Thanksgiving gave me opportunity to read James Lee Burke

Thanksgiving gave me opportunity to read a James Lee Burke mystery Pegasus Descending. I had a bus ride to my family's party, and my kindle was loaded with electricity both from the plug in my wall at home and from his writing on the page.

I give thanks for his story-telling ability. I can sail away to places I have never visited before, and experience them with all my senses. How wonderful is writing like that? In fact, for over half the bus ride, I was in Florida while riding on the New Jersey Turnpike. I lived the story with his detective Dave Robicheaux. One of the reasons I write the Samantha Cochran manuscipts in first person is James Lee Burke. He taught me how effective that person is to create a multi-sensory scene.
However, that is where the comparison in our writing styles diverges as his beautiful lengthy descriptions of every setting are not present in my writing. I write with more urgency. Probably the difference between the writing of an intense New Yorker versus the slow pace of the laid-back south and mid-west populace.
If you have not had the chance to read Mr. Burke, you should start within the minute, because it beats the hell out of almost everything else you can do legally wherever you live.
I may have written this before somewhere a blog or a tweet or on my Facebook page, but every time I pick up one of his novels, no matter which of his detectives is the protagonist, I leave New Jersey and travel to Louisiana, or Texas or Idaho or wherever his book takes place. Cheapest vacation you can ever buy. And one of the safest, no driving to a resort, no flying to a destination, and no travel delays that make your connections disconnected.
Oh, and if you were wondering if Alafair Burke, who writes mysteries as well, is related to him, her credentials as a former DA in the great Northwest does not require genetic compatibility with Mr. Burke. She has earned her ranking as a mystery writer on her own. She is quite prolific. However, she is his daughter and neither of the two will disclaim that fact. He has stated, she was writing mysteries before he ever penned one Dave Robicheaux manuscript.

I leave with this final thought, James Lee Burke is such a talented writer that he has won an Edgar (the award given by Mystery Writers of America for the best mystery novel of the year) for two of his detectives.

Now stop reading this post and go download or buy one of his books.

Here is a link for the order and complete listing of Mr. James Lee Burke's works

Or as an alternative, buy one of Alafair's
Here are the books of Alafair Burke in order.

One last thing, if you think you are too snooty and proper to read mysteries, because they are not literate enough or they do not present the level of academia that your taste requires, before I give you the you are one number sign with my middle finger, remember, Robert B. Parker taught college level English, as did Mr. Burke. His daughter's teaching credentials are listed at the link above. Things sometimes are not what they seem; oh wait, isn't that what most mysteries are based on. So if mysteries are the pablum of the masses, their author-chefs can still cook the hell out of them.


Enjoy. Read and live.
--- L.A. Preschel

Political Life goes on

I have published a political rant on my Facebook page.
So if you dare, go visit this link.

I will be back soon with more about noir mysteries and Samantha Cochran.

Thanks for the look and see today.

L.A. Preschel

Live to Write and Live to Read

Live to Write and Live to Read

Live to Write - I'm over 70 years old and that is my motto.
Write to Live - A life that would be otherwise unavailable to me.

Live to read - I hope my audience believes that. I'm retired and still learning everyday.
           A life without reading is dull and uninformed.
Read to Live - a life/story you want to discover that is unique, and yet, obscure to you.
           The key to discovery is exploring the written world, fact, fiction and fantasy.

Why Noir Mysteries Work

Noir Mysteries as a genre were created during the struggling times before World War ii. The world seemed broken then, as men with no morals made lots of money while good men seemed to struggle to get by. In America, the economy teetered on the edge of prosperity, and looked into the deep crevice of the depression.

Tough men took what they wanted and good men were victims. The world did not look past men as women were an afterthought, a temptation, or a side story on the way to a conclusion. They stayed home and raised families. Only good girls and bad girls existed, and neither was a fleshed out character. 

Yet, the noir stories worked so well, because somehow during the course of the mystery, evil was thwarted and justice preserved. The world returned to some balance of fairness and “the good guys” or at least, "the less bad guys" won.

It was every reader's wish for the real world to correspond to the written one. 

Eighty years later, the genre can still work. Madoff, Strehli, and insider trading the cheaters make profits and the honest suffer. When a President declares himself rich even though he declared bankruptcy in the past - building his empire on the backs of his broken creditors - and when police shoot innocent people without much justification – they always seem to have their body cams off when they do it. The world of the noir has become real life. We retrogress back to the world as it was in the 1930's and 1940's, but with the modern threat of environmental pollution recognized as fact not fiction. 

Reality offers justification for the noir mysteries on my pages. 

In my written world, I want a person who is Machiavellian enough to consider the path to justice immaterial, as long as justice is serviced. Forget the map, trespass, scam and swindle in the name of justice, but get it done right at the conclusion. 

I don’t want that in real life, but in fiction, I am so ready for Sam Cochran and Catherine Worthington. Let’s twist the noir paradigm and rebalance world through them. They are females who matter, because they won't let the world throw them aside. Welcome to the Sam-Cat mystery series.

L.A. Preschel  

the Arts and the Crafts of Writers  by L.A. Preschel.

This essay was originally written for Clued-in the newsletter of the Central Jersey Chapter of Sisters in Crime. I reprint here because ... no other reason than I want to. 

When I first became involved in writing fiction (at the age of 50), an editor/friend noticed that I was grammatically challenged. My excuse is that from 2nd to 4th grade in the Bronx school system, they experimented with a new way to teach reading. I never learned phonetics and I never was taught grammar. 

My friend who edited my first attempt at fiction (a vampire manuscript that sucked my life's blood, but will never see the light of day?) physically brought me to Barnes & Nobles and pointed me to "the little book," The Elements of Styleby Strunk & White. She felt this was a rite of passage involving editors and writers since the middle of the twentieth century. 

Report/author Charles Osgood is quoted on the cover of the little bookthusly, "... still a little book, small enough and important enough to carry in your pocket, as I carry mine." 

I have had several editors since my initiation rite into authorship. Everyone has said to me at one time or another, "Where is your Strunk and White. You have no idea how to punctuate English." And sadly, they are right, but my French is even worse. I keep the little book near me, and if I have a grammatical question, I look at it. Often, I have no idea that I have mis-punctuated. I guess that is what editors were created for.  

In the forward to the fourth edition of Strunk & White, p. x, Roger Angell wrote concerning the rules and concepts within the little book: "How simple they look, set down here in White's last chapter: 'Write in a way that comes naturally.' 'Revise and rewrite.' 'Do not explain too much,' and the rest; above all, the cleansing, clarion 'Be clear.' 

Strunk & Whiteis a great reference for writers. As evidence, I offer its section headings: 

1. Elementary Rules of Usage; it contains eleven simple rules with examples. 

2. Elementary Principles of Composition: 10 more rules to help a writer communicate to the reader. It instructs while not being condescending or complex. It has more examples.  

3. A Few Matters of Form: he details the usage or avoidance of colloquialisms, exclamations, headings, hyphens, numerals, formatting, quotations, references, etc.

4. Words and Expressions commonly misused: i.e. affect vs. effect, etc.   

5. An Approach to Style: a discussion of how an author goes about maximizing his or her impact on the reader. He emphasizes story telling is communicating an event clearly and concisely without the reader's attention or interest being broken, and without the author interposing their image/ego between the reader and the story. The reader must readily absorb the story without being distracted or losing interest. If the reader is willing to put down your manuscript, you have failed as a writer.   

The history of the little bookis interesting as well. William Strunk Jr. was a professor at Cornell in 1919 and taught English. E.B. White - the future author of Charlotte's Web- took his classes. They developed a friendship. Strunk's self-published the little book. It was universally known on campus, but unknown elsewhere. Being a self-published author, we should consider him ahead of the curve, a trendsetter, but he had no public relations department, and no internet presence. The little bookwas not yet a universally praised text. It wasn't carried by Amazon prime or Mississippi regular. That's a stream of thought joke, sorry.  

E.B. White, Strunk's student, went on to write for The New York Times, and eventually his writing and his looks caught the eye of Katherine Sergeant Angell. She wrote for the New Yorker, as well as being the fiction editor for that magazine. She convinced her boss, Chief Editor Harold Ross that he should hire E.B. as a staff writer. 

The notoriously shy White was seduced by the New Yorker, and Katherine, who became his wife after she divorced her first husband, Ernest Angell. With the marriage to Katherine, E.B. became the step-father of the above-mentioned Roger Angell - a famous sportswriter who also worked for the New Yorker under Chief Editor William Shawn. Roger eventually became the fiction editor at the New Yorker- almost like incest or a soap opera, As the World Press Turns? 

In 1959, with Mr. Strunk no longer living, Macmillian obtained the rights to the little book from Oliver Strunk, but the text needed revision and updating. Mr. White took on the job having previously written an article for the New Yorker(1957) concerning the little bookand it value. It had been revised in 1935 by Edward A. Tenney in association with William Strunk Jr., and so the third and fourth editions were revised by E.B. White. However, the New Yorkermagazine seems to have had a large part in making this wonderful text (sold for under $10) known to writers and educators across America. I recommend it for your literary library.           

The Elements of Style, the fourth edition. Strunk, William Jr. & White, E.B., 2000, 1979. Pearson Boston, et al.  (previous edition 1959, 1972 Macmillian Publishing Co. Inc. New York, N.Y. 

ISBN 10: 0-205-31342-6.          ISBN 13: 978-0-205-31342-6.