I figured it was about time that I updated the Writing page of this blog.  If writing is an interest of yours, or if (for some reason) my writing is of interest, then click on the Writing button at the top of the blog and read away.

This weekend, author Patricia Cornwell spent $250,000 for full page newspaper ads to defend her recent $1 Million dollar donation to the Crime Scene Academy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Last week, Cornwell told reporters that she decided to donate the money to help teach law enforcement officers how to handle crime scenes after being disgusted by what she saw while following police:

“I’ve seen cops walk through blood. I’ve seen them leave their own fingerprints on a window. I’ve seen bloody clothing put in a plastic bag, instead of a paper bag, so it decomposes.”

In the ads, she says this:

“What has been publicized certainly does not accurately reflect my deep respect and admiration for these hardworking law enforcement professionals.”

And she adds that her comments were directed at the general public, not police.

“I’ve been riding with the police for 30 years. I care about these people and I’m not criticizing them. Any mistakes investigators make are not their fault. Too often they don’t have the training or resources they need, which is what the donation is meant to address.”

She then complained about television shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which she accuses of “misinforming people about police.” TV, she says, has led people to believe they’re helping police when they meddle with crime scenes. Of course, crime fiction in print would never do such a despicable thing, the author did not add.

I like ‘CSI,’ and I don’t recall seeing episodes that encourage people to tamper with evidence in any way. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that those people who stage evidence generally find themselves in legal hot water by episode’s end.

So if it’s really time that we “take control of our crime scenes again,” as Cornwell has stated, then maybe crime fiction of any kind should be banned universally. That way, no one would ever get a wrong idea.

Think she’d go for that?

She says TV has led people to think they’re helping when they meddle with crime scenes, and cites an instance in which robbery victims laid out index cards highlighting evidence for the police to find.

A sad update to an earlier post here at Patrick’s Place:

Local radio and television personality and published author Red Evans lost his battle with cancer this morning.

Red was diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier this year, the same year that he published his first novel, On Ice, at age 75, proving that it is never too late to see a dream through.

I spoke to Red’s son earlier this evening, who says that what’s important now is that Red is out of pain and in a better place.  In an email to members of the writing group Red spoke to just last month, his son said that his father “entered the Pearly Gates conjuring up thoughts for his first heavenly novel.”

Local author Dave Moulton recently wrote a piece about Red’s visit with the group.  You can view that post here.

Red will be greatly missed.

Patrick’s Place received some sad news that involves local television as well as the world of local writers in the Lowcountry:  author and former broadcaster Red Evans is fighting cancer and was placed in hospice care just before Christmas.

Originally known as “The Rockin’ Redhead” on local radio, and then as a local television journalist, Evans, 75, calls himself a three, possibly four-career guy:

“Thirty years in broadcasting, as The Rockin’ Redhead and then as a TV journalist. I’m a three-career guy, maybe even four. A radio personality when I was young, spinning Elvis, Fats, and the drifters. I was the Rockin’ Redhead, a wisecracking, adlibbing deejay with voice mimics and catch phrases. Alas, I outgrew all that and got serious, turning to news which occupied my focus for the next twenty years and eventually led to lobbying Congress in Washington, DC and public speaking. Fifteen years later, after I retired I began my fourth career, writing fiction and playing with my grandchldren in Charleston, SC where I reside with my wife of 50 years.”

That description of Red, written by Red, is found on his blog, which he just began back in November, after publishing his first novel, On Ice, an unusual road trip story about a corpse being kept literally on ice in a kiddie pool, a farm boy and a flatulent dog.

More on the novel can be found at the publisher’s site, incidentally.

Upon learning of his diagnosis, according to Evans’s son, Mike, Red didn’t abandon his sense of humor.   “He said his cancer now has cancer and that the tumors in his body are all trying to join up with each other.”

I’ve never met Red officially, though I know we were recently in the same building when he stopped by to talk about his novel during a guest segment.

Another local author, Dave Moulton, told me the other day that Red read a passage from his book during last month’s meeting of the local writers group I’ve been attending.  Unfortunately, I missed that session.

Please keep Red and his family in your thoughts and prayers.

Keep fighting, Red.

I’m on Dean Koontz’s mailing list because he’s my favorite author. A few times a year, I receive a newsletter from him that mentions his upcoming releases, like The Darkest Evening of the Year, which came out today.

As is often his custom, he includes photos of Trixie, his beloved Golden Retriever that he adopted years ago. Trixie was to have been a service dog, but had a joint problem that required surgery; once a dog has joint surgery, it is no longer eligible to be a service dog, so Trixie was “retired” from the service, and that’s how Dean and his wife, Gerda, were able to adopt her.

The cover of this latest newsletter had a collection of eight photos of Trixie in various poses. There was one with a big smile — the kind only an ever-happy Golden Retriever can give, Trixie in a Santa hat, Trixie wearing Easter bunny ears, and Trixie wearing Sunglasses and doing her best at looking glamorous.

At the top of the page in bold letters, it read, simply, “Trixie Koontz.” The first time I looked at it, my eyes immediately went to the photos of this beautiful dog. It took me a moment to notice the second line:

5 October 1995–30 June 2007

When it comes to animals, particularly those of the canine persuasion, I’m a sap. The biggest sap in the world, in fact. I suppose that not many people would admit that. So to say the least, that line didn’t exactly raise my spirits.

It turns out that Trixie had developed an agressive form of cancer, and facing a painful death as the illness progressed, the Koontzes decided to put her down.  At his website, he describes how Trixie loved to have her head held in his hands while he rubbed her cheeks; Dean and Gerda were holding her when she passed.  And that’s when they learned firsthand how devastating the loss of a dog can be:

“That Saturday was the hardest day of our lives. The pain is more intense than any we have known before. The house seems empty without her, and we feel lost.”

Koontz had made Trixie one of his most popular marketers.  She would write messages to her master’s readers that would be crafted in a style that a dog might use, if a dog could actually write:

“Is big week for me because I am dog. Every week is big when you’re a dog. Every week is full of joy, kibble, plush toys, tennis balls, cookies, tummy rubs, wriggling in grass, and more, when you are dog. Dad doesn’t get kibble or plush toys (don’t know why, except maybe he hasn’t been good boy, good), and he is too embarrassed to wriggle on back in grass, so only fun he gets is having new book in stores.”

He has written a new message from Trixie in which she talks about waiting for her human parents at  Rainbow Bridge.  (If you’ve never heard of it, follow that link at your own risk; I can never get through it without tearing up.)

One of my uncles had owned dogs for years.  But they were outside dogs.  And while he fed them and took care of them, they didn’t spend much time indoors, and there wasn’t a great deal of one-on-one contact.  That changed years ago when he got a poodle mix that he named Petey.  Petey was an inside dog who followed my uncle everywhere.  My uncle suddenly realized that there’s something special about dogs.  Unfortunately, Petey was hit by a car and killed.  When the accident happened, my uncle grabbed him and sat in his living room cradling the dog in a daze.  His son called my parents and asked them to come over quickly, thinking that my uncle might actually die from the shock of the loss.

If you can’t imagine experiencing a loss like this, I genuinely feel sorry for you, because it must mean that you have never allowed yourself to get close to a dog.  Man’s relationship with these wonderful creatures dates all the way back to the caveman days according to early cave drawings.  Though cavemen never had dictionaries, encyclopedias or the internet, they were at least smart enough to recognize that these four-legged mammals were indeed friends.  And all these centuries later, there”s still nothing quite like a good dog.

Comedian George Carlin once said that every cute little puppy should come with a sign that reads, “Warning: This will end badly.”

And yet those of us who love dogs keep walking into that situation, because we’d rather have those precious years with our pets than live without them.  Dogs like Trixie ask for so little, and give so much.

That’s what makes them so special.

Author J.K. Rowling has announced, to “gasps and applause,” that one of the characters in the seven ridiculously successful Harry Potter books just happens to be gay.

The character she drop-kicked out of the literary closet was Professor Dumbledore.  She made the announcement at an appearance at Carnegie Hall when she took questions from the audience that included a query about whether Dumbledore would ever find true love.

I haven’t read any of the Potter novels and have yet to find any overwhelming motivation to do so.  This little surprise makes me neither more likely nor less likely to pick up one of the tales.

But I do note this:  how odd it is that people find out that the character is gay after the novel series was concluded.  There are some writers who would have shoved his sexuality down the readers’ throats from the first chapter.

Everyone doesn’t feel so defined by their sexuality alone that they make issue of it to everyone they encounter, and that’s true for some straights and gays.  Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with being open, but I wonder why some people feel the need to be as open as they sometimes are.

Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with keeping your business private.

I was browsing books at the book store, which is always a good place to go if you want to browse books, and I came upon a treasury of American Short Stories on the bargain table. I should have bought it but I didn’t. Some of them I already have still boxed away in other similar books.

But I flipped through some pages and scanned a few familiar tales. There was Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, a story that manages to be slightly more chilling every time I read it…for a variety of reasons. Continue reading “The Collection”

Last week, I did something I haven’t done in a while: I attended a local writers group and actually brought something along to read for the group.

It took a bit of courage for me to do so: I’m not a huge fan of reading my writing out loud, although it unquestionably helps: I spotted an error in which I had omitted the word that I hadn’t seen when I had read the passage to myself several times before. Sometimes your eyes just fill in a missing word without you realizing it has even happened.

The reading did, I’m happy to say, go well. It is a supportive group, after all, which is what led me to actually bring something to read to start with. I’m definitely glad that I managed to work up the gumption to read something, and I was very grateful for the constructive criticism. That’s what a writers group is supposed to be about in my book.

But here’s where the “stubborn” part came in. Continue reading “The Stubborn Writer”

Yesterday, I wrote about a common grammar blunder when it comes to something being bitten, not “bit” that drives me crazy.

One might expect me to turn off the television and go to some print media, instead, where the writing should surely be better.

Yeah…so I tried that.  Didn’t help. Continue reading “Still Taking More…”

Back in high school — yes, I actually remember that far back, thanks — I had an English teacher who once told a classmate that something he had said had just made her ears “tingle with disgust.”

Mine have lately. I get this way almost every time a human has an unpleasant encounter with a life form of the animal persuasion.

Yesterday, in the waters off Isle of Palms, two different people, a 10-year-old and a 30-somthing-year-old, got a reminder the hard way that when one wades into the ocean, one is walking right into the home of animals that can sometimes pose a danger. To be more specific, their legs became temporary gnawing toys for what is almost certainly a shark of some description.

Local news media were quick to report the situation, and during various live shots and taped reports, I’ve heard that unfortunate choice of wording that I hear every time there’s a bite involved. I’ve heard this blunder at every station I have ever worked for, and plenty of others that I haven’t. The little number goes something like this:

“…when he was bit by a shark…”

If you can’t tell what’s wrong with that sentence, it’s probably to your advantage to read up on your grammar. The rest of you, surely recognize immediately that it should have read, “was bitten.”

Bitten, of course, is the participle form of bit, which means that while the shark bit the person, the person was bitten by the shark and beachgoers could run the risk of being bitten by sharks as well.

I was sitting in my office at good old Channel 37 when I heard one reporter too many say it incorrectly. So I sent an email to the newsroom — they’re probably sorry I know how to email all of the newsroom employees with a single click — reminding them of this basic principle of grammar. One of the anchors, who later admitted to wanting to jump through the camera upon hearing another reporter make the same mistake, thanked me for reminding our colleagues.

Grammar is a big part of communication. Bad grammar from a reporter or anchor makes them stop communicating, because the listener gets so distracted by the error that he or she stops listening for at least a couple of sentences while shaking their head at the blunder.

Something will bite someone again one day. Perhaps sooner than later. And I’ll be ready with my memo…and my finger over the send button…again.

I did something earlier tonight that I haven’t done in quite a while: I attended a local writers group.

It’s one of those informal gathering of writers, some published, some not, who like to present pieces they have written and get feedback. It’s intimidating, but the group seems to be made up of writers who are very positive and encouraging of each other, which is, unfortunately, rare from the writers groups I have been exposed to in the past. Continue reading “Tinkering with the Foundation”

The advertisement in today’s Publishers Lunch newsletter caught my eye immediately:

Come to Thriller SchoolWant to improve your craft? Focus on dialog. Plotting. Research? Making a continuing character work? Have lunch with an agent? Or 20? (Yes, everyone will have an agent their table.)

Sounds great. Until I read that it’s in New York City during ThrillerFest in July. I’m hoping that ThrillerFest eventually makes it down south. There are scary things in, say, Atlanta or Charlotte.

USA Today recently published a list of the 25 Most Memorable Books of the last quarter-century. Leading the list, as you might guess, is the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

I must admit feeling pretty culturally-literate at the moment: I’ve actually heard of every book on the list. I haven’t read most of them, mind you, but I’ve at least heard of them.