NYE 2014

Here's one for all those braving the coldest night of the year for our annual gumbo celebration, and even more for the ones who won't make it.

Seems like this question just won't go away

Yep. What would Jesus drink?

NPR has a story on a new class at the Boston Wine School that asks that seductive and seemingly perennial question. I'd sign up, but it's one heck of a commute. Here's a link to the story.

And don't forget the 99-cent book that takes a stab at answering the question.

Words to live by

The only way to stay in excellent health and to do good work is to not allow anyone to get you up in the morning until you are ready. -Rene Descartes

One of those songs

I stumbled on this performance in a Christmas collection of all things. This is one of those songs that challenges my equanimity, even from the woman who ripped up a photo of the pope on SNL 22 years ago.



But not as much as the original.

Something to keep in mind as you do your holiday shopping

The Wiz is right. Simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. The Hymn of Acxiom by Vienna Teng.

You can read the lyrics here, or read them as they appear on the video.



Here's a crowd-sourced version.



In other news, check out Vienna Tang's other stuff.

Long live Mr. Bennet

Happy 239th birthday, Jane Austen. #MrBennetRules!

I had the privilege of championing the cause of Mr. Bennet for an international audience on the BBC World Book Club radio show in January 2013. I come on the scene at 10:00.

And, for your dining and dancing pleasure, a sampling of the interaction between Mr and Mrs Bennet.

Surfin' Bird

Somehow I missed this in 1963. #ItsNeverTooLate #OnActualTV #AmericanBandstand

Putting the Em in Emily

Happy 184th Birthday Emily Dickinson.

I suspect that Ms. Dickinson was called Emily because of her obsession with the em dash. Or was it the other way around?

Misty Mountain Wonderland

More Christmas goodness. The Woman hates this song, but it's one of my favorites. #FlemingAndJohn #ZepAndFred #BabyBabyBabyDoYouLikeIt?

Have a Wunderfool Christmas

Here's a Christmas song you may not have heard before for your dining and dancing pleasure.



Download the full album for free.

As you watch movies this Christmas

Don't forget that Alfalfa in "Our Gang" = Guy who opens the gym/pool floor in "It's a Wonderful Life" = Freckle-faced Haynes the dog-faced boy in "White Christmas."

Alfafa


First sighting at 0:40.


Freckle-faced Haynes the dog-faced boy

The novelist as a sports star

Sometimes, late at night on the deck, I will write a particularly tasty passage and wish I had somebody to read it to right then. I’ll even read it back to myself out loud and say, “Now that’s some good writing, right there. Top shelf!”

Blake Atwood reminded me of this Monty Python sketch, one of my favorites.

I have often reflected on how weird it is for some professions to not only be done as thousands or millions of people watch (sports, music, acting) but even weirder that some are subjected to endless analysis and discussion.

Consider the pre-game/post-game shows for football and other sports. These things occur before/after every single game for the entire season, hours and hours spent dissecting every player and play, their past performance, their future prospects. The only other profession that comes close is the politician.

Imagine if we did the same thing for musicians. What if every stop on a rock star’s tour was televised, with instant replays of especially tasty passages, and post-concert analysis of the bands performance were dissected and analyzed, compared to the last ten concerts, and compared to stats and abilities of the other national rock stars in their conference or league?

This video spoofs that kind of thing for novelists.

Jamming with Julie and Buddy Miller in 1982

I finally got around to digitizing a box of old cassettes and found this little gem recorded with Julie and Buddy Miller. It's not a great song. In fact, it's unequivocally lame, but on this night 32 years ago it was my newest effort. I like to think my songwriting has improved since then.

In 1981, Julie Griffin left her band in NY and returned to Waco, TX, where I met her through a common friend. When my band played a gig at the fair, Julie played 3 songs to open for us.

Several months later, Buddy Miller came down to Texas looking for his lead singer and girlfriend. In January of 1982, Julie and Buddy invited my family over for dinner and afterward we broke out the guitars and swapped songs. I hit record on a jambox before we started.

I don't have the rights to post the recordings of their material, which included How Could You Say No, but I can post one of the songs I wrote that they sat in on, Julie singing background vocals with my wife, and Buddy playing lead guitar.

And also the fun part—some interaction from the Number One Son on the front end.

Y59 R 130C B03 27038

Then the lights on the ceiling fan went out and somebody had to figure it out, so I pulled the light kit off. No apparent problem. I called in The Helpful Neighbor, who has a tester and, more importantly, the brains to use it. We determined that power was coming into the unit.

The puzzler is that there is very little that can fail in this system. The only thing between the wall switch and the light bulbs is wire and a $3 pull switch, and the switch tested just fine.

After an inordinate amount of troubleshooting, The Helpful Neighbor noticed a component about half the size of my little fingernail buried among the wires. We speculated on its purpose, since you don’t really need electronics to run a light. I suggested that it was planted by the NSA to spy on us.

Before we bypassed it to see if it was the point of failure, I decided to Google ‘y59 r 130c b03 27038’ to make sure we wouldn't regret it. It took us several minutes to recover from reading the link at the top of the search results.

Postal Recycling

“You know what I like about Tuesday?” I said.

“It's not Monday?” the Number One Son responded.

"It's when the junk mail comes."

"Ah. Why didn't I think of that?"

"There's more."

"I can hardly wait."

"It's also when they pick up the recycle."

"Well, there's a mercy."

"Yes, and an efficiency."

Characters from Fred: Vernon Crowley

At the beginning of this millennium, I expanded a series of short stories into the Fred books. Jake was in the short stories, but as I fleshed out the story of Living with Fred, I wanted another way into Jake’s story, and Vernon Crowley was born.

In the Texas singer/songwriter tradition there is what I call “the old man” song. I drew my inspiration for Vernon from these two classic songs of the genre.

Desperados Waiting for a Train
Lyrics


Pontiac
Lyrics


A few days after Christmas 2003 I woke up at 3 a.m. and after an hour or so realized I wasn't going to get back to sleep. I sneaked out of bed, into my office, and started writing Living with Fred. I didn't start at the beginning. I wrote the scene where Mark Cloud meets Vernon Crowley.

After a few pages I realized I needed to know a whole lot more about Vernon before I could write him with any degree of authenticity. Months of binge-watching WWII documentaries and devouring a dozen or so books from the library of first-person accounts of the European campaign followed.

I ended up with one of my favorite Fred characters. A few years later I wrote a song of my own, The One That Got Away. It’s the first one in this video.



Who’s your favorite Fred character?

Books, Chocolate, and Libations

Chocolate? Well, of course. Who wouldn't?

Robin Hardy, author of countless novels and the one single individual most responsible for me getting published, besides myself, of course, suggested that I join in the conspiracy to link chocolate with books. But that’s not good enough for me. Where there’s chocolate, there’s a libation, so you’re getting more for your money.

Dove Dark Chocolate / Ouled Thaleb Syrah / Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Some have linked dark chocolate with dark subjects, but I disagree. It’s bittersweet, and so I link it with Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, the book that springs to my head when I think of bittersweet. I discovered Bradbury in high school and began a lifelong love with his work. You could drop just about any of his books in here—Fahrenheit 451, Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes—but the creamy smoothness of the Dove Dark fits right in with the glorious 1928 summer of Douglas Spaulding in Green Town, Illinois.

Cadbury Milk Chocolate / Jameson Irish Whiskey / The Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse

Milk chocolate is less sophisticated and nuanced than dark, but is also excellent when done up right, and that’s where we come to P.G. Wodehouse. There is no pretense with Wodehouse, no hidden meanings, no delving down into the nuance of the human condition. Wodehouse himself said, “I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without the music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.” He brings good, clean fun by the lorry loads. And The Mating Season has the most complicated, outrageous plot of the 19 Jeeves books. To go with the milk chocolate, a simple Irish whiskey that adds a kick without getting in the way of the flavor.

A close second would be the Lucia books by E.F. Benson starting with Queen Lucia. I’ve been a fan for over twenty years and have yet to meet another person who has read them. A shame.

Green & Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate 85% / Fresh-ground medium-roast South American coffee black and strong / Tempest-Tost by Robertson Davies

If you really want to get down to it with the real stuff, there’s nothing like an 85% cacao. And nothing better to complement it than a rich, strong coffee served black. No need for milk or sugar. The chocolate takes care of all that. So get plenty of both and settle down with the very clever and highly amusing first novel in the Salterton Trilogy. Davies is not so much unappreciated as unknown down here in the lower forty-eight, which is unfortunate because he was a brilliant writer, both of the novel and the essay.

Next week, Lara Resnik, author of The Girl From Long Guyland tackles this weighty problem.

The Mugs

A reader expressed an interest in my Rosie the Riveter mug featured in the coffee/microwave video, so I thought I'd share the three go-to coffee mugs I use to claw my way through the mornings.

In order of preference, from left to right:

1. My favorite. I got this one at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva eight years ago.
2. A close second. I got this on a visit to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans two years back with my true love, The Woman. 
3. Like the design, but not the color. Acquired when I attended the Writer's Police Academy last year. 

I also have two preferred mugs for when making tea. They have a prevailing theme, as you can see.

Getting a Handle On It

“You know what I like about this microwave?” I said.

“It gets things hot?” the Number One Son responded.

“When you put in a half-cup of coffee and hit the 30-second button, it stops with the handle pointed toward you.”

The microwave beeped three times. I pulled open the door and grabbed the cup. “See?”

The Number One Son shrugged.

“Our last one stopped with the handle pointed toward the back. You had to set it for 22 seconds to get it to stop with the handle pointing out.”

The Number One Son began laughing.

“What?”

“Only you would take the trouble to figure out the exact number of seconds to get the handle pointed out. I mean, who does that?”

“Anybody interested in convenience and efficiency, that’s who.”

Am I right, or am I right?

The Open Season Reading Test

TAKE THIS SIMPLE TEST to determine whether you should read Open Season.

What do you do when you read the following sentences?

1. Her brothers had tried to teach her to play pool back in Louisiana, but it was all about angles and she was never good at geography.

1. Laugh.
2. Say, “Hey, there’s a typo. I think you meant geometry.”
3. Look up geography in the dictionary.

2. It wasn't a simple question to answer, not like “How many fingers am I holding up?” or “What’s the square root of two?” and his hesitation left a lull in the conversation into which Zoe leapt.

1. Laugh.
2. Say, “Hey, is that a typo? You know the square root of two isn't one, right? It’s not an easy question. Maybe you meant square root of four?”
3. Say, “The square root of two is 1.414.”

Now score your results.

If you answered A, congratulations, Open Season is the right book for you.
If you answered B, set the book down and back away slowly without making any sudden moves.
If you answered C, further study is required. Read the sample.

A Poem a Day

If there's one thing I would recommend to everyone, it's to never give advice.

I used to give advice. Back when I was young and stupid and knew everything. But after watching several disasters flower from people taking my counsel, usually interpreting it in ways I never would have imagined, I swore it off. I could tell you stories, but there are several people who would have to die first, and that's not practical.

The thing is, you never have to explain something you didn't say.

But I'm going to break that vow right now and advise something. Read one poem every day.

It doesn't have to be some serious, stuffy poem. It can be light and fun, like Ogden Nash, or zany and divergent, like Barbara Hamby, or wry and witty like Billy Collins. Or reflective or romantic or whatever suits you. But I do recommend mixing it up.

This is especially good advice for writers, but is also good for anyone who likes to get a fresh perspective every once in a while.

Here's the nice thing. APM and Garrison Keillor have made it easy.

Writer's Almanac

You can go to the website and either read or listen to the five-minute show, which starts with events of note on this day in history and concludes with a poem. Or if you prefer, you can listen to it on a radio station in your area.

If I don't catch it on the air, then I click Listen while I'm eating my Cheerios every day.

Behind the Scenes: Postcards from Fred

On my birthday in 2013, as we made a dinner of the lovely happy hour specials at Jack Allen's Kitchen, (bacon-wrapped Texas quail, barbacoa stackers, and smashed guacamole with pumpkin seeds), The Woman and I celebrated the pending release of Endless Vacation. Releasing a novel into the wild is a significant effort and requires acknowledgement via suitable celebrations.

As I told her of my plan to write and release Open Season by October 1, she looked on with unmitigated horror. First off, I have generally taken a year per book, sometimes longer, and she was imagining the state of the household if I tried to do a book from scratch in six months. Second, this was a completely new project in a completely new style, a risk from both creatively and in terms of branding. Third, and probably most important to The Woman, she wanted another Fred book.

And of course, she was not alone in this desire. Many fans had importuned me for an addition to the canon.

The problem was that when Escape from Fred released in 2006, I meant it as the final word on the subject and had no intention of returning to Fred, at least literarily. However, The Woman can be most persuasive, especially during the Jack Allen happy hour specials, and she pulled a zinger out of her bag of tricks.

"What about the postcards?" she asked.

"The postcards?" I replied with a certain sense of incredulity that she would drag out this old chestnut. "We've hashed this out many times. There is just no way to market the postcards."

"But what if you use them in a Fred story?"

Perhaps I should back up and explain. In 1996 I was working 60-hour weeks at three different jobs and still not making ends meet. Then I got a call from out of the blue. A recruiting company from California had seen my resume on the internet (yes, I had my resume on the internet twenty years ago) and offered me a single 40-hour/week job at twice my annual income.

Of course there was a catch. It was limited to a one-year contract and it was in a town 1,000 miles away. I would have to quit my current job, all three of them, and move to another state. At the time my kids were in high school: one a freshman, one a senior. I told the guy it was a tempting offer but I couldn't leave my wife behind to face two teenagers alone for a year. Then I called The Woman and next thing I was packing a suitcase to live as a bachelor for a year.

A month into the gig, reality began to set in for The Woman and I knew I had to do something drastic to keep her out of the psych ward. So I went to the post office, bought a jumbo pack of blank, pre-stamped postcards, and sent her one a day for the rest of the year.

Yes, I sent one postcard every day the mail was delivered for eleven months. Two hundred sixty four cards. Two-hundred sixty four blank cards I had to fill up with something. I started off with the sexy quotes from the Song of Solomon and such, but eventually I ran out of verses and had to create new content. I wrote in my apartment. I wrote in restaurants. I wrote in bars listening to jazz or blues. I wrote on the plane traveling for my monthly weekend home.

The last one arrived in the mail the day after I moved back to Texas. The Woman slid it into the album she had acquired for the purpose and at last she had the full set.

Yes, those postcards. They were the ones of which she spoke, attempting to seduce me into writing another Fred book. I cogitated on it for a while and came up with a plan. What if I wrote a series of short stories in which Mark Cloud solved the relationship problems of himself and others by ghostwriting postcards? It could work. And I'd wanted to write some short stories anyway.

So I mixed up my first-draft magic potion, went out on the deck, set the iPod to play Led Zeppelin I-IV over and over, and began. When I hit 20,000 words I realized I was out of short story territory and decided it would be a novella. When I hit 40,000 words I realized that I wasn't going to achieve my dream of writing short stories, or even novellas. All I needed was another 30-35K words and I’d have a novel. And so it was.

I used many of the original cards written back in the nineties, and also wrote new poems as the plot required. And it turned out to be the best Fred book ever. Of course, given I wrote it ten years after the first Fred book came out, it would have been unfortunate if it was the worst Fred book ever. I mean, I’d like to think I've learned a few more things about writing novels in the last ten years.

So, there you go. That’s the story of how, after seven years, the fourth Fred book came to be. And also the story of the postcards.

By the way, if you sign up for the BradNotes newsletter and send me an email with your snail-mail address, I'll send you an actual postcard postmarked from Fred. What's not to like?

On Religious Bullies

Not long ago a stranger sent me this email, which I have anonymized as a courtesy to the sender. These things happen when you have the nerve to publish and make your thoughts available to the world.

Hello Brad,

This is R—. I have a brother named Brad so the name is familiar and I feel like I know you somewhat.

I recently ordered your book from Amazon, “What would Jesus drink?” I have read it.

Before I read it, as well as after, I looked at the outside of the book. and wondered why a Christian, a born-again believer, would be identifying himself with Jack Kerrouac [sic] and James Taylor. I was raised in Californina [sic], was a ¨hippie¨, a beach bum, etc. and am familiar with these men as well as others. I am 67 years old and a Vietnam veteran etc. Not a big deal, just experience I suppose.

I do want to say that if and since you are consuming alcohol you are participating in what this world system loves, adores, and even worships. Are you participating in what the world system produces on a grand, no immense scale and which, as first mention in the scriptures, the shame of Noah and one of his sons and their generations to come. First mention is very important as you surely well know.

Question for you Brad. Are you a member of a local independent church that is non-sacramental, and believes the Bible. By that I mean, not an Episcopal church, (I was raised Episcopal), nor Catholic, nor Luthern [sic] etc. Just wondering.

Thanks for reading this .

R— B—
Missionary to [a place]

Although, as I readily admit in the book, I make no claim to be a Bible scholar, it was because of messages like this one, often delivered through sermons from the pulpit, that back in 1996 I sat down to do the research on this topic, much in the spirit of the Bereans (Acts 17:11) who examined the scriptures to see if what Paul had preached to them was true. As a protestant, I am of the opinion that every believer can, and should, go directly to the source rather than be forced to rely on some religious hierarchy to tell them what to think.

I undertook this project not to defend a preconceived position but to find out what the Bible really said about alcohol. And I was fully ready and willing to accept whatever I found, pro or con, and live by it.

To that end, I ferreted out all 247 verses in the Bible that mention wine and strong drink and read them in context to make sure I understood what was actually being said. Up to that point I had heard many opinions on all sides of the issue, but I was not satisfied with hearsay. I spent several months reading and compiling the results.

The truth is that I had a sneaking suspicion that, despite appeals to scripture on both sides, much of what I heard was not scriptural but man’s opinion and personal experience. Based on my findings, I wrote an essay that found a wide audience on the internet, and in 2011 I expanded the essay to a short book called “What Would Jesus Drink?” It’s a quick read because I wrote it for regular Joes like me, not for theologians.

Despite my suspicions, I was surprised at the overwhelming clarity of the message I discovered. I won’t rewrite the whole book here because this post is not so much about what the Bible says about alcohol as it is about something else that has been around for a long time and that has been more at the forefront of my awareness since 2011. That thing is religious bullying.

While I have no doubt that the author of the email is completely sincere and believes that he approached me with the purest of motives, his email evinces several tactics of the religious bully. A natural-born manipulator will use them, probably without realizing it much of the time.

Perhaps I should first define what I mean by a religious bully.

A religious bully engages a person, whether in his/her local fellowship or a complete stranger, to attempt to enforce a personal view upon this person, all under the guise of spiritual maturity.

The engagement is not an attempt to come to a broader view of what the Bible says, not to understand the view of the other person, but rather to impose the view of the bully on the other person. And in most cases, this view is in reference to some peripheral, subjective opinion that is not part of the essential elements of Christianity. (Rather than define what those elements might be, I refer you to Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis or Classic Christianity by Bob George or, for those who want the reader’s digest version, the Nicene Creed.)

With that in mind, let’s take a look at this email from R.B. First, he starts off by asserting that because I share a name with a member of his family, he somehow feels like he knows me. Somewhat. As if a relative of Charles Spurgeon might feel like he knew Charles Manson. Somewhat, at least. We’re only one sentence in and already words fail me in my attempts to point out the absurdity of that claim.

Next we get the “guilt by association” argument, as he is evidently at a loss to explain why I, a writer, would mention that I share a birthday with two highly talented and successful writers of the twentieth century. Instead he implies that because they were “hippies,” or in the case of Kerouac, the seminal beat writer who popularized the term, their ungodly ways disqualify them as a reference point for a writer who is a Christian. Notice that so far he is working in the realm of inference and implication, not scriptural authority. This is a classic tactic of a bully, whether religious or otherwise.

Then he plays the Vietnam vet card and as quickly discounts it. If it really is irrelevant, why mention it? Another bully tactic, to create the impression of authority via specious credentials.

Next, another guilt-by-association salvo, equating a glass of wine with endorsing the “world system.” This is actually two-for-one because he uses that nice evangelical code word, the “world system.” Very handy, that one. A nice catchall for whatever one wants to demonize.

Then he plays the “first mention” card, which “is very important as you surely well know.” Quite to the contrary, not only do I not “surely well know” that it is important, the law of first mention is an arbitrary and entirely unreliable “law” or “rule” of hermeneutics, as a little study and common sense tells us. And if that isn't enough, a simple search will provide ample evidence to the contrary. But it does come in handy for lending a veneer of authority to a pet position.

Finally, R.B. poses a leading question in the hopes that I will answer. The thing is, no matter how I answer, he will have a ready argument with which to beat me down. Because R.B. is not looking for a true dialog. In fact, of the entire email, the only sentences that are not blatant attempts at manipulation are the two sentences in the second paragraph, which are a mere statement of fact that the bought the book and read it.

R.B. is not wanting to understand and consider the validity my conclusions based on research. Since he told me he has read the book, he already knows my conclusions. So why is he emailing me?

What R.B. wants is to intimidate and browbeat me into submission, to enforce upon me his personal view on a non-essential, peripheral detail of doctrine. He’s made that very clear in every sentence of the unsolicited email he sent to me, a total stranger.

R.B. isn't seeking to understand my perspective, to find out what I think and why.

The reality is that he doesn't care what I think about this topic. And the reverse is also true. I don’t care what R.B. thinks about this topic. However, our reasons are quite different.

R.B. doesn't care what I think because, in his view, what I think is wrong if it is different from what he thinks, and he can’t let that difference stand. He’s zealous enough to engage me, a complete stranger, in an attempt to intimidate me into changing my mind.

And I don’t care what R.B. thinks because a position on alcohol is not a core element of the gospel. I’m perfectly content to let R.B. think whatever he wants to think about it without condemning him as “participating in . . . this world system” or trying to coerce him into recanting his position and adopting mine. (I also don’t go around trying to turn vegans into carnivores.)

If R.B. wants to abstain, I heartily support him in that view. Just as long as he doesn't pretend that he has any scriptural authority to enforce his view on others. The truth is that, according to scripture, the fact that he sees sin where scripture does not places him closer to the weak-in-faith end of the spectrum than to the strong-in-faith end. Where’s the authority in that?

What I am not fine with is R.B., or anyone else, attempting to bully people into conformity to his legalistic rules about whatever non-essential matters of faith he has decided we all need to submit to.

As Augustine said, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." Although Augustine of Hippo might not be non-sacramental and Bible-believing enough for R.B.

And that’s why I wrote “What Would Jesus Drink?” Not because I think everyone should start drinking wine, but because everyone should make up their own minds on the subject based on the actual scriptures, and let others come to their own conclusions without mounting a crusade to convert them to another view.

Jesus opposed the religious bullies of his day and only went along with their nonsense when it coincided with the plan of the gospel.

If you’re going to submit to something, submit to scripture, not to bullies.

Update

True to bully form, R.B. could not let it rest. After four months without a response, he sent a second salvo in his assault on my view on this peripheral issue. That's a hallmark of a bully. An opposing view cannot be allowed to stand.

No matter that there are over a dozen books on Amazon on this subject, all of which agree with him. No, there is one book that offers a different viewpoint, and it cannot be allowed to exist unchallenged.

In the marketplace of ideas, there should be only one shop. None of this open discussion of ideas and let each make up their own mind.

This new note is more than twice as long as the first. He opens with the same "my brother's name is Brad" approach, and then immediately fires all guns with this choice paragraph.

I want to tell you that you sir, are unwise. That is a strong word in the Bible. Your book ¨What the Bible says about alcohol.¨ reveals what you are. What is that? Well, the name of your publisher Wunderfool Press describes you and your book.

He also played the Vietnam vet card again, and indulged in a host of other transparent bully tactics, but I won't belabor the point by enumerating them all. You get the point. But I will use his P.S. as a final illustration of the type.

In reaction to my FB page tag line

Serious novelist, casual musician, amateur hermit

he writes

Are true believers hermits?

Lack of a sense of humor is another mark of a religious bully, often combined with a dogged insistence on applying religious or spiritual interpretation to even the most casual utterance or action in an attempt to guilt the victim into submission.

I leave you with the same exhortation: If you’re going to submit to something, submit to scripture, not to bullies.

Harry Bosch

Turns out Amazon Instant Video has finally released the pilot of Bosch, a proposed serial with Michael Connelly's fingerprints all over it.You should go watch it, and then rate it highly so we can see more.

In celebration, I provide an index of all the Connelly books that I have reviewed in the past. The first few are brief, but as I go along I wax more poetic.

Harry Bosch novels

The Black Echo
The Black Ice
The Concrete Blonde
The Last Coyote
Trunk Music
Angel's Flight
A Darkness More than Night
City of Bones
Lost Light
The Narrows
The Closers
Echo Park
The Overlook
The Brass Verdict
9 Dragons
The Reversal

Other novels

The Poet
Blood Work
Void Moon
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Scarecrow
The Fifth Witness

Wodehouse Quotes

1. I was feeling like a badly wrapped brown-paper parcel.
2. She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off.
3. I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.
4. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.
5. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
6. [Regarding to Jeeves objecting to his moustache.] It seemed to me that it was getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my costume.
7. I’m not much of a ladies’ man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something.
8. He lugged them out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of the salad.
9. . . . he always looked like something that had been dug up by the roots.
10. Something bumped into the Wooster waistcoat just around the third button, and I collapsed on to the settee and rather lost interest in things for the moment.
11. I knew that young Bingo, when in form, could fall in love with practically anything of the other sex; but this time I couldn’t see any excuse for him at all.
12. On the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps . . .
13. I was feeling more or less like something the Pure Food Committee had rejected.
14. It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
15. He got after me with a hunting crop just at the moment when I was beginning to realize that what I wanted most on earth was solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult country.
16. It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.
17. He came in looking as if nothing had happened or was ever going to happen.
18. “But lots of folks have asked me who my tailor is.” “Doubtless to avoid him, sir.”
19. I have never been in the West Indies but I am in the position to state that in certain of the fundamentals of life they are streets ahead of our European civilization. The man behind the counter, as kindly a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove in view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap. A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I’m not saying, mind you, that he isn’t right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles, and, if I ever marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father’s life was saved at Wembley.
20. “We must think, sir.” “You think. I haven’t the machinery.”
21. It is a nasty thing to see this bald and bushy bloke advancing on you when you haven’t prepared the strategic railroads in your rear.
22. “I fear,” Jeeves sighed, “that when it comes to a matter of cooks, ladies have but a rudimentary sense of morality.”
23. “I had no idea young girls were such demons.” “More deadly than the male, sir.”
24. For when it is a question of a pal being in the soup, we Woosters no longer think of self; that poor old Bingo was knee-deep in the bisque was made plain by his mere appearance – which was that of a cat which has just bee struck by a half-brick and is expecting another shortly.
25. “Unless right-thinking people take strong steps through the proper channels, my name will be mud.”
26. The going was sticky and took about eight and elevenpence off the value of my Sure-Grip tennis shoes in the first two yards.
27. There was a hissing noise like a tyre bursting in a nest of cobras.
28. The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say ‘When!’
29. I didn’t like his collar, and Jeeves would have had a thing or two to say about the sit of his trousers; but nevertheless, he was authoritative.
30. He withdrew, leaving a gap in the atmosphere about ten feet by six.
31. Now, setting a booby-trap for a respectable citizen like a head master (even of an inferior school to your own) is not a matter to be approached lightly and without careful preparation. I don’t suppose I’ve ever selected a lunch with more thought than I did that day. And after a nicely-balanced meal, preceded by a couple of dry Martinis, washed down with a half a bot. of nice light, dry champagne, and followed by a spot of brandy, I could have set a booby-trap for a bishop.
32. . . . a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rock-bound coast.
33. . . . rather like when you take one of those express elevators in New York at the top of the building and discover, on reaching the twenty-seventh floor, that you have carelessly left all your insides up on the thirty-second, and it’s too late now to stop and fetch them back.
34. In one second, without any previous training or upbringing, he had become the wettest man in Worcestershire.
35. The brow was furrowed, the eye lacked that hearty sparkle, and the general bearing and demeanour were those of a body discovered after being several days in the water.
36. One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crepe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is.
37. I sauntered along the passage, whistling carelessly, and there on the mat was Aunt Agatha. Herself. Not a picture.
38. “Remember what the poet Shakespeare said, Jeeves.” “What was that, sir?” “’Exit hurriedly, pursued by bear.’ You’ll find it in one of his plays. I remember drawing a picture of it on the side of the page, when I was at school.”
39. He was so crusted with alluvial deposits that one realized how little a mere bath would ever be able to effect. To fit him to take his place once more in polite society, he would certainly have to be sent to the cleaner’s. Indeed, it was a moot point whether it wouldn’t be simpler just to throw him away.
40. My Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth . . .
41. “I follow you, yes,” I said, a little dubiously. “What you have in mind is something on the lines of Mary’s lamb. I don’t know if you happen to know the poem – I used to recite it as a child – but, broadly, the nub was that Mary had a little lamb with fleece as white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go. You want me to model my technique on that of Mary’s lamb?”
42. I was thinking that if God wasn’t in His heaven and all right with the world, these conditions prevailed as near as made no matter.
43. I’ve often wondered about that scarlet woman. Was she scarlet all over, or was it just her that her face was red?
44. Considerations like these prevent one feasting the eye on Tudor architecture with genuine enjoyment and take from fifty to sixty percent off the entertainment value of spreading lawns and gay flower-beds.
45. Many a fellow who looks like the dominant male and has himself photographed smoking a pipe curls up like carbon paper when confronted with one of these relatives.

Want to get published?

Occasionally someone will ask me about how to get published. Here's what I say.

First off, I recommend self publishing. Here are a few good articles about why.

• Hugh Howey: Self-publishing is the future — and great for writers
• Hugh Howey calls for author earnings revolution

And here’s a recent report analyzing the Amazon revenue for various publishing approaches.

If you decide to self-publish, everything you need to know to get started is in this book.

• Self-Publishing Attack! The 5 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws for Creating Steady Income Publishing Your Own Books

If you decide to go traditional, there are hundreds of books and articles on the subject. Here’s a good one.

• Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published

My path to getting traditionally published won’t help, because an editor called me when I wasn’t trying to get published.

As far as developing content going forward, find a compatible critique group. If you're in the Austin, TX area, this is a good one that meets on second and fourth Sundays from 1:30 to 3:30. We always welcome new members.

• Novel In Progress