Almost 100 pages into a new novel

We've just returned from a two-week voyage through the Panama Canal aboard Holland-America's m/s Statendam. Aboard ship I get a lot of writing done—there's not much else for an introvert to do during long days at sea—and this time got a goodly chunk written of the fifth Steve Martinez novel, working title Tracking the Beast. 

It now stands at just short of 100 typescript pages, about one-third of a full novel.

During the two weeks I wrote myself out of a long vexing hole, but also into another one. Such is the life of the dilettante gentleman novelist.

Ancient history

The photograph above was sent to me by my old friend Sam Williamson, whom I met at age 8 and have maintained a friendship with ever since. He found it in an old album kept by his parents (both of whom were surrogate parents to me). I think one of them must have taken the photo in 1967, shortly before or after Debby and I were married.

Forty-six years later Debby is still a knockout, but I am no longer so hirsute.

It is only mildly embarrassing to recall that only months before I was in my Camus phase, affecting a black beret and turtleneck under a brown corduroy jacket (that last is in the photo) and smoking Gauloises.

I had dreams of becoming an Author. But I soon discovered that the work was harder than I was willing to do . . . at that time.

Correspondence

Every once in a while, maybe twice a month, someone writes to say he or she read one of my books and liked it. That always provides a lift to the morning.

And sometimes there is a truly special letter. This morning one came from a Dutchman:

"I just want to write you this email for thanking writing the book 'Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America'. I buy it earlier 1994 (Dutch version) and read it with pleasure.

"Now, almost 20 years later I am still in the possession of this book and read it several times. But what is important to me, it has become a special book. In difficult times, this book is the only book I can read. For no other book I have the patience and concentration to read it. Reading your book gives me peace and relaxation on a psychological level in difficult times. Maybe it sounds weird but it's a kind of Zen or mindfulness for me.

"At this moment, recovering from an open heart surgery, your book (again) gives me peace and relaxation.  

"So thanks’ again for writing this beautiful book."

Well. What can one say besides "You're very welcome"?

Coasting

This blog has been online off and on (mostly off lately) for eight years now, and it's admittedly running out of steam. So, for that matter, is blogging in general.

The phenomenon has been largely shoved aside by social media such as Facebook and Twitter, where people can post their opinions and relay those of others far more easily and succinctly than in blog format. I've been doing the same (on Facebook) rather than sitting and laboriously composing what I hope are shapely mini-essays.

All the same, now and then the urge to write something more substantial, useful and readable overcomes me, and so I will keep this blog going in the fits-and-starts form it has reflected in the last year or two.

But it won't be in service of my books, except in an oblique way. It'll be mostly a catchall of things I have to say, or want to say, or think are worth saying.

Don't be surprised if it's heavy on travel subjects. Of late that has occupied much of my time—not actual traveling, but planning.

In December the Lady Friend and I are riding Amtrak's Capitol Limited between Chicago and Washington, D.C., where we'll spend Christmas with our elder son and his crew.

In January we're taking the railroad's Southwest Chief to Los Angeles, thence a coastal train to San Diego, where we'll embark on Holland-America's Statendam for a cruise through the Panama Canal to Fort Lauderdale.

Late in the summer we plan to board Amtrak's flagship Empire Builder for a trip to Seattle, thence head up the coast by bus to Bellingham and the Alaska Ferry to Ketchikan, Alaska. From Ketchikan we'll take a southbound ferry to Prince Rupert, B.C. After a day or two there, we'll take the VIA Rail train once called the Skeena inland to Prince George, B.C., and Jasper, Alta. After a car trip to Banff and Lake Louise, we'll return to Jasper and ride VIA's storied Canadian to Vancouver. Finally, we'll ride an Amtrak Cascades train from Vancouver to Seattle and the Empire Builder home.

Expect detailed reports of the trips, as well as photographs of them.

Notice a sameness about these plans? None involve flying, except for the relatively short hop from Fort Lauderdale to Chicago. I've got a bad back and can't sit in an airline seat for more than two, maybe three, hours without deplaning in agony. Therefore in recent years I've limited my travel to surface journeys that allow me to get up frequently and move about in ways one can't in an airliner aisle.

Yes, this cramps one's traveling style. We haven't been to Europe in many years.

But there's a solution: to take ship aboard Cunard's Queen Mary II, which plies the North Atlantic between New York and Southampton regularly.

Expensive? Not as much as you'd think, only a little more than flying. If you take the last winter crossing in January, for instance, you could book an interior stateroom for as little as $799 per person—a steal for seven days at sea.

Of course winter weather in the North Atlantic might be no bargain.

Maybe sometime in the spring of 2015 . . .

Red Smith

Great journalists are praised at the wake but forgotten after the grave. Mike Royko lives on mostly in the memories of his contemporaries. Roger Ebert still casts a mighty shadow, but as the years roll on, his also will fade.

Few have broken the mold. H.L. Mencken did. So has Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith, perhaps the greatest sportswriter of them all.

The esteemed Library of America's new American Pastime: The Very Best of Red Smith (hardcover $30, Kindle ebook $14.99) is now taking me back to the days when anybody who could read eagerly devoured the daily 800 words Smith wrote, mostly for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times.

The book was edited by Daniel Okrent, himself a journalistic heavyweight, and its 150-odd columns are a national treasure, as was their creator.

I cannot bear to read Smith's piece on the death of Seabiscuit, but I am drawn to it again and again. It's not just his inimitably sharp wit and graceful prose that so mesmerizes me—it's also his deep humanity and wisdom.

Smith loved most sports, especially baseball, but he knew he was essentially addressing children's games writ large. (This was in the 1940s to 1970s, before they became enormous corporate creatures.)

Enough. Now back to the Kindle for a little more joy.

Back in winter quarters

Yesterday we completed our annual migration from the Writer's Lair on Lake Superior to winter quarters in suburban Chicago. The timing seems to be good, because today's forecast is for four to six inches of snow in Ontonagon County, the prototype of my novels' Porcupine County. This year, the almanacs say, winter is to arrive early, settle in deeply, and stay long.

Meanwhile, you might want to read Michael A. Black's long interview of me in the Summer issue of Crimespree Magazine. I've put it up on my web site.

Donna Leon

Some people like plot-driven mysteries, with lots of sex, gunplay and car crashes. Other people prefer character-driven mysteries, with lots of rumination, insight and local color. I'm one of the latter.

Right now I'm four chapters into Donna Leon's 22nd whodunit, The Golden Egg. Its first chapter is set entirely at the family dinner table of Commissario Guido Brunetti. This is a family of intellectuals, including the Brunettis' teen-age children, and they revel in wordplay.

"If the Brunettis had a religion, aside from a formal adherence to some of the outward, decorative manifestations of Christianity, it was language. Puns and jokes, crossword puzzles and teasers were to them what communion and confirmation were to Catholics. Bad grammar was a venial sin, deliberate corruption of meaning was mortal. The children had taken pride in reaching the stages of awareness where they, too, could partake in the progressively more serious sacraments; raised in this faith, they did not think to question its values."

Now wouldn't you love to go to their house for dinner?

The first three chapters involve no crime, except for a reference to petty bribery. Leon simply introduces us to her dramatis personae, including Vice-Questore Patta, Brunetti's pompous boss; Signorina Elettra, the police station's brilliant and sly secretary, and Inspector Vianello, Brunetti's assistant and sounding board. We also meet Venice, its sights, sounds, smells and especially cuisine.

Not until Chapter Four do we finally meet the homicide victim.

Slow to start? Not at all. Like P.D. James, Donna Leon is a master of both scene-setting and psychological suspense. From the very first, she enlists the reader's intellect in a conspiracy of discovery. We know from the first that nothing is wasted, that clues abound in her casual asides. She makes us eager to read on, to find out what's coming.

That takes art as well as skill.