The Daring Novelist

Misplaced Baroness - Ep 6

2013-05-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Episode 6 - "Making Use of One's Reputation"

by Camille LaGuire

"Run away with Antonio?" said Mrs. Lister. "And why would you want to do that, after all the trouble you had to say this wasn't a prank."

"My would be killers are waiting for news of my disappearance and death," said Plink. "If I do nothing, they'll know I'm all right, but if they hear I disappeared and everyone is assuming I ran off with Antonio, well, they'll know that's wrong. So perhaps they'll think they succeeded and get on with their business and leave me alone."

"A large perhaps, madame," said Lister.

'Indeed," said Plink. "I'd better ring up Antonio and give him the heads up.:

She got to her feet, and found that she could walk all right if she paused to wiggle and stretch her toes. Then she went to her writing desk where she kept the phone and all her correspondence. Plink was terrible at remembering numbers, so she rifled through and found where she wrote it down.

"The question is," said Plink, as she dialed, "should I ask him to play along, or pretend complete ignorance?"

"If you want the killers to be fooled, it's better if he's ignorant."

"Yes, but if he sits there and professes ignorance, then it will be clear enough to everyone that I didn't run away. And then everyone will ask what happened to me, and the police will tell them that they saw me here and in good health this morning."

The telephone continued to ring. Antonio was notorious for taking his time in answering, so she let it, and glanced over her correspondence. There was a note there from Antonio, regarding the party:

This is to remind you, dear Plink, that I have to catch the one o'clock boat train the next afternoon, so I will be leaving your party early. I am devastated that I will not be able to dance with you until dawn, but when one goes to the continent, one has so many things to prepare.

"Oh, blast!" said Plink.

"Your ladyship?"

"Sorry, I just remembered that Antonio is leaving town today. He must already be gone."

"That resolves it then. He'll be gone, so no one can ask him whether you've run off with him."

"It seems rum letting him go off without knowing he's being blamed for it all, though."

The phone was still ringing, however, so she hung up and collapsed down into a chair.

"The fact is, Lister, I wanted to talk to him anyway. Antonio is the sort who sees everything. If anyone noticed anything odd at that party, he'd be the one to see it. And he has a wonderful devious mind...."

Lister had come over to look at the note Plink had been waving around, and finally took it away, ever so politely, to read it herself.

"His train doesn't leave until one. He might only be out for breakfast."

"Yes!" said Plink, sitting up. "And if he doesn't go back home, I can probably catch him at the station or .... Lister! Pack a small overnight bag, quick! I'll go with him on the train, and we can conspire in full. I could even take the boat over with him. We can start an investigative notebook and he can give me every detail."

"I'll include your passport," said Lister.

It was barely a half hour before Plink was ready, and dressed in plain and inconspicuous clothes, and small boots which were not attractive, but comfortable on her sore feet.

Lister called a taxi to wait in the mews out back, just in case the killers were watching the house. If Lister questioned this precaution, she didn't let on.

Antonio lived in a bohemian district beyond the park, on a nice little street, where it was fashionable enough for is clients, but affordable for a man who always had to live above his means. Plink paid off the cab and took up her little suitcase.

She should have asked him to wait, at least until she had determined if anyone was home. But she didn't and the taxi drove off before she thought of it.

And suddenly she felt nervous. There was no reason for it. It was a quiet neighborhood, but there were people around. A maid with a perambulator, a chauffeur leaning against a car a few doors down, reading a newspaper.

Perhaps she was nervous about how Antonio might react to her horning in on his trip. Well, it was an emergency. She was nearly murdered, and if the police had believed her, they might have stopped him taking his trip at all.

Plink went up the stairs and raised her hand to knock, but as her hand touched the door, it swung away.

The door was not latched. She pushed it open and noted a sort of coppery, metallic smell. She stepped inside the darkened hall and saw a figure sprawled near the bottom of the stairs.

It was Antonio, his head lying in small pool of blood. His eyes were open and glassy. Unblinking.

Definitely dead.

Stay Tuned For Episode 7 - "Burly Men with Nefarious Intentions"
(Available after 8am EST, Mon)

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Support the writing of this serial! You can donate directly, or you can buy the first book in the series, The Case of the Misplaced Hero -- available as an ebook at major online retailers, including:

In most ebook formats at Smashwords, plus Amazon's Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Diesel, Apple iBookstore. (Coming soon to Sony.)

Now also at Amazon's international stores: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan.

Or donate via Paypal

Story Notes - Episode Endings vs. Chapter Endings (and a change in Ep 5)

2013-05-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Episode 5 of The Case of the Misplaced Baroness got posted with a place holder for the last line. I corrected it in the morning, but some of you likely only saw the original, so I'll mention it here.

In the orignal, Plink informs Mrs. Lister that she needs to talk to Antonio.

The line now reads that she needs to run off with Antonio.

The line was wrong because Blogger went gazookie last night, and I ended up fighting technology rather than finishing the last go on the story. I was up until four, my brain was no longer functioning, so I left the place holder.

It was not a big difference, but it was in the last line, and for a serial, that is important.

Pulling a "George Lucas"

They say that in the script of Return of the Jedi, during the fight between Luke and Vader, there was a spot which read: "Vader says something to get Luke really mad." They didn't have an actual line, so they put in a place holder. They finally came up with what he should say on the set.

I do that sometimes. Okay, I do that often. Most of the time, it doesn't matter much. It's a set up for a joke, or a transition. A great line in those situations will make the punchline or new direction shine, but it's not something you dwell on. An approximation will do the job.

And if I come up with a better word or line or phrasing when I'm editing, I'll stick it in later, without mentioning it. Or just put it in the book version during the editing and formatting stage.

More Important Than a Cliffhanger

With a serial, there is one place where the right detail or line can really matter: the end of an episode.

This is especially true of a short episode serial such as I write here. With a longer episode, a writer has a whole scene to set things up for the next episode, put in a cliffhanger, and otherwise make promises for the next episode. With a short episode serial, that last line is what you leave the audience to think about for three or four days.

I don't always come up with that perfect end line. Sometimes, I am left with the option of just haivng Vader say "Yeah, and you're ugly too!" and getting on with it.

When that happens, I can make it better in the novel version. But here's the unexpected thing:

That great episode ending is not nearly as important for a novel as for a serial. With a novel, you actually can end a chapter abruptly, and it doesn't matter, because the audience can flip the page. And the fact is many/most readers do check the first page of the next chapter before putting a book down. (I don't remember where I read that, but I know that I do that.)

With a novel, the audience gets to decide where they take their breaks. They can, and often do, end a session on a note of satisfaction. They can read until they see the next direction of a story, and then stop.

With a serial, the breaks are not optional. And that is more than an accident of the form; the breaks are what a serial is about.

So it's actually less important with a serial to leave the reader in suspense. With a novel, if you leave Jim the Adventurer dangling over a pit of zombie alligators, that will make the audience want to turn the page. Great! Because they can have instant gratification with a novel. With a serial, you need to give them something that lasts for days or weeks; something to actually think about.

I heard a bit of an interview with a reader of serials who had discovered that the serial format forced her to stop and think about the story between episodes. That turned out to be a real pleasure for her. The gap between episodes was the best part.

It made me think about how people react to TV shows -- especially on shows which have some sort of overarching story to the whole series. The thing that gets people to talking about the show between episodes is not exciting peril, but rather that something changes, making the future uncertain, or something is revealed that gives a whole new meaning to what went before. Things, in other words, to think about.

Mastering this for short episodes is tough. I don't know how well I do it, but it makes for a great goal in writing the story.

In Episode 5, the fact that Plink wants to talk to Antonio doesn't mean much. The audience doesn't know enough about him to anticipate anything or think about it. Sure, yeah, he was at the party. So maybe he knows something. But... The fact that she has just spent a couple of episodes trying to convince people to take her story seriously, and that it isn't a prank or joke or accident, makes her suggestion that she carry out a joke that would make people take her even less seriously -- that's more of a question. It's something to hmmmm about.

Therefore, I think it is a better to put it at the end of one episode than at the beginning of another.

See you in the funny papers.

Misplaced Baroness - Ep 5

2013-05-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Episode Five - "MacGreevey's Theory"

by Camille LaGuire

"MacGreevey, don't talk nonsense," said Chief Superintendent Darling. "Why on earth would she jump off that train?"

"To create a stir," said the sergeant with a great deal of satisfaction. "Get in all the papers; mysterious disappearance of the new baroness. Everyone making a fuss."

He turned an almost sneering look on Plink, and she had feeling she'd seen him somewhere before. He was very ordinary looking, with ginger hair and freckles. Tall enough, but a bit slight for a policeman. She vaguely remembered having that thought before, too, but she couldn't remember when.

"Her ladyship has a long history as prankster," the sergeant went on, emphasizing her as if Plink were no ladyship of his. "Starting with riding her pony through the Haverton Tearoom on a paper chase when she was, what, seven years old?"

"Nine," said Plink. "We had permission."

"For the paper chase, not the pony. Then there was the incident where she hung a full beard and mustache on the statue of Queen Valaria at Pinsby Square. And then the malicious destruction of property in Manners Park, including an assault on a police officer..."

"Oh!" said Plink, and she suddenly knew why the sergeant looked familiar.

That day in Manners Park, Plink had been attempting to affix a woman suffrage banner to the top of the light poles near the pond. A constable attempted to pull her down. She did not kick him. She just sort of shoved his shoulder with her foot, and he lost his balance and ended up in the pond, covered in mud and as angry as a cat would be in similar circumstances. This sergeant was that policeman.

"You slipped," said Plink, defensively.

"And you jumped!" said MacGreevey. "You plotted out this whole event. You had a fellow waiting in a car by the side of the road to pick you up, after you jumped. We found the tracks of the car."

"Those were obviously the tracks of my assailants. Find those men, and you'll find they're no friends of mine."

"Stop this nonsense, MacGreevey," said the superintendent. "This is utterly improper to accuse a lady of this kind of malfeasance."

"Oh, stuff it!" said Plink. "He at least gives me credit for some brain. You accused me of drinking myself silly!"

She turned back to the sergeant.

"If I had jumped off the back of a moving train," she said to him, "no matter how lithe and acrobatic I might be, I would certainly have at least fallen to my knees, and look, you can see for yourself... my knees are fine."

With that she slipped out from behind the breakfast tray, and pulled up leggings on her pajamas to display her knees. The constable turned pink and spun away to avert his gaze. The superintendent did something similar in a more genteel way. Both the inspector and the sergeant actually looked, though she thought the inspector was admiring and not really examining.

MacGreevey, on the other hand, bent closer and squinted at her knees.

"Very nice," he said. "But since the momentum of the train would have you going the other way, you'd have fallen on your hind quarters. Shall we have a look at them?"

"MacGreevey!" said the superintendant.

"No need," said Mrs. Lister. "I've seen her ladyship's other side, and she didn't fall there. She's nothing but scrapes and wee bruises anywhere. Nothing you'd get from a fall -- or a jump -- like that."

The police scowled and had a brief consult, in which the superintendent snarled at MacGreevey, who finally backed away like a sullen dog ordered back from an impertinent rabbit. No more was to be heard of the Prank Theory.

"Lister, would you fetch the things I was wearing last night? These gentlemen will want them as evidence."

The sergeant gave a nudge to the silent constable, who went with Lister to fetch the things.

"I think it would less of an embarrassment if we closed the case," said the superintendent. "Though, of course, we will investigate further if you insist. But there really is no evidence--"

"Bosh," said Plink, and she displayed her genteel upbringing by not throwing the tea pot at his head. "There will be evidence if you look for it. I am sure you fellows are much cleverer than the way you are portrayed in popular fiction."

Mrs. Lister and the constable returned, the constable with a carton full of Plink's things. The sergeant, still sulking, dug into the box with a scowl. He happened to pull out Plink's heavy cloche hat. The rabbit-like inspector exclaimed at the sight of it.

"I say, that's a rather thick hat, isn't it?" he said, hopefully, glancing around at everyone. "You could have had a blow to the head and not got a bump because of the hat! You'd still have a concussion. That would resolve everything, wouldn't it?"

"Perfectly!" said the superintendent. He smiled at Plink. She did not return the smile, so he bowed and took his leave. The sergeant lagged behind, examining the lining of the hat with a frown.

"Come along, MacGreevey!" snapped the superintendent. And then, with a thunderous clomping down the stairs, they were all gone.

"Well!" said Plink. "That was as useful as a partridge at a prize fight!"

"Indeed, your ladyship," said Mrs. Lister, and she cleared away the breakfast tray. "Will you be wanting a nap, or will you be chasing after trouble this morning?"

"Oh, trouble, I think. If I had any idea where to look for it." Plink took a sip of her tea. "I think... perhaps I should run off with Antonio after all."

Stay Tuned For Episode 6 - "Making Use of One's Reputation"
(Available after 8am EST, Mon/Thur)

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Or donate via Paypal

Update - Beware of Meaningless Talk

2013-05-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

Here is an eternal truth:

Nothing is as exciting to you as what you are going to do next. But what you haven't done is pretty meaningless until you've actually done it.

It's one of the reasons why the blogosphere is full of beginners blogging as if they are experts on subjects they hardly know: they're the only ones actually interested in blogging about it. (People who are experts are bored with it and want to get on to things they haven't done yet.)

And though it can be interesting to follow someone's journey into new territory, it's also one of the reasons why the internet is rife with rumors, myths and ill-considered half-truths. The people talking the most on any subject are the ones who don't know about it.

This is also why so many beginners never advance on to an intermediate level. They are so busy talking about what they're going to do that they get stuck right there at the point where they started talking. They settle into the comfortable spot of being the Advanced Beginner, who mentors the newer beginners along.

Which is what happened to me this week.

After 35 years of writing, you'd think I'd know better.

I probably wrote 10,000 words or more this week, prepping this update post. I am so jazzed about what I'm doing this summer that I'm talking about it rather than doing it.

The words are not wasted -- those words contain the core of a dozen or so good blog posts for later -- but they are not what I'm doing. They are what I'm thinking about. The theory behind my experiment, etc. Which is fine. But I don't need to tell you about that until I've done it.

So, for the most part, I won't.

(Other than to refer you to last week's update, if you want to know what this writing experiment is. Its under the middle section about Writing as a Get Rich Quick Scheme.)

What I learned this week:

*I write different genres and kinds of stories at different speeds. If the goal is to complete novelettes quickly, I have to first experiment with what I can write quickly. (Hint: Romantic Suspense triggers my intricate mystery puzzle plotting instinct. I love that stuff, but it goes SLOW.)

*When I try to write erotica, it takes a left turn into quirky literary territory.

*Creating a better, more productive writing schedule means taking the pulse of your life over a long time. (Also, it's easier to mess with your schedule and habits when you're doing something "unimportant" like mercenary writing.)

*Sleep is good. (I think I already knew that, but it's a lesson I always have to keep learning.)

*Kale makes a lovely (and healthy) addition to homemade coleslaw.

*Writing Experiment + Kale = Weight Loss (Who knew?)

Story Notes on Misplaced Baroness

Really short story notes this week, to whit:

I guess the cops decided they wanted to play a real part in the story after all. I'm thinking that I needed the interview between Plink and The Rozzers to set two things in motion.

Still doing my artwork at the last second. Must stop that.

See you in the funny papers.

Misplaced Baroness - Ep 4

2013-05-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Episode Four - "Breakfast With The Rozzers"

by Camille LaGuire

The bath was wondrous. She soaked away the fuzz and confusion until the steaming water turned cold. Her poor abused feet felt much better, though the scratches on her skin from that tumble down the embankment stung a bit. A few bruises, but only small ones. No major damage.

It wasn't until she was seated in her boudoir, clad in lounging pajamas and a pair of very soft slippers, scarfing down a pile of toast and pastries like a starved puma (if pumas ate toast and pastries), that her mind began to function properly.

"Lister!" she said. "You are right. We should call the police. Oh! Is that the rest of my breakfast?"

Though she had eaten sufficient bread to feed a small village, she looked with great eagerness on the tray which Lister had just brought in. It was piled with sausages, bacon, ham, an omelette, grilled tomatoes and a lovely large dish of creamed kippers.

"I've already called them," said Lister.

"Mmmffh?" said Plink, her mouth already full of kippers.

"The police, your ladyship," said Lister. "I know it was against your orders, but the aunts called. I might have put off Lady Hortense, but your Aunt Amelia was in a dreadful state and I couldn't help but reveal that you are safe and sound. Then, since the cat was out of the bag, I considered your fear that the villains would find out that you were alive and well, so I thought it would be best to ring up the police right away so they could protect you."

"Excellent!"

"They are waiting downstairs in the morning room."

"Well, call them up!" said Plink. "My feet have had enough traveling today. And someone tried to squish me with a train, Lister. We should not delay the pursuit of the malefactors."

She then attacked her sausages, as Lister went out with a look of disapproval. It was fond disapproval, though, for if Lister really disapproved, she'd never have taken the position. She knew Plink from early childhood.

Soon she heard the exceptionally heavy tread of the law on the stair, so heavy that when the door opened, she half expected to see a police horse enter the room. Instead it was no less than four policemen, three in plain clothes, and one uniformed constable.

They filed in, all correct and grave, and the one in the lead, who looked more like a politician than a policeman, bowed.

"Your ladyship," he said. "I am Chief Superintendent Darling. This is Detective Inspector Pfaffle, and Detective Sergeant MacGreevey."

The constable apparently had no name.

Plink waved a sausage in greeting and said, "Thank you for coming so quickly, gentlemen. Can you tell me what happened last night?"

The superintendent paused in surprise.

"We're here to ask that of you, your ladyship."

"I haven't any idea," said Plink. "I was largely unconscious, and now I'm eating sausages. So why don't you start. I'm sure you have gathered some information?"

The superintendent turned to the inspector. The inspector turned to the sergeant. The sergeant did not turn the the constable but instead raised his chin and recited a report. Plink had, apparently, declared she was running off with Antonio, stolen Lady Blinkersley's cloak, driven her car into a ditch, caught a train, lost a shoe on said train, and was never seen again.

"It's nonsense," said Plink, as he finished his report and she finished her sausage. "All except the bit about Antonio, which was a joke. I did not leave the party or drive anywhere or get on a train. I was drugged into unconsciousness."

"And how are you sure of that, your ladyship?" asked the superintendent.

"Because I was perfectly conscious and having a wonderful time, and then suddenly I was lying on a train track, wrapped in a strange robe, with a train bearing down on me." She briefly related her escape, and return home, complete with her impression of the Grim Reaper's Attack Goose.

The police were not impressed.

"So you never saw your ... assailants," said the superintendent in a tone which dripped with doubt.

"No," said Plink. "I was, as I said, unconscious."

"What is the last thing you remember before you woke up on the tracks?"

"We had just finished playing charades and I called for a cocktail, and then... nothing."

"That is, unfortunately, a common effect of cocktails."

"Not just one," said Plink.

"Oh, just one can have a powerful effect on a genteel young lady," said the superintendent, knowingly.

"Not on me," said Plink. "And regardless, I don't drink so quickly or heavily that I can go from cold sober to unconscious in an instant. And it offends me that you assume that I do."

There was a moment of silence. The superintendent clearly didn't like being corrected by a slip of a girl, but he was a gentleman and had to be aware that she ranked him.

The silence was finally broken by the inspector, a fluffy little round man with a curly mustache.

"But the fall!" he said. "It can all be explained by the fall from the train. She hit her head, and that caused amnesia. No need to explain it with drink. You see?"

The superintendent sat back and looked mollified. "Of course," he said. "That would explain a lady's loss of memory..."

"Yes," said Plink. "That would explain it quite nicely, except for the fact that I don't have a bump on my head."

She raised both hands to her head and poked and prodded at her scalp to illustrate.

"Not a scratch on the noggin," she said. "As a matter of fact, I don't have any injuries that would be compatible with falling off the back of a train, even a stationary one."

It was at this point that the sergeant, who had been silently scowling behind the inspector spoke up.

"Of course not," he said. "That's because you didn't fall. You jumped!"

Stay Tuned For Episode 5 - "MacGreevey's Theory"

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Or donate via Paypal

Misplaced Baroness - Ep 3

2013-05-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Episode 3 - "Barefoot in the Big City"

by Camille LaGuire

It was a long long walk.

The one shoe Plink had left had been useful for feeling her way along when she went from the track to the road, but it was more trouble than help in walking, so she took it of and walked barefoot along the road toward the city and her second home in north Thronden.

The pain in her feet made it impossible to think, or to count time, but at least it made her less aware of the pain in her head. And her back. And her knees.

Thoughts swirled in Plink's mind as to who might want to kill her, but she was so weary that it was more like a bad dream of fractured images and idea, flitting by like angry flies.

She walked on, through muddy pools of what she hoped was water. She walked over sharp stones. She was barked at by dogs, and still never saw any place she'd like to stop for help. Or any place she thought there might be someone who could help.

But presently the streets became more narrow and buildings more crowded. She was too numb to really look at them. It still seemed silent and dead, but soon, perhaps she'd see a policeman or a place to call for help.

But as she passed the dark specter of one more abandoned factory, it's open door like a gaping maw of hell, two figures stepped out of that darkness. Unsavory men, lurking. Their voices were thin and reedy in the echoing night, but she could hear them well enough.

"Here, this looks like a bit of interest," said one of them.

They moved closer and the other, with a nasty sounding voice called out, not at all kindly: "Where you from, missy?"

Plink looked at them, decided they were not the sort of person she should speak to without introduction (a rule she normally did not follow, but here seemed appropriate). She saw a glint and realized one of them had a knife. They separated slightly as though to trap her.

She couldn't run away. They'd have her in a second. But she'd be blasted if she'd just faint on them. The honor of the Beethinghams demanded some reaction. So she let out scream and ran straight at them, raising her arms as far as the heavy cloak would allow, which wasn't far.

She imagined she looked rather like an angry goose, with her flapping arms and waddling uncertain gait. She hadn't the lung power to give a good solid highpitched scream, so it came out a deep ghostly howl.

The men turned tail and fled into the darkness whence they came. Plink staggered a few more steps and wrapped herself around a lamppost.

"Honk, honk," she said after them, in rather the same tone of voice you'd say take that!

She figured they might come back if she stayed too long and looked too weak, so she pushed herself away from that post and continued on her journey. The incident gave her a new surge of energy and she focused her mind on the nice hot bath she had waiting at home. And breakfast... yes, breakfast! She was starving.

The sky was quite bright by the time she staggered into Kerrington Lane, dreaming of bacon and sausages and grilled tomatoes, and toast and jam and kippers in that lovely cream sauce that only Mrs. Lister could make....

Mrs. Lister answered the door very quickly like she was waiting for the knock. She was fully dressed in her black housekeeper's habit. She wore it like a priest wore his vestements or a butler his waistcoat. But to be wearing it at this time of morning, she must have been waiting.

"Oh, your ladyship!" she cried, before Plink could say a thing. "We've all been so worried about you. They thought you had an accident!"

"It was no accident, Lister," said Plink and she staggered inside.

"We should get you to bed, your ladyship," said Lister.

"A bath," she said in reply. "A hot bath and then breakfast."

"I'll draw your bath and then call your aunts--"

"No!" said Plink. "No, I don't want anyone to know where I am."

"But they'll be worried, ma'm."

"Lister, someone tried to kill me. I don't know who, and I don't want them to know they failed. I don't want to tell anyone until I've had a chance to think."

Lister was silent. She was an old-school servant and did not like to contradict her betters, but she also had the backbone to do it anyway.

"Miss," she said, using the term of address she'd used when Plink was a child. "You can't just hide while everyone worries. And if someone is looking to harm you, how safe will you be here on your own? Let me call the police at least. And a doctor."

"I'll be better able to receive tham after a bath," said Plink. Lister made a slight harrumphing sound but accepted that.

Lister helped her upstairs and drew the bath while Plink dumped the cloak and peeled off her hat and dress and the remains of her stockings. The dress was a beaded, clinging affair, and its weight had become unbearable. Next party, she's wear silk chiffon, regardless of how scandalous it might be.

"What would you like for breakfast, ma'm?" asked Lister.

"Everything," said Plink, in a deep, haunted sort of voice. Mrs. Lister took her arm and helped her into the bath.

"Then you shall have everything, little miss."

It was GOOD to be home.

And she could always think better in the bath. If she didn't fall asleep.

Stay Tuned For Episode 4 - "Breakfast with the Rozzers"
(Available after 8am EST, Thursday)

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Or donate via Paypal

Update - a Reboot, Experiment, and Story Notes

2013-05-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

It took a bit to extricate myself from the Tsunami of Kerfuffle that swept me away recently. We shall not speak of it.

Instead, we shall look forward to a good old-fashioned reboot: power down, sweep the decks, unplug everything, count to ten, and start back up again. Brrrrring! (That's a Mac start up chime.)

The very best way to effect a reboot, imho, is to find a barrier and kick it down. To do something which, a polite English bobby would tell you, is "not recommended." (Or as Will Rogers might say, it's time to pee on the electric fence for yourself.)

Therefore, for the next four weeks I am going to indulge an experiment:

Writing As A Get Rich Quick Scheme
("Rich" and "quick" being relative terms....)

I was inspired, directly and indirectly, by Dean Wesley Smith's talk a year or two ago about the income you could potentially get by writing short story after short story. That interested me, intellectually, but the fact is, the idea of writing short story after short story doesn't fill my soul with glee. I enjoy writing them once in a while, but it tends to be slow going.

But the idea of writing novelettes? That actually does interest me. Novelettes and novellas are different than either shorts or novels. They are, in fact, screenplay lengths, with similar structure and pacing. I use a whole different part of my brain for that. It's more like, well, hack work. Screenplays and especially TV shows have strict criteria -- length, act structure, budget, locations, cast size, sometimes weird things like you need to put in a role for producer's girlfriend.

(Irony time -- DWS recommends that you not use the cold logical "inner editor" part of your brain for writing. But for me, the cold logical part of my brain loves that kind of writing, and is surprisingly good at it. If my inner editor had a human form, it would probably look like Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer.)

Writing this way is not something I would want to do all the time, but it is a great way to reboot. It is easy on the imagination (while still giving it a nice workout) so it's a great way to meet the first goal of this experiment: to build new and better habits. At some point my creative side will get sick of it and kick Mr. Warner out, but I'll have a new more focused work pattern set.

The other goal of this experiment is a "proof of concept" for things we believe about writing: Is a book really the best promotion for another book? Does the author's name have to be known at all? Is 2.99 too high of a price for a novelette? Do people even read novelettes? KDP Selects - good idea or bad idea? Etc.

I'll be writing these under a pseudonym, both to help unleash my inner shameless movie mogul, AND because of those marketing questions. I will not tell anyone the name. But I will talk about how it's going, and the issues involved, each Sunday in an update post.

In the meantime, those who like what I do under my own name will have to make do with The Serial for a while (which will continue every Monday and Thursday). In some ways, The Serial has also been a kind of "reboot." I write it for fun, off the cuff.

And speaking of The Serial.....

Story Notes for Episode 2

Yeah, I admit it. Episode 2 is a lump of exposition.

As I stumbled beyond the end of the first episode, I realized that I really don't want to spend episode after episode with Plink thinking through everything she knows. She knows lots of things that could be relevant, and can't remember or doesn't know a lot of things which are actually relevant.

Furthermore, as I mulled over the 49 episodes and 20 characters it would take to illuminate the events of the party in flash back, I thought: this story isn't a fair-play whodunnit, and it won't be solved by parsing out exactly where the butler really was when the kumquats disappeared. This is a bounce-and-go adventure. Future events will resolve it, and very few of the party characters will enter the story again, because we're going to get out of town and head across the continent soon.

So, since neither Plink nor her party guests can tell us efficiently the few relevant facts, I guess I should bring in the professionals whose job it is to gather those facts and sort them:

Meet Pfaffle and MacGreevey of Thronden C.I.D. (Special Greek Chorus Branch)

One method of exposition is the "Greek chorus" method. You interject scenes of someone outside the story who comments on what's going on. This is a common trope in spy stories. The hero is running around blowing things up and stealing things, and meanwhile back at the CIA, the suits are scowling at the trail of evidence he leaves behind, while they explain and comment on what it means. And it's a particularly fun trope in comedies, where outsiders are perplexed by what the audience knows first hand.

So that's what I decided to try here. It isn't quite what I wanted. (I wrote it at the last second before posting, and I'll certainly rewrite it for the ebook.) But I can see that I could really have fun with this.

Will I? I don't know. The story will eventually leave the jurisdiction of Pfaffle and MacGreevey, and I doubt it will come back to them within this particular story.

In the meantime, I think I'll make Pfaffle's first name "Robert". Then MacGreevey can say: "As you (should) know, Bob, (if you had bothered to pay attention)...."

(For the uninitiated, this is a writer joke. Bad dialog that just exists to give information to the reader is sometimes called "As you know, Bob..." dialog.)

As for the characters: MacGreevey actually has a bigger part to play in later stories. He's Plink's nemesis. (In kind of the same way Sylvester Puddytat is Tweety Bird's nemesis.) He's bad tempered and arrogant which means he will always be destined for a pie in the face, no matter how diligent he is. (However, he is destined for his own story too. He's not really the sort of person you can stop with a pie in the face, and he has honor.)

Inspector Pfaffle is more secondary, but there is more to him than it seems. He has a certain amount of wisdom and an instinct about people. He can see their hearts, you could say. This makes me wonder if he too has a bigger part in the future.

But for tomorrow, we shall return to Plink (a.k.a. Lady Pauline) who is treading barefoot through a bad part of town in the wee hours of the morning, and she's just about to do her impression of The Grim Reaper's Goose. Stay tuned. (You can start at the beginning with the introduction to The Case of hte Misplaced Baroness.)

See you in the funny papers.

Misplaced Baroness - Ep 2

2013-05-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Episode 2 - "Meanwhile at Beethingham Hall...."

by Camille LaGuire

The dawn was breaking over the vast expanse of Beethingham Hall. Some of the lights were still lit, but most of the denizens had finally tottered off to bed. Servants scurried about cleaning up the shambles that was left of the great party. Too bad the guest of honor had taken a powder.

Out on the damp and dewy lawn, Detective Inspector Pfaffle and Detective Sergeant MacGreevey stood looking over their notes. Or at least, Pfaffle was. He always took voluminous notes, especially when dealing with important people. It impressed them and made them think he was listening.

Unfortunately, he didn't actually listen or take notes very well, so his notes were a confused mess of doodles and disjointed phrases. This whole case was a mad confusion of misplaced facts, suppositions and witnesses who were drunk, hung over, hysterical, or uncooperative.

He glanced over at MacGreevey. The sergeant was writing furiously -- furious being his demeanour, not his writing speed -- in his notebook, in neat careful marked lines. Unlike Pfaffle, MacGreevey listened well and never took notes until later, after he had it all ordered in his mind and ready to be turned into a report.

MacGreevey was smart, brave, talented and ambitious, and should have promoted above Pfaffle a long time ago... except for the fact that he was also stubborn, naive, arrogant, rude and insubordinate. He was constantly on the edge of being dismissed. Pfaffle had won the man's loyalty with a persistent application of patience and a steadfast refusal to take offense. He needed MacGreevey to do things like think, and MacGreevey needed Pfaffle to keep their superiors from dismissing him.

"Well, MacG?" said Pfaffle, as the sergeant flipped his notebook shut.

"Waste of our time," grunted MacGreevey.

"Oh!" said Pfaffle, looking at his notes. "Are you ... sure?"

"You don't agree?" The sergeant looked at him narrowly.

"Well, I thought, at least we should do a sum up. Shouldn't we?"

MacGreevey knew full well that Pfaffle wanted him to explain it all, but he was clearly in a mood this morning. Pfaffle squirmed and looked helplessly at his notes. As hoped, that satisfied his subordinate, who gave a small, superior smile and put away his notebook, just to show he didn't need it.

"The subject, Lady Beethingham, is a known prankster."

"Ah, but she's a peeress now," interjected Pfaffle. "Responsibility sobers a person up."

"She was hardly sober last night," said MacGreevey, then he went on reciting the facts. "Last night was her twenty-first birthday party. There was crowning ceremony, like she was a queen, and then a dignified dinner with lots of dignified people who are above talking to us. The subject then led the younger members of the party on a wild game of cat-and-mouse through this barn--" MacGreevey here paused to glance distainfully at the manor house behind him. "--which is larger than some whole countries."

"Yes, very fine. Very large," said Pfaffle. "It makes it all more confusing. So many things going on."

"Not really," said MacGreevey. "The only possibly relevant thing is the bit about Antonio Maurinos."

"Yes, the foreigner!" Pfaffle looked down with satisfaction the exclamation point he'd made in his notes, right next to the word _foreigner__. "A magician or something."

"Dance instructor," said MacGreevey with derision. "Paid party host and entertainer. According to some rather hazy witnesses, Lady Beethingham declared she was already bored with being lady of the manor, and she planned to run off with this Maurinos. Soon after that, Maurinos left the party, presumably fleeing a fate worse than death. Lady Beethingham then was seen to pass out on a settee in a small drawing room of some sort."

"The west wing, yellow sub-drawing room," said Pfaffle, who tended to remember that sort of detail, though not its significance.

"Next relevant moment was when Lady Blinkersley left and found that her peacock cloak was missing, whereupon several witnesses, again hazy, recalled that they had seen Lady Beethingham stumbling across the patio wrapped in it. She called out that she was headed toward Thronden and freedom. Concerned about her safety, the servants called the local constabulary, who found her roadster in a ditch near the railway station. The ticket agent remembered a young woman in a large peacock cloak, who bought a ticket and got on the midnight train to Thronden. At which point the local constabulary called us down in Thronden to see if she had arrived safely."

"And we found her shoe!"

"Yes, one of our constables found the subject's right shoe caught in the scroll work on the observation platform at the back of the train."

"So she fell or jumped off the train."

"Or she put her shoe there as a prank, threw away the peacock cloak, and ran off with poor Maurinos."

"She could be injured. Or dead!" said Pfaffle.

"The local chaps are searching the tracks, now that it's light."

"You should get on to them. You should---"

"I should find Maurinos and then get some sleep."

They compromised on breakfast in town. By the time they were finished, the local constabulary reported back. No body found on the tracks, but they did find some peacock feathers, and also some suspicious tire tracks in a spot in the last bit of woods before Thronden.

"So she jumped," said MacGreevey, "and Maurinos, or someone else, picked her up."

Stay Tuned For Episode 3 - "Barefoot in the Big City"
(Available after 8am EST, Monday)

First Episode | Previous Episode | Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Or donate via Paypal

Misplaced Baroness - Ep 1

2013-05-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Episode 1 - "Plink's First Peril"

by Camille LaGuire

For a fraction of a second, when Plink drifted awake, she was quite cozy. She was well wrapped in her blanket, her arms wrapped around her too, and so utterly unconsciously relaxed that her body seemed molded into whatever was beneath it.

It was that cozy feeling you have when you are a child with a cold, and you are tucked into bed, and people are hovering to take care of you, and bring you soup and treats and read you stories....

But after that fraction of a second passed, Plink realized she was not lying on a bed. She was not wrapped in a blanket, and her feet were cold -- one foot more cold than the other, because she was wearing only one shoe.

He head throbbed, and she felt nauseated. He twenty-first birthday party must have been quite the shin-dig, though she hardly remembered it just now.

It wasn't actually her head that was throbbing.... No, it was the pillow. A hard cold, wretched pillow which forced her head at an odd angle was vibrating at some painful frequency.

It was only then that she realized that she laying across a railroad track.

And there was clearly a train coming.

She opened her eyes and tried to sit up, but she could not. She was wrapped up in some sort of cloak that smelled faintly of gardenias. She wriggled, but could not get loose of it. As far as she could tell, she was not tied, merely so well wrapped that she could hardly move.

The engine was now clearly audible, and not far. The vibration of the track was nearly unbearable. She lifted her head and tried to roll, hoping to unwrap the cloak, but it did nothing for her.

It was dark, but she could make out the shape of trees and tracks in the moonlight, and now the light of the train shone down on the tracks, picking up details of the gravel and ties. It was coming fast, perhaps an express. No sound of the horn. No squeal of breaks. No indication that they could see her.

The sound and vibration was now overwhelming, and no logic could fight the sudden, immediate urge to get out.

She curled her body up and then rocked back, so she could kick her feet up in the air and make a backwards somersault. It didn't move her entirely off the tracks, but she was in a better position to flop and gyrate like an acrobatic inch worm.

By now the noise was so loud it was disorienting. She didn't know which way was up or which direction to roll. For a moment she thought she'd been struck by the train, as he felt her body tossed and bumped and thrown about.

... But it was merely that she'd made it off the tracks and tumbled down a rather steep embankment.

The train roared by overhead, and she lay breathless and shaken for several minutes.

She was now free of the cloak. It had caught on a stump halfway down the embankment and she had rolled free of it.

The train was now gone. She could still hear the engine in the distance, but by contrast to it's passing, the earth seemed suddenly still. She propped herself up, hands braced behind her.

"That, my dear, was a very close call," she said.

Her shaken voice sounded thin and reedy in the hollow darkness around her, though loud enough that she wished she hadn't spoken aloud. That perhaps she didn't want to be heard. Which was nonsense. She should be screaming for help...

Except for that nagging question: how on earth had she come to be laying on a train track, unconscious and helplessly wrapped in that cloak?

A thousand romantic scenarios flitted through Plink's head, most of them involving burly men with nefarious intentions. She didn't know any such men, certainly none with a motive to murder her. Except perhaps for Freddie, her cousin and heir and would-be fiance -- who was neither burly nor imaginative. If he'd had a plot to kill her, it would be by smothering her in boring declarations of his insipid opinions.

The other scenarios were of poor, helpless, amnesiac women, wandering helplessly and hopelessly in the wood, who become entangled in their own tattered cloak and fall unconscious into some perilous situation, like onto a high ledge or railroad track.

And that was ridiculous because she had no reason whatsoever to be wandering helpless in the wood, and she certainly didn't have amnesia. She knew exactly who she was.

Reading from top to bottom, she was: Lady Pauline Anne Marie Tritt-Woolsey Beethingham Smythe, the eighteenth Baron of Beethingham. (Or the third Baroness of Beethingham, if you wanted to be very literal.)

She had just turned twenty-one, and come into her full fortune and title that very day. She had no reason whatsoever to wander helplessly in the wood, tripping pathetically in her cloak. She was not abandonned, or deceived, nor did she have a love child or dread disease.

And besides, the cloak had been too well wrapped around her for it to have been an accidental entanglement.

Burly men with nefarious intentions it was, then.

Well, they were gone now -- because surely, if they were waiting around in the cold and dark to be sure their deed was done, they would have checked on her by now. All the same, they might come back.

It was time, she thought, to make a hasty exit.

Stay Tuned For Episode 2 - "Meanwhile, Back at Beethingham Hall...."
(To Appear after 8am EST Thursday, May 9)

Series Intro and TOC | Story So Far | Next Episode

Or donate via Paypal

Introduction - The Case of the Misplaced Baroness

2013-05-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Go straight to: Episode 1 - The First Peril of Plink

The Case of the Misplaced Baroness
Series: The Perils of Plink

Published Twice a Week: Mondays and Thursdays, beginning May 6, 2013. (To end... when it's done. Sometime in September or October, most likely.)

You could say this story is a prequel to last summer's serial The Case of the Misplaced Hero. Or you could call it a "paraquel": It starts before that story began, and may well end after -- lightly crossing paths in the middle. You shouldn't have to read Misplaced Hero before reading this, though it might help you a bit with the world of the story. (Also, this story will contain spoilers for that one.)

Genre: old-time adventure, alternative universe -- based on the unrealistic reality of silent movie serials and pulp fiction of the same period. (The previous story had a fantasy element, but this one does not, other than the "alternative universe" thing.)

Premise: After escaping a near encounter with death, Plink (also known as Lady Pauline Anne Marie Tritt-Woolsey Beethingham Smythe, Baroness of Beethingham) goes on the run, dodging police, spies, friends and family alike -- because any of them might be her would-be killer.

Episode 1 - The First Peril of Plink
Episode 2 - Meanwhile at Beethingham Hall...
Episode 3 - Barefoot in the Big City
Episode 4 - Breakfast With the Rozzers
Episode 5 - MacGreevey's Theory
Episode 6 - Making Use of a Reputation

(NOTE: this page will change and update, with a table of contents and links to pages about the series and world.)

For now, for more information, you can see the rather rambling introduction to The Case of the Misplaced Hero.

See you in the funny papers.

April, Go She Will

2013-04-30T09:37:00.001-07:00

Not that April didn't have its bright spots, but...well... we shall draw a veil over April, knock on wood, and look forward to a brighter May.

Most of the things I planned to do in April got steamrollered by ducks. (You know that saying about being nibbled to death by ducks? Well, my ducks were tiny merganser "saw-toothed" ducks, who came equipped with steamrollers.)

Some of the things I meant to do can be rescheduled, but I am greatly annoyed that I never got the chance to get the new artwork style settled for The Case of the Misplaced Baroness. I needs to be consistent with the Misplaced Hero illos, but I wanted to take it to a new level. I was thinking of adding line to it, not just shape. Also thinking of changing the color palette.

I was hoping to start off with the style already figured out, but alas, like Test of Freedom, or even the Misplaced Hero, the first few illustrations will suck, or at least not be what the series style will end up as. Maybe I'll get lucky. I have all weekend.

Thursday I will post the intro post of The Case of the Misplaced Baroness. I have decided, this time, not to do a webpage for the intro posts, but rather make the first blog post into an "anchor" post for the series -- with a TOC and links to related items. And as such, I'll be changing it and editing it and adding to it over time. (In other words, treating it like a webpage, even though it's a blog post.)

In the meantime, The Man Who Stepped Up has made some great strides toward being an active manuscript. Though the serial is the WiP for the time being. I will be doing Sunday Updates starting this Sunday. I have no guarantee that they will be interesting. (One can hope....)

In the meantime, I shall take Lawrence Block's advice and try to remember to say "Rabbits, rabbits," when I wake up on May Day.

See you in the funny papers.

Escaping Awful April - a Postponement

2013-04-24T09:11:00.001-07:00

Seriously, last month may have been the month from heck, but April has been even heckier -- and the month is not over yet.

We're going to hope for a better May, and to that end, I am postponing the start of The Case of the Misplaced Baroness until May. I'll do the intro post on Thursday, May 2nd, and the first episode on May 6th.

I'm also going to start posting some kind of updates again. I'll start with an update on April at the end of the month, but thereafter I'll probably do Sunday updates.

Characters at Breakfast: Alex and Friends - Worldbuilding and Food

2013-04-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

This is the third and final post in my series on Characters at Breakfast. I've talked about the limitations of writing food in an historical series with Mick and Casey at breakfast, and about the relative freedom to use food for characterization in a contemporary setting with George and Karla at breakfast.

This time I'm going to talk about the third option: food in a made up world.

Cuisine is an important part of world-building for fantasy writers. It's limited by the culture and geography of your location. Of course, most fantasy writers base cuisine on some model in real history. Western high fantasy is often based on Medieval Europe, for instance. On the other hand, some science fiction writers will construct a very detailed and unique cuisine based on the other elements of the world they create.

Last summer's serial story, The Case of the Misplaced Hero (and the upcoming The Case of the Misplaced Baroness) is an Alternate Universe story. In this case, though, the alternate world is not an intentionally built world. It's more a "dreamed" world -- based mainly on the often inconsistent way the real world is depicted in old silent movie serials and adventure stories of around 1910-1925. It's a world that's been with me for a long time, and borrows from a whole lot of other sources.

So in some ways, this made up world gives me the same freedom as a contemporary story. Furthermore, with that first story I wrote last summer, I added a connection between that world and this: a pair of characters from modern-day Michigan.

As a result, I have all three approaches to food going on in the story. The nation of "Awarshawa" is made up, and though it has a certain Balkan feel to it, I can do what I want with the geography since it stands in for all those "exotic foreign lands" in adventure fiction of a hundred years ago. And since Imperia is really a stand in for the more familiar England, I can use period appropriate cuisine there. And for my travelers from Michigan, I have real modern cuisine.

At Breakfast in Awarshawa, Michigan and Imperia

Character Name: Captain Akio "Kosha" Rozinshura
Book or series: The Perils of Lady Pauline (The Case of the Misplaced Hero)

Location/Setting: Awarshawa, an alternate universe, cartoony country, which is always in a state of revolution. The current government is an Anarcho-Bureaucracy (a form of socialism...sorta).

Captain Rozinshura is a "District Faciliator," which means he is a bureaucrat in charge of redistributing the wealth -- a good position for eating well. He is something of an avuncular trickster, who looks after his district and his people. (Unlike many officials, he represents both the Anarcho and the Bureaucracy sides of his revolutionary beliefs. He knows all the rules, and is very good at breaking them.)

Usual breakfast: Whatever is being served at the canteen, or made for him by his cook -- which would usually be some sort of gruel or solid mush (like polenta), cheese and fermented goat's milk to drink. Sausages if there are any (which there usually are for him - he's inmportant). And probably some form of blootchkes, which are the national food of Awarshawa, and consist of something wrapped up in something else. For breakfast, this would most likely resemble a tamale. (I.e. mush wrapped in a leaf.)

Oh... and beer.

What he'd make for himself: Rozinshura would never make breakfast for himself. If he were on his own, he'd seek someone to make breakfast for him. (A more accurate description: he would help himself to someone else's breakfast ... but only in the most polite way.)

Fancy or special breakfast, Restaurant: It's a special meal if it involves chocolate or a quantity of meat. But more often: "skillet blootchkes," which are like crepes, would be a special treat. His cook is very good at skillet blootchkes.

Breakfast on the Run: Probably an apple. He is fond of apples. But if there were no apples available, whatever can be stuffed in a pocket.

==========

Character Name: Professor Artemis Thornton, aka "Old Thorny"
Book or series: The Perils of Lady Pauline (The Case of the Misplaced Hero)

Location/Setting: Thorny is from Michigan, but he makes an accidental trip to Awarshawa.

Thorny is a burnt-out old professor who's just going through the motions these days. Also a bit of a drunk. (We don't see him eat breakfast -- or anything else -- within the story, which takes place in one afternoon/evening. These answers are what he would eat in Michigan.)

Usual breakfast: Egg McMuffin.
(NOTE: this assumes he is actually awake for breakfast, which he won't be if he doesn't have to be.)

What he'd make for himself: left-over Egg McMuffin and beer. Also, Doritos. Maybe a donut.

Fancy or special breakfast, Restaurant: It depends on who is picking up the tab. If he's paying, he'll order the cheapest meal. If someone else is paying, the most expensive. He likes rich and unhealthy foods, so Eggs Benedict would probably be his favorite.

Breakfast on the Run: Egg McMuffin.

==========

Character Name: Alex Nichols (actually Nikolinshe)
Book or series: The Perils of Lady Pauline (The Case of the Mispaced Hero)

Location/Setting: Alex is a college student from modern day Michigan, who also makes an unexpected trip to Awarshawa.

In Michigan -- and this world in general -- Alex is incredibly bored with everything. He doesn't much care about what he eats. (He is the "misplaced hero" and doesn't really belong in Michigan.)

Usual breakfast: Whatever the dorm serves. None of it tastes particularly good, so if he's not that hungry, just toast and coffee. If he's hungrier, scrambled eggs.

What he'd make for himself: Cocoa Wheats. Cooked thick, so that a spoon stands up in it. With a little extra sugar and goat's milk. It's one of the few foods he really likes, because that's what is Aunt Flavia used to make.

Fancy or special breakfast, Restaurant: Meh. Whatever. Well, okay, he does kinda like fancy pancakes, you know, crepes.

Breakfast on the Run: Maybe an apple. Granola bar. Muffin. Whatever.

(You'll note that what Alex prefers to eat has some resemblance to Awarshi food. There is a reason for that.)

==========

We don't really see much of Lady Pauline in The Case of the Misplaced Hero. But she is the central character of the main series and of the next serial, which will begin at the end of the month.

Character Name: Lady Pauline (Actually, Lady Pauline Anne Marie Tritt-Woolsey Beethingham Smythe, the Baroness of Beethingham. AKA "Plink")
Book or series: The Perils of Lady Pauline (The Case of the Misplaced Baroness)

Location: Pauline is from Imperia, a rival country to Awarshawa -- more or less a cartoon version of England.

Pauline has just come of age, 21, and also has just come into her hereditary title: the Baroness of Beethingham, a title she holds in her own right.

Usual breakfast: Generally the servants put out a big buffet of what we would call an "English breakfast" (an "Imprish breakfast"?). Though she is a bit of a partier who stays up late and often wanders in late for breakfast, she is a hearty eater. She will likely have something of everything the servants put out, but she is especially fond of the breakfast meats, and also of jam.

What she'd make for herself: Make it herself? How jolly exciting! She'd make...um... well ... she'd make... bread and jam! (It's the only thing she knows how to make, but she also happens to like it very much.)

Fancy or special breakfast, Restaurant: There is nothing particularly "special" about eating at a restaurant. It's never as good as at home . However, she is more likely to have poached eggs. For some reason they never have poached eggs at Beethingham Hall. She's never asked why. (It's actually because her great great grandfather hated them, and nobody has ever questioned tradition.)

Breakfast on the Run: She's never heard of such a thing. If you're running, how can you eat? Perhaps some biscuits?

This post was more fun to write than the rest -- maybe because it was more speculative. The serials here are often "bump and go" and I don't always have time to play with full details like this. Also, since the characters are more cartoony and outrageous, that gives more room for playing with their eating habits.

This was fun. I hope you'll consider answering the Characters at Breakfast Challenge with a blog post of your own -- about your own characters or characters from favorite books you've read. A few others ahve written posts. Be sure to check them out: Kyra's Breakfast Post 1, and Breakfast Post 2. James D's Breakfast Post. Watch the comments for others.

If you want to check out The Case of the Misplaced Hero, you can read it on line, or the more polished version novella ebook:

In most ebook formats at Smashwords, plus Amazon's Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Diesel, Apple iBookstore. (Coming soon to Sony.)

Now also at Amazon's international stores: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan.

NOTE: Buying books not only encourages me to write more of them, but it also supports the blog.

See you in the funny papers.

Characters at Breakfast: George and Karla - contemporary characterization

2013-04-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Last time for the Characters at Breakfast post, we talked about food in historical settings with my young gunslingers Mick and Casey McKee's breakfast habits.

This time we're talking about a contemporary story. And of all the stories I'll talk about, the cozy mystery series about George Starling and Karla Marquette is the one where food is the most revealing of character.

And that makes sense: With a contemporary story you the most leeway for your characters to like just about anything. These days, even in a small, isolated town -- such as Potewa -- the residents will get The Food Channel on cable TV, and they can order pretty much anything through the internet. And many formerly exotic foods are routinely distributed to remote locations.

Food plays a very important role in this series. First, the local culture of Potewa County is hospitality oriented: it's a northern lower Michigan beach town. While it's not a "destination" attraction, most of the economy is based on people coming to visit -- whether it's a hotel or resort stay, or more likely a cabin in the woods. And when they come to that cabin, they are probably there to acquire food: hunting, fishing, mushrooming, or coming for a cherry festival.

But beyond that, food is key to showing how the characters think:

In the very first chapter, we meet George's girlfriend Gwen, who suffers from anxiety disorders (and PTSD) and who eats only childish comfort foods -- particularly cheese burgers (no pickles). And while George has come to despise cheeseburgers, he still hovers and loyally supplies all the burgers she could possibly want. Furthermore, when Karla first meets George, and believes him to be a secret agent, she sneeks a peek into his briefcase, and her very first concern is that he hadn't packed a lunch -- which she believes one should do if one is going to stalk and spy on others.

As you'll notice, both George and Karla see food as nurturing as well as nutriment. Although they are very different characters with very different tastes, they are immediately on the same wavelength with food. That's why much of the scene where they first start working together is choreographed around the making of a snack.

Karla Marquette and George Starling

Character Name: Karla Marquette.
Series Title, Book Title: Starling and Marquette Mysteries: The Man Who Did Too Much
Location: Modern Day Michigan, rural/tourism area.

Karla is a middle-aged, small town spinster, who lives a hand-to-mouth lifestyle -- she gardens and barters and does odd jobs. But she enjoys cooking and feeds herself well.

Usual breakfast: Karla, given her druthers, would mostly skip breakfast. She might have some cold cereal, or some leftovers, or just a glass of milk. Or a brownie. She'd rather just start in on lunch after she wakes up. (We see her nuke herself some hot chocolate in Chapter 19.)

What she'd prepare for herself: As mentioned above, she generally skips breakfast. However, if she feels she has to have breakfast -- like she's going to have a busy day, or might have to skip lunch -- she would make waffles or maybe hot cereal. Or she'd make lunch and just eat it early.

Fancy or special breakfast, restaurant breakfast: Buttermilk pancakes with extra bacon and orange juice. (Which is what she orders in Chapter 13, when her uncle, Sheriff Rosie, takes her out to breakfast so he can question her. Rosie himself has "mostly everything on the menu.")

If she were out of town at an event, and needed to load up calories, she'd probably add scrambled eggs, but not because she likes them.

Breakfast on the run: Donut. Chocolate frosting, no sprinkles. But only if you could get them someplace that makes real homemade cake donuts, fresh.

====

Character Name: George Starling
Series Title, Book Title: Starling and Marquette Mysteries: The Man Who Did Too Much
Location: Modern Day Michigan, rural/tourism area.

George is a wealthy globe-trotter who lives everywhere in the world, but we only see him when he's in Michigan. Though George is an action hero, he is also somewhat neurotic. (He has a compulsive need to rescue people, which is mostly under control.) He was raised in Asia and tends to have a preference for Asian foods.

Usual breakfast: Whatever you're having.

No, seriously. George is a social chameleon. Aside from being a sophisticated traveler who adapts to local customs, he's always seeking to blend in and please people.

So normally, if he's with somebody, he'll eat approximately as they do. However, he is also a closet gourmet and secretly fussy as hell, so he'd probably adjust his order subtly to upgrade it. He is also happy to be a "food guide" to anyone who is unfamiliar with a cuisine.

What he'd make for himself: Left to his own devices, he'd make himself a bowl of Juk (rice gruel) or noodles, Asian style.

Fancy or special breakfast, restaurant breakfast: His mother was an anglophile, and so he considers a "proper" breakfast to be an English breakfast. He would never make it himself, but that's what he'd order in a hotel restaurant -- but it isn't his idea of a fancy meal out. (A fancy meal is not something you have at breakfast.)

Breakfast on the run: He would prefer whatever the local equivalent is to jian bing -- which is a Chinese version of a breakfast burrito. He likes street food, but he'd rather go hungry than eat packaged fast food.

As you'll note: breakfast isn't really a favored meal of either of these characters, but as I said above they both enjoy food. It's a form of self-expression for both of them. But food is kind of a symbol of life -- and George really doesn't know how to enjoy his life -- except in the area of food, and even there he is a little inhibited. Karla, on the other hand, knows exactly how to enjoy life, and she becomes George's "Happiness Coach." George is happy to return the favor by mentoring her appreciation of exotic fare.

Next time we'll talk about four characters from the summer serial her on the blog - last year's The Case of the Misplaced Hero, and the upcoming The Case of the Misplaced Baroness. Alex, Professor Thorny, Captain Rozinshura, and introducing Lady Pauline, the young Baroness of Beethingham -- around whom the overall series revolves. (The series title, I fear, will be called The Perils of Lady Pauline, or perhaps just The Perils of Plink, as that is her nickname.)

That series takes place in an alternate universe -- but one based on a fictional version of this universe. That allows a blend of fantasy world-building (and food can be the most fun part of that!) and historical and modern diet.

Meanwhile, you can check out the first Starling and Marquette Mystery, The Man Who Did Too Much, at:

Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

(There is also a very short flash story featuring George and Karla in the collection Pink Snowbunnies In Hell. It's called "Revenge of the Peeps" and it's available from most of the above vendors.)

Buying books not only encourages me to write more of them, but it also supports the blog.

See you in the funny papers.

Characters At Breakfast: Mick and Casey - Historical

2013-04-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

For my first Characters at Breakfast post, I'll be talking about Mick and Casey McKee, a pair of young gunslinger detectives.

When the story is set in an historical period (even a generic version of one) the characters are often constrained by the period and location. And an author is also constrained by what we know of the period (as well as what most people know of the period -- accurate or not).

For instance, while yogurt certainly existed in the 1870s, most readers would be upset if your young saddle bum in the American west had yogurt for breakfast. And even if you created the more likely scenario where he comes across a visiting Turkish pasha who came with his own chef who made yogurt for him, it's really unlikely that they would sprinkle granola on the top.

Unless, of course, it was an intentional "wink wink" satire, in which the pasha was sharing his yogurt with a young John Harvey Kellogg, who was experimenting with his special healthy diet of toasted nuts and grains....

But that's not the kind of thing I do in the Mick and Casey series. (A pasha with yogurt might someday appear, but no winking references to the present. Except in chapter titles.)

Mick and Casey At Breakfast

Character Name: Mick and Casey McKee.
Series title, Book title: Mick and Casey Mysteries; Have Gun, Will Play
Location: American West (generic), 1876-ish.

For Mick and Casey the setting and the situation almost always dictates the food. They are saddle tramps. They have no home or kitchen, and for the most part, they do not travel with a pack animal. (They would in situations that call for it.) They might carry some cornmeal or old hard biscuits -- to get them through to the next town. But they mostly eat in town, or what a farmer is willing to sell them.

So Mick and Casey are opportunistic eaters. They eat what is given to them. or what they find or can buy, or what Casey shoots.

As a result, they have a surprising amount of variety, given the culture. In Have Gun, Will Play, for instance, they get some rice porridge for breakfast from a Chinese grocer who has befriended them. Later in the same book, they have a full hotel breakfast -- steak, eggs, beans, bread and flapjacks.

Usual breakfast: whatever is available (which is usually some form of ham or steak, beans and biscuits). And normally they'd eat at the cheapest digs in town that is also clean. Preferably a place that has pie.

What they make for themselves: When forced to rely on their own devices, corn dodgers can be cooked on a metal plate, and Casey will shoot something they can roast.

Fancy or special breakfast: Pie. (And also everything else on the menu.) Mick is partial to pie, and will eat it any time of the day or night. Any variety, sweet or savory, it doesn't matter. Casey considers it kinda sissy to be fussy about food, but she'll go for some kind of steak for a treat. And, okay, maybe some pie.

Breakfast on the run: when you're running you ain't got time for breakfast! (They tend to interpret "on the run" literally.) When you stop running, you eat what you find nearby, or what you got in your saddlebags.

Another note about Mick and Casey, and about much of the eating habits of the frontier: what they have for breakfast, lunch and dinner are highly likely to be the same things. The fancier and more formal the restaurant (or the more civilized the homestead) the more likely the offerings would differ. But many places you'd find food would be highly limited in terms of menu. They'd make what they make.

I have so many fun books on food in the west, though, I hope to talk about food again later. It's a great subject. (It seems to me that folks in the west were either in a phenomenal hurry... or in no hurry at all. It made for interesting eating patterns.)

Next up: Contemporary breakfasts with George and Karla.

(NOTE: this is a blog challenge inspired by an article in The Guardian -- write about your favorite characters and what they do or would eat for breakfast. It can be your own characters, or famous characters you love in literature and film.)

If you want to check out the first Mick and Casey Mystery, you can get it in paper and ebook form at:

Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

Shorter stories are also available at the same vendors: The Curse of Scattershale Gulch (a novelette) and Waiter! There's a Clue in my Soup! (a collection which contains two Mick and Casey short stories). Soon a new novelette A Fistful of Divas will be available too.

Buying books not only encourages me to write more of them, but it also supports the blog.

See you in the funny papers.

Characters At Breakfast, and a Challenge

2013-04-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

"Wienies, the Breakfast of Fandom"

Back when I was a button dealer at science fiction conventions, the phrase above was one of my best selling buttons.

The kind of conventions I attended did not have the razzle-dazzle of the professional convention, such as Comic-con. These were fan conventions. There were few stars (maybe a midlist author or two, and a champion gamer) and no corporate presence at all. For many fans, conventions were a lifestyle. The fen would pack themselves in, sometimes eight to a double room, and party, and argue, and play all weekend.

And very often the only food available for breakfast, for those who were crashing on the floor of the hotel room of a distant acquaintance, was whatever was left over in the "con suite" (the hospitality room of the convention). This often consisted of chips, pretzels and hot dogs.

Hence the button "Wienies, the Breakfast of Fandom."

Some of these people might very well eat hot dogs for breakfast at home, but most of them were just eating what was available. (I suspect that Pop Tarts was a common meal back home.) And yes some people brought their own Pop Tarts, and some went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, and some would pack themselves in, a dozen to a car like clowns, and head off to find the nearest Denny's or Waffle House. Many slept through breakfast and started their day with lunch.

And all of them probably ate something different at home than what they ate at the con.

I bring this up, because I think what a person eats for breakfast -- often the most opportunistic meal of the day -- is an intersection between their character and their situation.

And these two elements -- character and situation -- are the foundation of all fiction.

What a person chooses to eat for breakfast tells you something about them. What they choose when they can't have what they normally have can tell you more. (And what they choose when somebody else is buying tells you more also.) Food relates to culture as well as taste, and a person's choice will be influenced not only by the culture they are currently surrounded by, but also the culture they were raised in.

Breakfast Blog Challenge

For the next two weeks, I'm going to be blogging about what various of my characters eat for breakfast in different situations. I'd like to challenge other bloggers out there -- both writers and readers -- to write a post about the breakfasting habits of their favorite characters.

You can write about your own characters or a famous character created by someone else. (And you can extrapolate what you imagine the famous character would eat. You don't have to stick to the text.)

Consider these questions:

*What is a usual breakfast for this character?

*What's different in these circumstances (some of these may be the "usual," some not):

What sort of breakfast does a character make for himself, on his own?
What's a quick breakfast on the run?
What breakfast would the character order when away from home, in a restaurant?
What's a special "treat" breakfast?

You could also consider things like whether you character skips breakfast, or whether they'll eat differently if someone else is paying. Does the character see breakfast as a social occasion? Or a "health" activity? Do they see breakfast more as an ending to The Night Before, or a preparation for The Day Ahead? How does the character relate to unfamiliar things -- a change in schedule, foreign food, social pressure? Also, are there cultural or world-building considerations from the greater story?

If you write such a post, please let me know: post a link in the comments here, or maybe tweet with the hashtag #characterbreakfasts .

I'll be posting about my characters on the following schedule:

Thursday, April 11: Mick and Casey, whose "on the trail" lifestyle in a western setting puts some limits on what they can choose.

Monday, April 15: George and Karla of the Starling and Marquette Mysteries. Their eating habits reflect both their very different personalities and backgrounds (neurotic man of the world, and quirky small town spinster), but also the similarities which make them so compatible.

Thursday, April 18: Alex, Thorny, Captain Rozinshura, from The Case of the Misplaced Hero. And introducing Lady Pauline whose prequel story, The Case of the Misplaced Baroness begins the week after. These characters illustrate a little about blending made up cultures with real ones -- and how an imaginary culture influences a real one.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Notes: A Fistful of Divas

2013-04-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

The Mick and Casey saga began when I decided to sit down and teach myself to write a screenplay. To make it easy on myself, I decided to write something standard -- and old-time western. (Of course, being me, I couldn't write to just ONE standard, I also had to mix it with a second formula of a coming-of-age tomboy story.)

That script was originally called "The Legend of Casey McKee" (later I considered calling it "Girl Gunslinger") and it got me some nice attention, including a "just missed" the quarter finals in the Nichol Fellowships. It was about a teenaged Casey, a wild and apparently orphaned girl who was determined to join a posse led by the legendary law man, Harry Lowe. Harry, who is as ornery as Casey, will have none of it, but the necessity of the situation and Casey's stubbornness win out in the end.

Mick was a secondary character: Harry's good-natured young sidekick. He actually did for Harry what he does for Casey - he provides the smiling and talking whenever that is needed. Harry was no more able to tolerate social amenities than Casey is.

However, once I'd finished the screenplay, I had a problem: when you sell a screenplay, you sell the rights to the characters. It's very hard for a screenwriter to get what is called "separated rights." That's when you keep the rights to the character and world, and the production company just buys rights to that particular story.

And I wanted to write more about these characters. I didn't know what, I just did. I had some ideas of a Maverick-like TV series, where Mick and Casey ride into town, get in trouble, get out of trouble, and then ride out again.

But I couldn't help but think about writing it as fiction rather than scripts. After all, the writers most likely to actually get separated rights are fiction writers who have an established, published series. So if I established the series, even in short fiction....

There aren't many western markets out there, but what I really wanted to write, always, was mystery.
And that's when the series clicked too: When I decided to let Mick narrate, I realized that I had a real detective on my hands. Mick may seem a bit of a doofus, but he's actually an observer and a thinker. That's why Harry tolerated him, and why Casey sticks with him. And his job is to talk - to ask the questions before his partner starts shooting.

A Fistful of Divas was one of the first story ideas I had. Their search for opera comes from a line in the original screenplay, in which Casey's father bemoans the fact that she married Mick, and will spend her life seeing the inside of saloons, but will never see the inside of an opera house.

The Advantage of Serialization

As I mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I never finished A Fistful of Divas. It was about 3/4 done as a short story, and I had a screenplay version done, but it was just hanging out in my trunk.

I started the serial here mainly to force myself to finish it. Little did I suspect that I would rewrite the whole thing from scratch. It turned out to be a lot more work than I expected. I kept the plot, and some of the dialog and a few good lines with Mick's interior dialog.

But what you saw here was what I call a "rough draft with benefit of rehearsal."

And that got done because a serial demands that it get done. On time. One way or the other.

The Disadvantage of Serialization

I feel as though a number of threads got short shrift in this version of the story, because with a serial, you have to make the individual episodes work. And that means you have to focus in tight, and some of the larger arcs get neglected. Or at least disjointed.

For this reason, I'm going to pause to rewrite before I publish the ebook version of this.

I feel that two things need attention: one is the thread of Casey's bad day. I think that was somewhat lost after Rufus' body is found. The story becomes complicated and both Mick and Casey are concentrating on other things. But for me, this story is about Mick trying to live up to being a good husband. I don't think that it's clear in this version: but Mick thinks this obsession with opera houses is coming from himself. He's trying to prove that Casey didn't lose anything by marrying him. He doesn't realize how much it means to Casey until halfway through the story. And that, of course, raises the stakes and gives him a shot at redemption for screwing up.

The other element that I think needs more work is, ironically, the mystery itself. I kind of reined in the "Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Wrench" aspect because I didn't want to get too far from the central story. But this is that kind of story. It requires more subtle and more overt cluing, and better timing of cogitation.

So both of these important elements interfered with the other. I think next time I do a Mick and Casey as a serial, I'll choose a more straight mystery, with less of a tangled subplot. (Something more like "The Hoosegow Strangler.")

In the meantime, I'll rewrite this one to be a cohesive story that does what I want it to do. Eventually, I will write the events of that original screenplay into a novel. I just have to re-frame the background plot into a mystery.

For those of you new to the Mick and Casey Mysteries, there are several ebooks available:

Have Gun, Will Play (novel) available in both ebook and paper at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

Waiter, There's a Clue in My Soup! contains two Mick and Casey mystery shorts. Available as an ebook at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

The Curse of Scattershale Gulch, a Halloween novelette. Available as an ebook at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

And on Monday, I'll start a blog series about breakfast and characterization. Both our habits, and how we break our habits, says a lot about a character.

See you in the funny papers.

Update - Month of Living Heck

2013-03-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Every single person in my circle of friends seems to be having their life go to hell in a handbasket. Dying parents, major health issues, transportation issues. Employment issues. Disability issues. And while several people are either available, or can drive, OR have two working legs, I am the only one in the group who actually has all three. At least so far.

So me? I got sick this weekend and I can't tell if it's A) a reaction to a rabies shot, or B) a sinus infection or C) because the same day as the rabies shot I spent all night in the ER with a friend.

This all after a whole week of sleep deprivation due to minor and miscellaneous causes.

And my lips are numb, which may be a symptom of a dreaded side effect of the rabies shots... or just because when I am stressed I suck on my lips and make them numb and chapped. Probably the latter, because there is no "progression" but....

It would be really nice if Scruffy the Feral Cat would show up for brunch tomorrow to display one more time that he really and truly is not showing any signs of rabies a full two weeks after he objected so strenuously to being taken to the vet to get his own bite marks checked out. He was in the pink on Day 11, which should be good enough, but I would really rather see some confirmation before I discuss whether I can forgo the second booster shot.

(And yes, these are boosters. I've had rabies shots before, because of bats in the belfry. And no, this is not an April Fools post. Sigh.)

This is just one way of saying... there will be no "Story Notes" for A Fistful of Divas until Thursday.

For the rest of April, I'll be doing some light blogging - once or twice a week - before getting on with the next serial. In particular I will be talking about Fictional Characters and their Relationships with Breakfast.

I was inspired to write about breakfast because of an article in The Guardian, about what various famous fictional characters eat for breakfast. (The Sexiest Meal) That article is from a reader's point of view -- finding clues about the character within the story. And that's plenty fun.

But it's a fun thing for writers to talk about too, for two reasons: One is that we don't always tell the reader everything we know about a character, and it's fun to reveal little "extras", such as how a character relates to food. The other reason is that considering a character's eating habits can be a great way to develop a character.

So next Monday, I'll introduce the subject, and challenge those of you who are bloggers (both readers and writers) to write about your favorite characters and their breakfasts, (or other food). Then I'll have a series of posts about the characters from each of my series.

Then, on ~~April 29~~, (make that May 2) I'll post an introduction to The Case of the Misplaced Baroness, and we'll be off to the races again with another serial.

See you in the funny papers.

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 8

2013-03-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Story Notes

Episode 8 - Who Will Sing... and Who Will Swing?

by Camille LaGuire

We found the piano man in the hall of his hotel, a suitcase in his hand, sneaking toward the stairs. When he saw us, he ran back to his room and tried to slam the door shut, but I threw myself against the door and slammed it back open.

That bowled him over, and Casey jumped on top of him.

"Please! No! I won't say a word!" he cried, covering his face. "Don't shoot!"

"We ain't here to kill you," I said, and I kicked the door shut.

He didn't look like he believed me. He looked up at Casey like a mouse looks at a snake. Which, to be fair, was appropriate, since she was looking at him like a snake looks at a mouse.

"So what word won't you say?" I asked, as I picked up his suitcase and emptied it on the bed, and started poking through the contents. He didn't answer, maybe because he had just promised not to talk.

I found what I was looking for, hidden in the middle of a bundle of handkerchiefs. Two letters, a little rumpled. One for Miss Clarice and one for Madame Olenka. Addressed and in French. I held them up.

He kinda shrunk into his jacket like a turtle. Casey, who was still sitting on him, bounced on his chest hard, and he un-shrunk real fast.

"You can have those," he said. "I...I was going to burn them."

I squatted down next to him.

"What do these letters say?"

"Madame Olenka is from some little town in Indiana, and Mademoiselle Clarice is from Hatchetville, Missouri."

For a minute I couldn't see why that mattered, but then I figured it out.

"They ain't French!" I said.

"Clarice isn't French. Olenka isn't Russian. The letters are from the guy who teaches people to speak French and act like royalty. They're fakes."

"They ain't fake if they can sing," said Casey.

"I agree," said the piano man. "In regular show business, nobody's who they say they are. It's part of the act. But opera, that's almost society. The Great Henri is not interested in hicks who can sing."

"So which one's trying to kill you?"

"I don't know. I really don't," said the piano man, nearly breaking into sobs. "I only left them a couple notes in their music, telling them to leave money on the piano. I didn't even sign it. I didn't know they knew it was me."

"Where'd you get the letters?"

"I found them in Clarice's dressing room. The teacher gave them both to her. That letter to Olenka is a letter of introduction for Clarice, asking for a job for her. I don't think she ever used it. She just kept it to blackmail Olenka."

The piano man didn't know anything more, so we told him to keep the door locked until we got it sorted out, and left.

"It was Clarice," said Casey, "she was the one lying."

"Yeah," I agreed. Most likely it was Clarice. But I was thinking on all that confusion in the opera house. All those people running around, it was quite a trick to hide Rufus and stab him and not be seen. I stopped. "Or maybe both of them."

"How you figure that?"

"They had me chasing all over the opera house, all distracted. They couldn't have done a better job if they had been working together."

"They hate each other."

"They're fakes. Maybe that's fake too."

Casey let out a string of oaths that would take the paint off the walls. "If it's both of them, then nobody's going to sing!"

She stalked off down the stairs. I followed real quick, wondering if it was time to apologise, but she ducked past me before I could. Just then Mr. Henri came back from talking to the sheriff. He looked tired and distracted, but Casey jumped into his way.

"Can you sing?" she said.

He looked surprised and then gave us a little smile and a shrug, kinda smug like.

"Bien sûr," he said. "I have some talent, madame. But if you will excuse, I must rest. The sheriff is a difficult man. I am all of a frazzle."

Casey glowered at him as he trotted up the stairs. She grumbled something, but I wasn't really listening. All of a sudden, I had an idea floating in my head, but I couldn't quite grab on to it.

Casey had my arm and was hauling me toward the hotel parlor, saying something about wanting to get Clarice anyway. I pulled back and blinked at her, as my idea finally settled in and let me grasp it.

"What?" she said.

"Casey," I began, "if you were French...."

"Well I ain't French," she snapped. "And I never will be!"

I looked at her and spent a moment juggling my new idea with her reaction.

"That wasn't what I meant," I said.

"Oh," she said, settling down. Now I'd lost track of what I'd been about to say.

"Okay," I said. "If you was...American."

"I am American."

"Okay, but if somebody who wasn't American came up to you and started speaking English, you'd know they weren't American, wouldn't you?"

"Probably."

I pointed up the stairs where Mr. Henri had disappeared.

"How come he didn't know Clarice wasn't French?"

Casey looked me straight in the eye for the first time in what seemed like ages.

"He ain't French."

"Yeah."

"But why didn't the piano guy say anything about him?"

"Maybe he didn't know. He didn't sign the notes he left around for the ladies. So maybe he didn't put their names at the top either. Maybe Henri found one and thought it was for him."

Casey was already running up the stairs. I chased after.

* * *

Well, we caught Henri before he killed the piano man. He had talked his way in and nearly stuck a letter opener in the guy. And after Case took that letter open and started trimming Henri's mustache with it -- which must have hurt on account of it not being sharp, so most of those hairs were being pulled out by the root -- we got a full and tearful confession.

It was evening by the time we had got him to jail and everything sorted out with the sheriff. Casey slipped off somewhere. I knew that if she didn't want to be found, I wasn't going to find her, but I went looking anyway. I figured it was time for me to apologize, even if she didn't want to hear it. I'd rather have her pissed off than ducking me.

The opera house looked empty, but I checked the balcony and then backstage, and the dressing rooms. I was just about to leave when I heard her voice.

"Hey."

She was standing in the shadow of the curtains, her hands in her back pockets, looking at me from under her hat. She kept glancing down, and her face was kind of pink. I almost asked her if she had put some rouge on it, because her lips were a little more red than usual too, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. She was working herself up to something.

So I stood there with my hands in my back pockets, looking just as uncertain, but probably not as pink. Finally she sidled up closer, her arm just against mine. She didn't look up, and she still had trouble coming up with what she wanted to say. So finally I talked.

"I may get distracted," I said. "But nobody can distract me like you can. You don't even have to try."

She took a deep breath, and nodded. That was what she wanted to know.

"I love you," she said, flat, like how you'd tell somebody they had a spot on their shirt. It wasn't something she said very often. I would almost go as far as saying she never said it, but it wouldn't quite be true. She just had a real hard time with it. I smiled at her.

Then she punched me. Hard. In the pit of the stomach. I staggered back and she waited until I had mostly caught my breath again.

"Would you like me better in a dress?" she asked.

"Nope."

"In a corset...?"

"Nope."

"Would you like me in a dress at all?"

She waited as I considered my options.

"Sure," I said. It turned out to be the right answer. And it was particularly good because it was true. I like Casey any way she comes. But I kinda like that she doesn't know that, even if it does get me into trouble sometimes.

I straightened up, took her by the shoulders and showed her just exactly what I had learned about kissing from that pretend French woman. I think she liked it. She didn't punch me again, anyway.

"You still want to hear them sing?" I said.

"Don't matter," she said. "They won't."

"Sure they will." I pulled out the two letters from my pocket. "They don't want me sending these letters to that opera company in Chicago."

I didn't tell her that I had also told Clarice that she didn't have to sing, if she didn't want to, since Olenka had promised to give us the best singing anybody had ever heard. It wasn't true, but it was enough to get Clarice to declare she was going to be the star of the concert. And when Olenka heard that, she wasn't going to let anybody out do her.

So, in the end, we got ourselves a fine concert, with two ladies singing their hearts out. The most beautiful thing I ever heard, other than Casey saying "I love you." Even so, I suppose it wasn't really opera. Not a whole opera. One day we're going to hear that.

And that concludes our little story.
"Story Notes" about the writing of this to appear Thursday, April 4.

The next serial - The Case of the Misplaced Baroness - will start in late April.

First Episode | Previous Episode | Story Notes

If you're enjoying this Mick and Casey Mystery, check out their other stories, such as the first novel in the series: Have Gun, Will Play.

Available in paper or as ebook at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, as well as these ebook dealers: Kobo, Deisel, Apple iBookstore, Sony eReader, or get it in all formats without DRM at Smashwords.

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 7

2013-03-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 7 - But Which One?

by Camille LaGuire

So it had to have been someone inside the opera house.

Maybe.

I supposed there were a dozen ways I could be wrong. Maybe, when the piano man had tried to leave, he'd flipped that backward lock around wrong and then I'd flipped it back wrong, and so the door hadn't locked. Or maybe that "partner" the sheriff was looking for had been hiding in the closet too, before I locked the door, and he only went out later, after he stabbed Rufus.

But I was thinking maybe that didn't matter. Maybe the question to ask wasn't who hired Rufus to shoot, but who Rufus was shooting at.

"Case!" I called again. "Where was Rufus standing?" I pointed to a spot at the middle of the balcony. "Right about there, wasn't he?"

Casey shook her head and pointed to the railing in front of her.

"Here," she said. "Powder on the rail."

I nodded and looked back at the stage. I tried to picture where folks were when we had first walked in. They had all be standing still, and then they all moved just before the shot.

"He didn't like moving targets," I called back to Casey, as I jumped up on the stage.

"Or bein' seen," she added. She hunkered down, so that she was just peeking over the rail like Rufus might have.

I went and stood where Clarise had been. Casey pointed her finger at me like it was a gun. She looked awful serious about that aim, and I was reminded that I was in trouble with her. I kinda hoped she was imagining that she was aiming at Clarise, rather than me.

"And just before the shot, she went over there," I said, and I moved across the stage like Clarise had. I stopped where she had been standing when the shot rang out and hit the music she'd had in her hand.

Casey's finger didn't follow me so well. She was resting her hand on the railing -- as Rufus might have done, he not being a steady shot. He was also a fellow who liked to take his time in aiming. Casey shrugged and scowled -- that shot didn't feel right.

I went over and stood where Olenka had been and moved like she had.

"The ladies were too far away for the shot to end up where it was," said Casey.

"Maybe he tried to follow them and overshot."

"What about the mustache?" she said, meaning Henri.

Mr. Henri had been sitting in a chair on the floor, and had got up and moved forward. He would have been at the same angle from Rufus the whole time. I did as he had done. Casey kinda frowned over that one.

"Maybe," she said. "But you're taller than he is. And he would have had to aim down a lot more to hit him when he was sitting."

All the same, Henri made the most sense. The ladies were competing hard over him. If one of them thought that he liked the other one better, she just might want to kill him....

But there had been one more person on that stage. The one who had looked up and seen it coming. The only one to move away from the shot, when he ducked. I went over to the piano, and put my finger on the hole in the wood. Casey squinted and aimed her finger at it. I sat down on the bench like I was playing the piano and I turned around, and saw Casey aiming right at me.

"Piano man," she said.

I agreed. Most likely, the person Rufus was aiming at had been the piano man.

"Why?" she said.

"Not sure," I admitted. "He don't seem to care much for any of them, and they don't pay him any mind at all. But he was nervous all right, and so he probably knows why. And maybe who. Don't know why he didn't say anything, though."

Casey swung over the railing and landed in a crouch in the middle of the floor.

"He'll say something," she said ominously. And I remembered how we were sure that Rufus would say something when she caught him... before he got stabbed.

"Case," I said. "If somebody's out to kill him, this would be the best time to do it. The sheriff's looking for somebody else. And nobody's looking for one of them being the killer."

We ran out of that opera house in a flying tumble, hoping we weren't too late.

Stay Tuned For Episode 8 - "Who Will Sing... and Who Will Swing?"

Available after 8am EST, on Thursday, March 28

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 6

2013-03-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 6 - No Reward For Rufus

by Camille LaGuire

The blood did not belong to any of the opera folk. They all popped out to see what was going on as soon as Miss Clarice screamed. The sheriff had Casey round them all up and keep them up front.

Meantime, the sheriff and a deputy tried to get the door open. As nobody was complaining from the other side, I figured there wasn't that much of a hurry, but my opinion wasn't wanted. They eventually sent for the opera house manager, who came huffing in a little bit later, apologizing because he hadn't been able to find his keys, and had to dig out another set.

"Mabye somebody stole them," I said.

The sheriff elbowed me, like I should stay out of it. The manager looked alarmed and then looked down at the blood on the floor and looked more alarmed. The sheriff took his keys and unlocked the door of the closet.

Inside the closet was old Ring-neck Rufus. Dead as dirt. Somebody had shoved a knife up under his breastbone and into his heart. He must have gone fast, but he still bled out pretty good.

This time it was the manager who nearly fainted. I hauled him around the curtain to the stage, where the opera folks were waiting with Casey. I noticed that they were all sitting still for her. Maybe it was the sight of blood, but I thought it was more the look of blood in her eye.

The sheriff joined us a moment later, wiping his hands and nodding his head.

"It's pretty clear what happened," he said. "The bolt on that back door is set to twist in the wrong direction, and Mick here thought he was locking the door but he really left it unlocked."

"No, sir," I said. "I noticed it twisted wrong and I locked it."

"Don't want to hear it!" snapped the sheriff. So I shut my mouth and he went on. "Rufus wouldn't do something like that on his own. Somebody must have hired him. And I expect when Rufus ran, he met up with his fellow and maybe told him how he'd screwed up. That might have been enough motive right there, but this partner also would have been worried that Rufus would talk once he was caught."

"Yes!" said Mr. Henri. "That is what Monsieur Mick said -- we would know everything when his magnificent wife caught the fellow."

He looked at me with a smile, and the sheriff shot me a glance that said he'd rather my name didn't come up again.

"Anyway," he continued. "This partner had to get rid of Rufus, so he brought him back in here and knifed him and shoved him in the closet. And slipped back out into the alley."

"Where you folks were searching," I said. "How'd he get past you?"

"It was after we had moved on from the alley. Had to be."

I supposed that was possible but it didn't set right.

"What I need from you folks," the sheriff went on, "is the straight story of who might want to kill you, or at least scare you."

For a moment they all murmured and glanced at each other, until finally Henri coughed and said something about a lovely lady in the previous town who had a jealous husband.

"I meant nothing," said Henri. "Beautiful women are to be admired!"

"And what about her?" added Madame Olenka with a glance at Clarice. "She threw herself at that man with the angry wife, did she not?"

"What about you, you cow?" said Clarice with enough venom to make a rattlesnake feel inadequate. Olenka shrugged and fanned herself.

"There are always jealousies," Olenka admitted. "But I have no need to throw myself at anyone to cause them."

"I'm sure you ladies have your rivals," said the sheriff. "But no lady could pull a crime like this."

I glanced at Casey, and I could see she was fingering her knife, but I couldn't tell if she was looking at him or me. No, she was looking at Clarice. But the sheriff told Mr. Henri he wanted to know more about the this fellow he'd made jealous, and he sent all the other opera folk back to their hotel.

Case and I were left alone.

Casey went off to the balcony to be by herself. She did that when she felt bad, which made me feel extra bad. But I couldn't help but feel I did not deserve quite as much disgust as I was getting -- well, maybe I did from her, but not from the sheriff.

I had locked that door. And it wasn't the kind of bolt you could unlock with a key. Only someone on the inside could have unlocked it. I remembered how the piano man had tried to leave, and I wondered for minute if he had got messed up by the backward lock and had managed to lock it rather than unlock, and I was distracted enough, maybe then I flipped it back, thinking I was locking it when I really unlocked it.

I didn't think I'd done that, but.... But maybe it didn't matter.

"Case!" I called.

"What?" she yelled back from up in the balcony.

"You didn't find any sign of Rufus in the alley?"

She came up to the railing and leaned over to look at me closer.

"No!" she called back. "What're you thinking?"

"If he'd been back there, you'd have caught scent of him. Sheriff might have lost him, but you wouldn't."

"Yeah?"

"So when Rufus ran, he must have run right around to the back door and come back in, before we even got to the alley to look for him."

"Why would even Rufus do a fool thing like that?"

"Like the sheriff said: He ran to his partner for help. And that partner was somebody in this building. It was one of the opera folks themselves."

Stay Tuned For Episode 7 - "But Which One?"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 5

2013-03-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 5 - French Literature

by Camille LaGuire

Casey was keeping her look neutral, so I shifted my weight and waited for Olenka to say more.

"Clarice leaves threats for me sometimes," said the lady in a low, confidential voice. "She has a letter of mine. It is from a man other than Henri. This man loves me, and Henri would not understand.... Do you read French?"

"No," I said.

"Well, the letter is addressed to me, so that should be clear it is mine. I will pay you twenty dollars if you get it for me."

I thought about that. I wasn't sure we were getting the straight story, but it sounded interesting. I looked at Casey. She gave me a little shrug without looking at me, so she was still mad, but she didn't object. Maybe she wanted to get back at Clarice.

"We'll do it," I said. "...but not for twenty dollars."

"Well, thirty?"

"No money. You gotta sing."

Casey straightened up a little. Yep, that's what she wanted. I turned to Olenka and, and damned if that woman wasn't looking sour, like singing was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

"Why not?" I said. She shrugged and turned back to her mirror and started playing with her powderpuff and combs and things. Because of the mirror, though, she really couldn't avoid looking at me.

"I...sprained my voice," she said. "When that man shot his gun. I screamed...."

"You did not. The other gal did, but you didn't."

She looked at me in the mirror, reluctantly. She sighed and turned around again.

"It is difficult to sing for people who do not appreciate...."

"We ain't good enough?" said Casey. She uncrossed her arms, and stood like she was about to draw. The lady narrowed her eyes, and made a little shrug.

"Perhaps," she said, "I will sing from sheer joy if I have the letter in my hand."

"You get the letter after you sing," I said. "That's it. It's the only deal."

The lady sighed and shrugged. "If I must, I must."

It seemed to be a deal.

Casey was already out the door, and I found her in the hall, staring hard at the door of Miss Clarice's dressing room. As I came up to her, she twisted around slow and looked at me with the scariest look on her face I ever saw. I nearly took a step back.

"Okay, Sugar Lips," she said. "You lure her out of that room and distract her and I'll search it."

I did not like this plan. But Casey didn't leave me any time to come up with a better one. She reached out and knocked lightly on the door.

"Entrez!" came the voice of Miss Clarice. Casey reached over and pulled the door open while staying behind it, out of sight. I didn't have any choice but to step into the room.

I thought quick and decided furtive was the way to go. I put a finger to my lips and hunched down. Miss Clarice took a quick glance behind me, didn't see anybody, and gave me a mischievous smile.

"I need to talk to you," I whispered. "But she might overhear."

I pointed toward Madame Olenka's dressing room, and Clarice smiled slyly. I backed out of the room, looked both ways like I was watching out for trouble. Trouble, as it happened, was well-concealed behind the door where she wouldn't be seen.

Miss Clarice followed me out, and I hustled her around the corner into the little hall that led to the back door.

It was a narrow space, and Clarice smiled, and reached up to caress my chest. In that moment I changed my mind on how I was going to handle it. I shoved her away, down the hall where she was trapped. Her face turned pink enough to match her rouge.

"You were not so unfriendly before," she said.

"Well, that's 'cause I'm slow," I said. I backed her up another step, and said: "So where's that letter?"

"I don't know. What letter do you mean?"

"The one that belongs to Madame Olenka."

"Ha! She is a liar. She has my letter."

"Oh, it's your letter," I said. "What's it about?"

"It is nothing, and indiscretion. This man is in love with me, and he wrote a letter...."

"And Mr. Henri might not understand."

"Yes."

"It's in French, too, I bet."

"Yes, it is. Can you read French?"

"No, but I'm sure it's addressed to you so if I saw it I would know it."

"Would you find it for me? Could you? I would be grateful. I would make you very happy if you did...."

"That won't be hard to make me happy," I said.

She smiled and slipped forward, all friendly. I poked her back, and leaned in.

"All you have to do is make my wife happy."

Her eyes got wide. "How?" she said.

"You gotta sing in that concert tonight."

She had the same look on her face that Madame Olenka did. Exactly the same.

"You sprain your voice?"

"Why, yes, I did." She put her hand to her throat, and looked guilty.

"Tell me the honest truth. Did you two ladies hire Rufus to take that shot just so you wouldn't have to sing tonight?"

"No," she said. "But it would have been a good idea."

She sidled up to me like she was going to kiss me again. I straightened up and tried to think of how keep stalling her, without shooting her or getting any more rouge on me.

But it turned out I didn't need a stall. Just as she put her hands up to my shoulders, the door behind her opened up.

It was the sheriff.

"Why the hell is this door unlocked!" he said.

"But it was locked," I said. It was only then that I realized I should have asked Casey how she had got into the building, seeing as the doors were both bolted from the inside. I had thrown those bolts myself.

The sheriff slammed the door shut and locked it. "You been standing here guarding the door the whole time?"

"No sir," I said, and I recounted just what I'd done to secure the building. He gave me a look like I was the lowest fool he ever saw.

"It ain't locked," he said, pointing back to the door. "And Rufus must have come back in this way. It's the only place he coulda gone."

Clarice gave a squeal and grabbed onto me for safety, while the sheriff went stomping around the corner.

"You make sure those opera folk are all safe," he called back to me. "I'm going search this place again and--"

He stopped, so sudden Clarice and I ran into the back of him. He was looking down at the floor, and I looked down too.
There was a little pool of blood seeping out from under the door of one of the closets.

"That door was locked too," I said. "I think."

The sheriff reached out and yanked on the handle, but it didn't budge. Miss Clarice, in the meantime, let out a scream and fainted right into my arms.

Stay Tuned For Episode 6 - "No Reward For Rufus"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 4

2013-03-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 4 - My Name Is Dirt

by Camille LaGuire

Casey stood there for just a second, arms crossed, while I scratched my head and shuffled my feet.

"I...I'm sorry?" I said.

She made a little face and then just walked right past me, around the end of the curtain to get to the stage.

"Casey, are you mad at me?"

"No," she said, and she kept going without looking back.

The thing is, Casey doesn't lie. Not unless she's making a joke, which she doesn't do much, and this time she sure wasn't.

It's easy to forget that underneath the big hat, and the pair of sixguns and the big boots and spurs and sometimes bandaleros and chaps and the tough talk and all, there's a girl. I forget sometimes that she's even younger than I am, because she doesn't seem so, and she's a lot more shy than she lets on. She's a little gal in a big man's world, and she somehow manages to be tough when she isn't big or strong.

And I'm supposed to be the one watching her back. And not just from bullets.

I had let her down. I felt like a rat. I was mad at myself, and I was mad at Clarice -- especially when I thought that she must have seen Casey coming up, and she pushed it anyway. She was stomping on Casey's territory on purpose.

I followed Casey toward the stage, but she had actually gone to the end of the curtain where an extra fold gave her bit more privacy. When she saw me she turned away.

"So," I said. "I guess you found Rufus, then."
"No," she said, and she snapped it so hard I knew I wasn't the only one who let her down. "Sheriff's still looking. He's got some deputies, so he didn't need--"

She cut herself off, but I knew what the sheriff didn't need. A girl. This day just wasn't turning out for Casey.

"I suppose you don't want to hear the opera now anyway," I said, trying to sound philosophical.

She turned half toward me, looking hard at my boots.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, they ain't gonna sing."

"Shit!" said Casey, and she kicked at the curtain. It just fluffed around and caught on her spur. She hopped there, cursing even worse, trying to get it unhooked. I started to help, but she shoved me away.

"Why not? Because they got shot at?"

"It ain't a bad reason," I said. I explained how Clarice wouldn't sing because she thought Madame Olenka was trying to kill her, while Casey tried to get her spur loose. She couldn't because she had managed to kick up so high she couldn't raise her foot any to get unhooked. I finally scooped her up, and she kicked loose, and I put her back down again.

"Maybe the other one will sing," she said, still not looking at me. She punched the curtain aside and headed backstage again.. "Or if she's really trying to kill the other one, maybe we can hog-tie her and then Little Red Lips will sing."

* * *

Madame Olenka turned and looked at us wide-eyed when Casey kicked open the door to the other little dressing room. She kept her cool pretty good, but I couldn't tell if she was just cool by nature, or if it was because she knew full well Rufus hadn't been aiming at her.

Casey crossed her arms and leaned back in a corner, glaring defensively at Madame Olenska. I was supposed to do the talking, so I turned to the lady and scratched my head.

She was a beautiful woman too. Older and a good bit heftier, but all woman, if you know what I mean. But she wasn't interested in me, which was a good thing.

"Ma'am," I said. "Do you know what's going on here?"

"It is sabotage!" said the lady. She gestured with her powderpuff, and the room not being very big, I wound up with a splat of powder on my chest. "Do you know what that is?"

"Yeah," said Casey, as I dusted myself off and sneezed. The lady didn't listen to Casey, but kept talking.

"In Europe, if you want to stop a factory, you drop a sabot--a wooden shoe--in the machine. And it stops. She is dropping a shoe on me."

"Miss Clarice?"

"Yes."

"She says you're trying to kill her."

"Ha! She would like you to believe that. She would love for Henri to believe that." She turned to Casey. "Men are such fools. No one is trying to kill anyone. She hired that man herself."

I glanced at Casey, who straightened up in interest. Madame Olenka powdered her chin and kept talking.

"Of course, Henri attempts to cultivate her. One day I will stop singing. But she refuses to learn. She wishes to be the prima donna, to shine above all. And to have Henri, but Henri is not interested in someone so trivial. So she attacks me, and pretends to suffer. She hires this man to shoot at her."

"That's a dangerous thing to do, don't you think?"

"She has the insanity of youth. She doesn't think, except to scheme for what she wants."

Olenka turned and looked very closely at me. She looked down at my guns, and then at my chest.

"You are not a sheriff."

"No."

"Not a lawman."

"No."

She looked at Casey, and Casey just looked back at her, arms crossed, eyes narrow.

"You..," she said and paused a long time. "You do things for hire, yes? For reward?"

"Yeah," I said carefully, glancing at Casey.

"I would like to hire you for something perhaps not legal, but only for the good."

Stay Tuned For Episode 5 - "French Literature"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Changes In The Blog

2013-03-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

If you're expecting a Miss Leech cartoon, I'm sorry to say that she's going on holiday until September. I've figured some things out, and I realize that it is necessary to make some changes right now.

I'm Changing The Blog.

I have no idea if I'm going to do this for a month, or through the end of summer, or for the whole year. It probably won't be beyond that, though. Call it a sideways hiatus:

From now until ... sometime, this blog will be a fiction blog. I will post three things:

Stories: mainly the Monday/Thursday episodes of serial novels.
Announcements: sales, new books, stories in magazines, breaks between serial stories, major life events (such as when I'll start regular blogging again)... stuff like that.
Story Notes: about stories posted here, or possibly on books in progress.

That's it. The announcements and story notes will not be on a schedule -- they'll just appear when I have something to say. The fiction will continue on Mondays and Thursdays. I have drafts of many wonderful posts for you. They are going into a drawer until they get the perspective they need. I will undoubtedly add more drafts to the pile.

Why Am I Doing This?

Focus.

I finally have the chance to focus. Before I retired, I didn't have a Chance In Hell of achieving the focus I aimed for. Since my retirement was, uh, a surprise for me, I had to take time to get past a lot of life-related distractions. Now for the past few months I've been cutting down on the number of things I do, bringing myself down to the focus point.

I'm not there yet, so I'm going to keep cutting down until I get where I want to be with writing.

Life changes are like global warming, or the demolition of a dam: they start slowly, almost imperceptably, but when they go, they go fast and certain.

I will keep you up to date now and then in the "announcements" posts, but until then:

Be brave. Be fair. Do good work.

See you in the funny papers.

A Fistful of Divas - Episode 3

2013-03-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode

Episode 3 - Deep Trouble

by Camille LaGuire

The piano player stood off by his piano and clutched a folder of music sheets to his chest. He was staring at the piano. There was a hole in it.

When I went over to him, he told me his name was Dick, but he didn't want to talk. He wanted to leave. I didn't blame him but I wanted to persuade him to stay and play piano for the concert.

Before I could start in on that, though, the fellow with the mustache came back from comforting the ladies.

"There will be no concert," he said sadly, in his bouncy French accent. "It is too disastrous."

"Don't you worry, mister--"

"Monsieur Henri de Villefort. I am the impressario," he said. "You are the deputy?"

"Nope," I said. "Name's Mick McKee. The little lady who chased the fella out the window is my wife, Casey."

"Your wife!" he exclaimed, and for a minute he didn't seem to know what to say. But he recovered fast. "Ladies are so magnificent, are they not?"

"That one is," I agreed. "And don't you worry about that gunman. I know him. He's dumb as a bag of hammers, and snivelly to boot. My magnificent wife has probably caught him by now."

"Why would he do such a thing?"

"I don't know," I said, looking up at the balcony where he had been. "He's too stupid to be crazy. He had to think there was money in it. Can you think of anybody who would pay him to give you folks trouble?"

"No! Of course not. There is no trouble with us."

I saw the piano player's eyes slide over toward the curtain, where the ladies were hiding out. I was thinking the same thing.

"Any jealousy over the ladies maybe?" I asked.

"Well, they are very beautiful," Henri admitted. "Yes, perhaps, but I..." He shrugged and his words drifted off.

"Well, if I know Rufus he'll tell us everything as soon as Casey gets her hands on him."

Henri was lost in his thoughts. He frowned back at the dressing rooms again.

"I should speak to Olenka," he said. "She will be upset that I reassured only Clarice."

He disappeared behind the curtain again and I called after him: "You tell them it's all right! It'll be safe to sing tonight. We'll see to it!"

I didn't hear any answer, just the sound of polite knock and a door.

Dick the piano guy reached over and hit a key on the piano. It made a funny scraping thunk sound. Must have been the wires that got hit by the bullet.

"We'll get you another piano," I said. "A good one."

"There won't be a concert," said Dick.

"I tell you, we'll catch him," I said. "It'll be safe."

"Tell that to Clarice. She is almost dead!" he said, mimicking her French accent.

"I"ll do that," I said. I went back behind the curtain and I found Miss Clarice just coming out of the door of her room.

"Ma'am," I said, tipping my hat. "I just wanted you to know that you don't have to worry about a thing. We're gonna catch him--"

"Are you the sheriff?" she said. Her voice had a pretty little lift to it, and so did her chin as she looked at me hopefully.

"No ma'am. My name's Mick McKee. I'm a gunslinger."

"You will protect me?"

"Well sure," I said. "That's what I'm here for. To protect all of you."

"I am very frightened," she said, and she shrank back a little. I naturally stepped forward and put a hand out to reassure her. She grabbed my hand with both of hers. "I cannot sing with people shooting at me. I would die."

"You won't die, ma'am. We'll catch him."

"That would not stop her."

"Stop who?"

"Her!" she said, and she pointed toward the next room, thrusting her chest out in a way that I couldn't help but appreciate. "She does not want me to sing. Her voice, it is old and turning like a frog."

Madame Olenka's voice had not sounded all that bad to me. What little I'd heard sounded better than Clarice, actually. But I didn't say so.

"She knows that Henri favors me," she added, and that made some sense. Clarice was younger, and though she was a bit skinny, she was awful pretty. Awful pretty.

She came up closer and put a hand on my chest, looking up at me with those big eyes. My heart started thumping, but it didn't seem like any of that blood was going to my head. I blinked at her.

"You are very strong, Monsieur McKee," she said.

"Uh," I said.

"They call you Mick? Don't they?"

"Uh...uh, yes, ma'am. They do." She smelled like flowers. She put her other hand on my ribs, and began to slide it, ever so softly, around and down....

Then she kissed me. They say that French people really know how to kiss, and she sure seemed to know. She was a comfortable armful, but I was trying not to put my arms around her, just like I was trying to remember what it was I had meant to say. I didn't succeed at all at the first, but I eventually managed the second as she slipped back and away from me.

"I'm, uh," I said. Married. The word was married. It didn't make it out of my mouth.

She smiled and swayed back away from me, waving with her fingers, not at me, but at somebody behind me. She slipped back into her room, and I turned around.

Casey was standing there, arms crossed.

"You've got rouge on your mouth," she said.

I did. I could taste it. But I reached up and wiped it off anyway, and looked at my hand. Yep. Red.

"She kissed me," I said.

"Yeah, I saw what a big fight you were putting up."

"Oh, hell," I said.

Stay Tuned For Episode 4 - "My Name Is Dirt"

Available after 8am EST, on Thur

First Episode | Previous Episode | Next Episode