 pp in, a bad guy is observed carrying one of those newer automatic pistols, no brand mentioned, and that that back-ends the earliest possible time to the late 1890's, though it would have almost surely been later, since practical semi-auto pistols didn't show up in this country until after the turn of the century. There were Broomhandle Mausers, but the Colt 1911 wasn't adopted by the military until, well, 1911 ...

A character mentions a Nick Carter story, (p 70) and those ran from the mid-1860's to 1915, (then were restarted in the 1930's,) so that's not really much help.

There are some of them newfangled horseless carriages (p 74) and early oil wells. In Texas,  the earliest locally-owned automobile showed up in 1902. The first oil well gushed in 1901. (Autos stayed close to home until years later, because finding gasoline was not easy, even in Texas where the oil came from. Somebody had to make the stuff.)

There comes a reference to a vaudeville act, the Marx Brothers, and if that's who it ought to be, that narrows things: The speaker allows as how he had seen them a year back, and they were singers, the Marx Brothers, but not so good at it; however, they told some jokes that were passing funny. According to the history about this, the Marx Brothers didn't start doing comedy in their song-and-dance act until 1912, which puts the story a year later, minimum, as the new back end cut-off. So now, we are no earlier than 1913.

I didn't see any mention of WWI, which started in 1914 and into which the U.S. entered in 1917, and had the war begun, I would have assumed it to be a topic of conversation. If I had to nail it down, I'd guess the novel is set in 1913 or 1914, before the Great War began. The archduke wasn't assassinated until June 28th. 

Is it necessary to know this to enjoy the story? No. It's just that knowing the five-W's and the aitch–who, where, what, when, why, and how–make for a richer experience, so I took the trouble to figure it out ...

Major Uke Collection

A guy in Thailand who collects ukuleles. Whaddya think ... ?

New Mic

Got a new USB microphone. The old one, a Samson USB, was great when I got it, but it finally crapped out after what? seven or eight years?

The new one, a Blue Yeti, is way better and cheaper than the old one. It's a big, heavy sucker, got several bells and whistles, not the least of which is the ability to record in stereo. You can sit it on your desk or mount it on a stand or overhang, and the sound input quality is clean and full.  Check it out here.

In preparation for my upcoming career as a world famous 'ukulele recording artist ...

Bad Cat - Connections ....

So, my son sent me a link to an online piece about seriously-deadly old western gunfighters, most of whom weren't particularly well known outside historical buffs. 

One of these was the New Mexican lawman, Elfego Baca.

Man was a serious bad-ass: sheriff, marshal, lawyer, politician, and while he was a lawman, got so respected that, according to the legend, he would sometimes just send a letter to bad guys telling them to turn themselves in or he'd feel justified in shooting them. Apparently, more often than not, they did just give up ...

One of the legends I like was after he got to be a lawyer. He got a wire from a client: Just been charged with murder, I need you at once!

His reply: Leaving at once. Bringing three eyewitnesses ...

Um. Anyway, that sparked old memories and a couple of connections.

There was a short-run TV series done by Disney, back in the late 1950's, The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca and I remember it. It starred Robert Loggia, and in the show, he was called "El Gato," the cat. It being pre-non-violence TV, there where a lot of new residents of Boot Hill after every episode.

Fast forward to 1966, and another TV show, a TV noir series called T.H.E. Cat, about a reformed cat burglar and ex-circus performer turned vigilante, one Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat. This also starred Robert Loggia. Did he get the second role because of the first? 

Who knows? I found it interesting is all ... 

Hallelujah!

Just put the finishing touches on the draft of Cutter's Wars: The Dixie Conflict, and shipped copies to to my editor and agent.

Glory be! 

This was one of my slowest and most difficult novels. Not for the writing or the story itself, but for all the stuff surrounding the doing of it. The last few months, I have been living, as the Chinese curse goes, in interesting times, and getting the book written was very much hampered by the experience. 

But, turned in, along with, a couple days ago, the galley corrections for the second book, The Vastalimi Gambit.

In theory, Gambit hits the racks around Christmas Eve this year, and Dixie will see the light of day around January, 2015.

I have other work in the offing and I'll get to it, but I believe I might take the rest of the day off ...

Upwellings from the Memory Pool ...

Recently, a woman writer I knew slightly passed away. I won't say who, nor will I confirm it if anybody posts here, that's not where I'm going with the story, but people in the biz who know me will likely know to whom I refer.

This is not to speak ill of the dead, but to examine my reaction to the death, and the personal history upon which I found myself looking back when I heard of her passing. 

I got into writing for the Star Wars™ universe eighteen or so years ago. My first novel for them was Shadows of the Empire; I subsequently wrote a five-issue miniseries for Dark Horse Comics, and eventually, collaborated on three more SW's novels, with Michael Reaves. 

Between the Dark Horse project and the MedStar and Death Star novels was a long gap, during which I didn't officially work for Lucasfilm/-arts. 

The gap wasn't my idea.

I would have done more. Intended to, having in mind another original comic book series and a couple of novels. But something happened and I–along with several of the other SW's writers of the time–suddenly seemed to find ourselves personae non gratae.

Several of us who had been writing for 'em, and quite successfully, were suddenly somehow longer able to do so. Was there a blacklist? Who can say? There were some hard feelings, and I heard them manifested. I also heard some reasons why I wasn't being considered, and proved to myself and others that those reasons were, um ... the word here is "bullshit ..." 

It is hard to prove anything at this far a remove, but at the time, it seemed easy enough to figure. You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

What happened? 

The writing organization to which I belonged, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, aka SFWA, became unhappy with Lucasarts and the then-new publisher of their SW's novels. The house that won the bidding war had to pretty much give away the store to get the rights to the next round of books, and as a cost-cutting measure, was electing to cease offering royalty payments to writers, in lieu of a flat-fee.

A figurative drop-in-the-bucket, such royalties, but there you go.

Typically back then, the writers in shared-universes got a tiny piece of the pie, and if sales were very good, might actually earn back their advances, even with only 1% or 2% of the action.

I had such a deal with SOTE, and it paid off long-term. I'm still getting little checks eighteen years on, and given my druthers, I would prefer a tiny piece of the action over what became fairly handsome flat-fees. (As I recall, the deals were something on the order of $40K for a paperback original, and as much as $70K for a hard/soft deal. Much more than the advance I had gotten.) 

At at 1% royalty, you have to sell a bunch of books to earn that much, do the math: At, say, $8.00 for a paperback, the writer's cut is $0.08. Divide that into forty grand, any you earn out after half a million copies are sold. 

Back in the day, when I had a Top 5 New York Times Bestseller with SOTE, you could do that, though it would take a while. As the franchise expanded to more and more books, sales of any one title dropped, and that is much less likely to happen now. When I started, a SW's novel was an automatic bestseller.

Not anymore.

So, the book house announced its new policy, and SFWA came unhinged. There was some serious frothing as some of the officers and members climbed onto their steeds and rode off to do battle with Lucas and his minions. The intent was to slay the greedy dragon, or at least wound it enough so it would see the light. We the writers deserve a piece of the pie!

I was not among those heading into that war. Yes, I allowed when they asked, my druthers would be for royalty over flat-fee, but given the amounts of the latter, which was nothing to spit at, I wasn't going to aim my lance at Lucas and spur that horse. George been bery, bery, good to me, so just, you know, include me out, and thank you, kindly.

SFWA, mainly in the form of the writer who passed away, included me in anyhow, after I told them specifically not to do so.

I was a bit peeved. I sent a note to my editor and my contacts: Listen, I said, I didn't do this, I'm not part of it!

Yeah, right. That's not what that open letter said.

Fast forward a bit: Lucas, unsurprisingly, was not brought to his knees by SFWA, whose entire budget, if it fell out of his pocket, would not have been worth his time and energy to bend over and pick up. It wasn't knights against a dragon, it was mosquitoes against an Abrams tank.

Writers who were interested in getting well-paid for fun work lined up out the wazoo, and the SW's biz continued unabated, eventually netting George what? four billion and change? when Disney bought him out. 

Along the way, by the by, the publisher went back to offering small royalties, because given the decline in individual sales, it was cheaper.

But: While I could be wrong, it certainly seemed as if I and others had been tarred by that brush SFWA slung hither and yon. 

How do I know this? Attempts to contact my editors at Lucasfilm failed. Nobody would even talk to me, much less allow me to pitch anything. I thought we had this great relationship, only to see it vanish like smoke in a Class-5 hurricane.

Understand, that past Tim Zahn's first couple, my first SW's novel sold more than any, and everybody made money on it. I was one of the golden boys, Bantam sent me a leather-bound, gold-leaf impressed copy of the book in appreciation. But then nobody wanted to take my calls.

I had been a faithful, on-time worker, loyal, didn't reveal any secrets, ne'er talked out of turn, was a team player, but it was crickets and echoes. 

It wasn't just me, I spoke with others who had similar stories. A few more bits and pieces came my way to confirm it, I shan't bore you with the minutiae. We had, the thinking seemed to go, gotten too big for our britches, and AMF.

So, okay, I had other work, life goes on, and if you live long enough, wide ties will probably come back. Things change, worlds move. Eventually, there was more work to be had from the fine folks at Lucas. I got some, and much enjoyed doing it. Let bygones be bygones.

But: The woman who helped put me into bad professional graces died, and while I didn't bear her any ill will–she was, by accounts, a fine person–it did stir up all those old associations. It was a road not taken, and as it turned out, I have nothing to complain about, but at the time it happened, it was a disturbing experience, and memory forms as it does.

Interesting how that works.

New Uke Case

Red fiberglass. Used, but it looks new.

Rock on ...

Surprise, Surprise!

Two different kinds of surprise to relate ...

My lovely spouse went to visit a friend recently, a woman who had several plum trees in her yard, and who wished to share the fruit.

Plum season is pretty much passed locally, so the friend had rendered the overripe plums and turned them into plum juice, which has some use. (Think: Prune juice ...)

Wife had a gallon or so of the stuff in a couple of containers inside a carrier in the back of her car. 

The lids to the containers were not affixed very well ...

You see where this is going, don't you? (And if you do, it is because I wrote it in such a way as to provide hints without saying it directly, which will speak to my second surprise in a few moments.)

Back to the car:

So I'm writing away and my wife arrives and allows, in a somewhat unhappy manner, as how the back of her car is the recipient of much plum juice.

Took almost three hours to blot and use the rug shampooer extension to get it all up. It soaked through the dog blanket and carpet, the carpeted top of the jack compartment, and seeped around edges into the carpet under the jack compartment. The sun was shining brightly, which was good and bad. Good, because once we were done, it dried things up nicely; bad, because we were mostly in the sun scrubbing away.

Note to self, and anybody who might find themselves in a potentially similar situation: When transporting sticky, sugary liquids, be certain that the container won't leak if it falls over whilst in transit inside your automobile ...

The other surprise is more pleasant: I am doing the rewrite on the first draft of the current WIP, the third and final Cutter's Wars novel. Should be done by maybe Monday. Late, but not fatally so, and happy I am to be nearly finished. (And the galleys for the previous novel, The Vastalimi Gambit, have just moments ago arrived in my in-box, and need be attended to, as well.)

As I go through the text, I am sometimes struck by the impulse to add a phrase, to clarify or clean up a line or graph. Part of rewriting is to do that. A quick example: The enemy troops, using the cover of hard rain and wind delivered by a hurricane, are trying to sneak a sapper team up the hill. Our Vastalimi fighter Kay, out to fix a sensor that has stopped working and thus missed the enemy, spots the sappers and after knocking off a couple, calls for assistance. Gunny arrives with grenadiers, and they give the sappers reason to rethink their plan.

Kay allows as how the sappers know they have been spotted and are probably retreating.

The line was: "You heard the fem. Eighty and walk 'em."

By which Gunny means that the grenadiers are to lay down a pattern of explosions eighty meters down the hill, which is, not coincidentally, where the sappers are.

So, reading that line, I thought it would be a tad better to add a word at the end, making the line, "You heard the fem. Eighty and walk 'em down." Since the sappers are probably leaving.

The grenade launchers go off, the bad weather makes the targeting less than optimum, they correct their aim, yadda, yadda, yadda.  

But then, four lines after my correction, a line ends thus: "the shooters corrected their aim and walked the pattern downward." 

Which they would know to do, right?

I had, in the draft, already spoken to that thing I wanted to clarify, i.e., the direction of the moving grenade impacts, and while there are times to repeat a thing for effect, mostly you don't want the same words popping up in close proximity too often, so you need to say it but once, and if it needs to be emphasized, recast the phrase slightly, for variety. 

My present editor forgets what my past editor did, and he adds or subtracts and finds momentarily that the past has anticipated the present. Because he is more or less the same and he tends to see the same things that need to be fixed. But forgets I already did it. 

You write something you think sharpens or make something a bit more clever, and then a few lines down, you realize you are fixing something that isn't broken. This usually makes me smile when I realize that the me from a few days or weeks ago is at least as smart as the me of today ...

Scary Website

Doing some quick research on tactical nukes for the third book in the military SF trilogy, The Dixie Conflict, I came across this. A site where you can  dial up a size and ground-zero a nuclear device onto a map of a city, then show how big the blast radius would be if it were to ignite.    

Take a look at man's ability to deal inhumanity to his fellow men.

Sobering to realize that even the smallest one would do terrible damage and kill a lot of people in an urban area. A Davy Crockett shell would take out a few blocks in New York City; The biggest Russian device tested, the Tsar, would obliterate Manhattan, and irradiate most of Long Island, a big chunk of New Jersey, as well as the southern parts of Pennsylvania and Connecticut. 

As somebody who grew up under the threat of mushroom clouds in the duck-and-cover days, and in a city that was on the Russian's Top Ten Hit list I used to have nightmares about nuclear Armageddon. Look at the map of Louisiana, and see what the biggest Russian nuke tested would have done had it been dropped on the oil refineries in Baton Rouge. Third-degree burns halfway to New Orleans, seventy miles away; up to Mississippi, almost to Opelousas and Lafayette. 

Einstein had it: 

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones ..."

Gifts ...

Went to visit family this afternoon, got a couple of gifts. My son bought me a high-end wooden flashlight, above, and my daughter-in-law, who has gotten into crochet in a professional way, made me this, below ...

Another Cycle Round the Sun ...

Music for this year ...

Out walking the dogs this morning, couple guys across the street talking to each other, one of them says, "Happy Birthday!" 

Wasn't talking to me. 

Another of life's odd coincidences. That somebody down the road got birthday wishes just as I walked past on my birthday. What are the odds of that?

Local Music

Saw this uke player (Travis Stine) play at a wine tasting in Forest Grove, along with Alex Taimanao, on guitar. Some serious musicians, and the wine (Volare Pinot Noir, 2009 Reserve) excellent, too ...

Fly Skeet

Seen this? Housefly shotgun, uses table salt. You need one, you know you do. You can take 'em on the wing! Or salt your fries across the table!

Ambition

So having decided to get better at playing the ukulele, I selected some songs to fingerpick, one of which is Paul McCartney's Blackbird. It's a piece I can play on the guitar, in G.

So I went on YouTube and found what I thought was the best-sounding version on the uke and decided that was the one I wanted to learn. It's in C, which is a better key for the uke, and for my voice.

There is a reason it sounds the best; it's the most complex, and the hardest to finger.

 Of course it is.

Be a while, but I will get back to you ...

Also on the to-learn-list:

Something in the Way She Moves
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Quigley Down Under
Ashokan Farewell

Already have the chords for Hey, Jude ...

Oh, and a technical note: Whilst playing the most recent gig, a come-to-realize moment, regarding volume ...

My ukes are pretty loud for such instruments, but that's a relative term. A loud ukulele is kind of like the world's tallest midget. When the banjo and mandolin and steel-string guitars and various tympani crank up, the uke disappears. This might be a good thing if you are prone to hitting clams, but when I was at the farmer's market strumming away, I couldn't hear myself playing, because when the electric guitar starts, the acoustic instruments just run and hide ...

Which brings us to amplification.

Back when I was at my first jam group, I had something of the same problem with my nylon-string guitar. The other players suggest that I get some kind of small amp, to add just enough sound to achieve parity with the steel-strings.

Which I did. Got a tiny amp, a Roland MicroCube, about the size and shape of a car battery. A grand two watts of power, but with a piezo pick-up stuck to the front of the guitar, it gave me more than enough juice.

The stick-to-the-front transducer wasn't pretty and it required some extra tape to keep it in place, but it did work. 

I decided that since I will be likely be playing out more, given that the CM's already have another gig lined up at the assisted living place this fall, I should consider having a pick-up installed in one of the ukes. I hunted around and found the go-to guy for such things in Portland, Ryan Lynn, and he didn't see any problem doing it, so that is in progress. He's busy, so it will take a week or ten days to get to it.

What this means is, I can use a standard quarter-inch jack and cable from the uke to the amp, and kick the volume up. Ideally, I need a dedicated acoustic amp, and failing that, some kind of pre-amp between the other end of the cable and the amp, but there are a bunch of those around and not really expensive, so, depending on how the thing sounds after the pick-up (K&K Twin Spots) is installed, I might become more of a gear head ...

Vampire!

I've been corresponding with Duncan McGeary, a writer from Bend, OR, and during a back-and-forth on how I would have written this or that, I offered an observation. Much like the ones wherein the villain does things that will result in the hero kicking his ass, or the post on mystery heuristics, in which I offer my take on those rules-of-thumb, this one is a hit on the vampire tale.

Herewith:

"Why, when a cop finds a body drained of blood with two holes in the corpse's neck, isn't the first thought–the first thought–in his mind, "Oh, shit, a vampire!" Or, at the very least, "Oh, shit, some psycho who thinks he's a vampire!" I mean, it's all over our entertainment culture, you can't miss it, and for the cops not to have that thought strikes me as totally unbelievable; it kills my suspension of disbelief. Really? Has the cop never seen a TV show, a movie, a comic book, a novel? He doesn't have to believe in real vampires, but if he doesn't acknowledge it? Right away, the cop is a dunce, albeit the writer is making him such for a plot device that, for me, doesn't play any more. 

Stop any ten people on the street and posit this scenario: The cops find a body in a motel, it's been drained of blood, and there are two puncture marks on the neck, over the big blood vessel. Who you think might have done it?

How many do you reckon won't say "Its a vampire!" 

I haven't written a vampire story in twenty-odd years, and that one was a short and comic tale. In it, I had the vampire wearing sunblock and a Kevlar vest; at the time, these were still relatively-novel concepts. Both have been exploited a lot since, and again, it makes me wonder. If one of the few ways you can kill a vampire is with a stake through the heart, why wouldn't one with half a brain have a trauma plate over his heart to turn away stakes, arrows, or wooden bullets? A fireproof gun safe for a coffin, only able to be opened from inside? A really good watch or an iPhone app  that warns them dawn is coming? Wouldn't you take such precautions? I would.

Not, nowever, if the plot device needs to have them kinda stupid. If they are that stupid or arrogant, we need to know that ..."

Paying Attention

I've been nose-to-the-grindstone here of late, so I haven't been keeping up with the news. I know who Bradley Manning is, the Wikileaks and all, and that he just got thirty-five years in the pen, but I somehow missed that he is a woman trapped in a man's body ...

I guess I need to pay more attention ...

Hey, Jude

Got the pathologist's report back on the skin tag removed from Jude's chest last Thursday, and the key word here is ...

... benign ...

Even though they would have gotten it all either way–they took out a big margin–any time you can get past the "cancer" word is good.

Couple Books

Been a while since I did any book reviews, and there are a couple I wanted to bring to your attention ...

I first became aware of Carsten Stroud with his 1992 novel, Lizard Skin. A tour-de-force, off-the-wall romp featuring a loosey-goosey Montana state trooper and a bunch of craziness; I was hooked by his writing and sense of lunatic fun.

So I looked for his other titles, found them, and have enjoyed them all. 

His most recent novels have gone much deeper into Stephen King territory, first with Niceville, which is ever not-so-nice, and the sequel, The Homecoming. There is a third book in what is billed as a trilogy, currently in-progress. 

The man can write, and the books are peppered with bits that the observant and relatively-literate reader who likes old movies will find amusing. A line from The Scarlett Pimpernel here, a comparison to an actor in a certain film there. Odd data that spark recognition and grins, at least in this reader.

Niceville is as spooky as Derry, there's a fair amount of gunplay, and what evil lurks there manifests in deadly ways. These are not for those easily made uneasy. People are murdered, bad things happen to children, and there's a monster at work that make the town a place you wouldn't want to pass on the freeway at eighty wearing blinders.

But the man can write, and he does carry you along turning pages. Check him out, and any of his books will do–they are all good.

Duncan McGeary wrote a trio of fantasy novels back in the early eighties; apparently life happened, he bought a business, (Pegasus Comics, in Bend, OR) started a family, and with this and that, he drifted away from writing.

Fast forward thirty years ...

McGeary is back, and the first novel in a new series, available in ebook on Amazon.com, starts with Death of an Immortal. Terrell is not your sparkly, sweet, doe-eyed kind of vampire, he's a monster. He's not happy with himself, and he'd rather not be, but he can't help it.

There's a subplot with an abusive cop; it's mostly set in Oregon, and if you like your undead to be more along the lines of  Fright Night  than you do Twilight, these will be your cup of gore ...

There are other vampires There is a lot of chomping and blood and some sex, newly-turned vampires arriving in the undead state both hungry and horny.

If you like the first one, the second one is about to be released, and he's working on a third.

Elmore Leonard

Elmore "Dutch" Leonard

1925-2012

One of the greats in modern genre literature, Dutch Leonard, has passed away from complications of a stroke suffered last month. He was 87.  

His stories and books are too many to list here, but here's the opening of the wiki:

Elmore Leonard
Born	(1925-10-11)October 11, 1925 New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Died	August 20, 2013(2013-08-20) (aged 87) Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, United States
Occupation	Author, screenwriter
Genres	Pulp fiction, Westerns, crime fiction

Elmore John Leonard Jr. (October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013) was an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were Westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.

Among his best-known works are Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk and Rum Punch, which was filmed as Jackie Brown. Leonard's short stories include ones that became the films 3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T, as well as the current TV series on FX, Justified.

I was a long-time fan, read all his books I could find, and have reviewed Justified here, along with some fun connections to Leonard's other work in his most recent Raylan.

We never met, though we did once exchange a couple of letters, back in the papermail days.
He had written a book about a prison escape, (Out of Sight) which was later made into a movie starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, and in the book, got some gun stuff wrong.

That was unusual for him, so I dropped him a note. Did he know that the chances of the character using a .38 auto pistol were really slim?

Actually, yes, he said. He had written .380 auto, and a helpful copy editor had "fixed" it for him, assuming he had made a mistake. He hoped to get the next edition of the book changed back. 

It was an affable exchange, and as I recall, his letter was handwritten. 

Adiós, Dutch.

Yet Another Gig ...

The CM's had a short gig at the Woodstock Farmer's Market in SE Portland today. Steve Cooper, a Real Musician™ asked us to sit in for a few numbers during his gig at the outdoor market. He and a bass player, Bill, were doing a couple hours, but Cooper is a kind man and made room for us–literally–in the little kiosk next to the people making carrot juice ...

I had planned to play standing, so I brought the ukulele instead of the guitar, which has no strap, nor provision for one, so I can't play the guitar unless I'm seated. Turned out there was a chair for me anyhow, but there you go.

We had six tunes more or less ready, and since it was kid's day and a lot of activities were set up for children, we selected some goofy and kid-friendly songs.

1.  Sloop John B
2. Don't Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man) 
3. The Lion Sleeps Tonight
4. Puff the Magic Dragon
5. Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?
6. Portland is My Home Town.

We did a respectable job, though I had been expecting that Cooper would lead and we'd back him, he was worried about his electric guitar overriding us, so he just strummed an uke and let us play until the last number, one of his originals.

One funny: I was checking the list of things for kids to do, here, when I came across one called "Cornhole," under the auspices of one "O'Tingley Cornhole."

Well, what kind of gig have you gotten us here, Mr. Cooper? 

My immediate reaction was to send it to Jay Leno's headlines; turns out it wasn't what my mind-in-the-gutter thought, but  a game like horseshoes, using wooden boxes and tossed bags of corn.

Something of a letdown, that ...

Um. Anyhow, we survived another outing. Getting to be old hat. After all, I can now say, "Yeah, I played at Woodstock ..." Where do you go from there?

Busy

Been a busy week hereabouts. 

My nephew and his fiancé are on a long camping trip and they swung by for a visit. Been here a few days, we had a barbecue and the family over for meet 'n' greet. Lovely young woman, the fiancé.

Both Jude and Layla have had their sorta-annual visits to the vet, which cost a small fortune, and Thursday, Jude is having surgery to remove a lump on his chest. The needle biopsy was not definitive, but the treatment is the same either way. That won't be cheap, either.

There is an upcoming gig for a Real Musician™ I know from our jam group who is letting us back him for a few numbers at an outdoor market. I need to learn to play and sing six songs on the ukulele by then, and then is coming up soon.

There's an upcoming martial arts seminar to benefit my teacher, whose medical problems caused a scare. He's fine now, but the bills for the treatment are large.

My wife hurt her back working out,  and while it wasn't majorly crippling, it was enough to slow her down. 

The old dog we recently acquired, Crombie, is doing very well, better than expected, but that's one more little thing that has to be attended to–she's not quite used to the house and we can't leave her alone until she recognizes that peeing outside is the way to go ...

And, of course, the novel upon which I am cranking  away at a speed I thought I'd left behind, back in the good old days, is no less overdue than it has been.

The Mini needs new tires and Costco not only doesn't have any, they can't get any in that size.

Odd how it happens. Rolling along, things under control, and all of a moment, we get busy. Sometimes it is precipitated by a big event; my father's passing and the trip to and from Louisiana, with its sequela. 

And sometimes, it's just, you know, one little thing and then another and another and all of sudden, they add up ...

And the beat goes on ...

Attitude

Ten days or so back, a kid walked into Beaverton City Hall and told the clerk he was ODing on mushrooms. Banged his head again a receptionist's glass wall. 

She called for help. 

A trio of police officers came out to talk to him, but he got agitated and aggressive, offered that he was gonna kill somebody, so they tackled him. (Link above takes you to the video.)

The kid–he's eighteen, skinny, dressed in shorts and T-shirt–managed to pull a pistol from one of the officer's retention holster as they went down and cook off a shot. Supposedly there are three levels of retention with the Beaverton police holsters, and I don't know what level was in use. 

One of the cops got a death grip on the Glock, the others piled on, and they pepper sprayed and tased the hell out of him. According to the report I heard, they were at contact range with both the spray and the tasers, and they had to stop the pepper because it was affecting the officers but not the suspect. Tasers went seven rounds, along with a couple of solid knees, none of which helped, and it took three more officers to finally control the kid.

Now this is an unfortunate event. I never heard of anybody on mushrooms doing this kind of dance, and there was a report that there was cocaine in the kid's system, which would explain a lot more than psilocybin alone. 

But the point of this post is, attitude alone will take you a long way. Imagine if this kid had serious training in a fighting art, or a knife ...

RED 2

I loved the first RED  movie, Willis, Parker, Malkovich, Mirren, Freeman, Dreyfus. It was a hoot, the old ops in the field, so I expected I would like the sequel, cleverly entitled RED 2. 

I loved the second one, too.

It is even sillier, less realistic, and everything a summer movie for grown ups should be. Old pro actors having fun, clever dialog, cartoon violence, and the last drop on a long and tall roller coaster. Bang! Boom! Whack! Screech!

Some nice touches the youngsters will miss: At a funeral early on, the organist plays "You Can't Always Get What You Want," an obvious homage to the funeral scene in "The Big Chill."   

Mirren pretends to be the Queen of England in an asylum scene. How many time has she played the role? And Anthony Hopkins ...

Most of the first cast is back, with some new/old faces, and as an old guy, I hooted and hollered. Silly? Absolutely. Fun? You betcha.

I found that reviewers who didn't like it tend to be young, no surprise. The younger they are, the less they approved of it. Rotten Tomatoes critics give it 41%, but the audiences are at 70%.

As is often the case, the critics are ... well, let's just say ... uninspiring. A few words for them:

There will come a time, I am here to tell you, that you will start to root for the old guys (and gals). You won't remember I told you so, and by then probably I will be gone, but gray and wrinkles are out there, kids, and if you make it past your extended adolescence, they will be waiting for you ...

The Vastalimi Gambit

Behold, the cover for The Vastalimi Gambit, the second book in the three book Cutter's Wars series. 

Pub date is 31 December 2013, so if you are staying home New Year's Eve ... ?

You can pre-order it here, or here.

I'm pretty happy with the cover, since I didn't expect to get Kay, it being photo-based like the cover for The Ramal Extraction, but Ginjer (my long-time editor) prevailed. When I pointed out that Wink–the guy in the foreground–had his finger curled around the trigger, which is not a good gun-safety thing, the art director fixed that.

Always nice to work with editors and artists who attend to the small details.

Ace is now an imprint of the megalith publisher created by the recent merger of Penguin Books and Random House, jokingly referred to as "Random Penguin," in some circles.

I like that name, Random Penguin, it has a certain ... je ne sais quoi, no?

At one point, the collection of imprint lines got pretty long as houses merged; here is a book from Ace/Berkeley/Putnam/Penguin/Random House. 

And now I need to get back to finishing the third in the series, which is overdue. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one; I hope it's not an oncoming train ...

Goin' to the Dawgs

L. to R: Layla, Crombie, Jude

We have inherited a new dog. 

Well, actually, an old dog. Oldest dog we've ever had.

Crombie is seventeen, a Cocker Spaniel, and they average 12-15 years. She is pretty much deaf, eyes are cloudy, though she can still see; she's very thin, and has a couple of age-related medical problems. 

She belonged to my nephew and his wife, in San Francisco. They have a two-year-old son and a newborn boy, and keeping track of a terrible-two and breastfeeding a newbie takes a lot of energy, not leaving much for an old dog who needs attention. 

When my wife went to visit, she saw the situation, realized that the dog's quality of life was not what it could be, and offered to take her.

We were worried about integrating a new critter into the household, what with two long-established dogs and a cat, but we've be able to do it before, and figured we could manage it again.

We collected Crombie at the airport yesterday. Set up the baby gates and fences and kennels and introduced her to Jude and Layla and Balou.

The reaction so far? 

The dogs looked at her and shrugged. A dog? Yawn.

The cat came round, hopped up onto the counter, looked at Crombie. Another dog? Yawn ...

We have been careful with food, since Jude will eat anything he can get his teeth into, we don't want him running Crombie off. When we put food into her pen, he gobbles his and then stands at the fence staring longingly at Crombie's dish. She doesn't eat as fast as he does.

A starving grizzly bear doesn't eat as fast as Jude does. We had to get in a special bowl with little knobs in it to slow him down so he didn't accidentally inhale his supper. Plus he's on a lower-calorie diet, because we have let him get too big. So he's hungrier than usual.

Crombie seems to be adjusting okay, though she's not used to as much space, nor to spending much time outside. We have a fenced-in back yard; the SF branch of the family lives upstairs in a one-bedroom apartment.

Um. Anyway, so far, so good. We'll see how it goes, and we'll be sticking close to home for a bit to make sure things stay on an even keel.

Never a dull moment.