Book Review: Wild Horses

Just finished reading Wild Horses by Dick Francis. I’ve read this book, three times? It might be one of my favorites but if you asked me, what did you think about Wild Horses, I wouldn’t know it by name. I always remember it the second I read the first page. The story begins with a man dying next to the protagonist, Thomas Lyon, and telling Thomas about his greatest sin. The rest of the book is spent with Thomas uncovering that sin. It’s an interesting story in that it attacks the mystery from two different angles. There is the past mystery, and the mystery going on around Thomas as he films a movie about horse racing. Whenever I read it I think about a large rake or boom being dragged along the muddy bottom of a lake revealing things best left covered.

I tagged a few of my favorite lines:

I liked this first passage for its simplicity. It’s just one line, but it describes so much about what Thomas’ intentions are and why he is doing the things he does in the book.
“Conjurors never explained their tricks. The gasp of surprise was their best reward.”

The first part of this line isn’t anything to shake a stick at, but the last four words grabbed me.
“More people came, apparently plain-clothes policemen. Betty and I retreated to Dorothea’s sitting room where again, comprehensive chaos paralyzed thought.”

Loved this description of one of the suspects. Who wouldn’t want to be a person happy with little?
There was an obvious self-contentment in his whole personality. He had the weathered complexion and thread-venied cheeks of an outdoors man, his eyebrows dramatically blond against the tanned skin. Blue eyes held no guile. His teeth looked naturally good, even and white. No tension showed in his long limbs or sturdy neck. I thought him no great brain, but one of nature’s lucky accidents, a person who could be happy with little.

Some might think this description of a sun rise a bit ham-handed, but Francis inserts this into his usually utilitarian prose and it makes it more interesting.
“Faint horizontal threads of clouds were growing a fiercer red against the still gray sky and as he busied himself with camera speed and focus, the streaks intensified to scarlet and to orange and to gold, until the whole sky was a breath-gripping symphony of sizzling color, the prelude to the earth’s daily sping toward the empowerment of life.”

Thought this description of this aging professor and his room remarkable, particularly the length of that first sentence and the last line of that sentence . . . “and a brass Roman-numeraled clock ticking away the remains of a life.”
I was becoming accustomed to him and to his crowded room, aware now of the walls of bookshelves, so like Valentine’s, and of his cluttered old antique walnut desk, of the single brass lamp with green metal shade throwing inadequate light, of rusty green velvet curtains hanging from great brown rings on a pole, of an incongruously modern television set beside a worn old typewriter, of dried faded hydrangeas in a cloisonné vase and a brass Roman-numeraled clock ticking away the remains of a life. The room, neat and orderly, smelled of old books, of old leather, of old coffee, of old pipe smoke, of old man.

Francis throws in some ideas about his belief in having a strong fantasy life, a positive thing in his view.
“A good strong fantasy life, I’d guess, saves countless people from boredom and depression. It gives them a feeling of being individual.”

I’m biased I know, but I’d read this again in a heartbeat and will. Great hook, great plot, great story lines.

Nota Bene

Uh oh. This is a good note to self. If you want to be a published and well known spy thriller novel, probably best NOT to plagarize. The whole article, Spy Thriller: 'An Instant Classic' Vanishes Amid Plagiarism Charges by Jefferey A Trachtenberg (here), is well worth reading but I've quoted (not lifted!) segments below.

The Hook

The book is a thriller about an elite CIA agent chasing a shadowy international group of assassins. But Tuesday, publisher Little, Brown & Co. recalled all 6,500 copies of the novel on the grounds that passages were "lifted" from other books. One sharp-eyed observer says he had identified at least 13 novels with similar material.

The Proof

One example, noted by spy novelist Jeremy Duns, is this passage from "Assassin of Secrets": "Then he saw her, behind the fountain, a small light, dim but growing to illuminate her as she stood naked but for a thin, translucent nightdress; her hair undone and falling to her waist—hair and the thin material moving and blowing as though caught in a silent zephyr." The same sentence appears precisely in "License Renewed," a James Bond novel by John Gardner, a search of Google Books shows.
Although not in and of itself damning, this next passage is enough to nail the coffin down.

On the first page of chapter one of "Assassin" is this paragraph: "The boxy, sprawling Munitions Building which sat near the Washington Monument and quietly served as I-Division's base of operations was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular work space."

In the book "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" by James Bamford is this: "In June 1930, the boxy, sprawling Munitions Building, near the Washington Monument, was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular workspace."

YOW! Why do folks do this. There are things that I read from my favorite authors that I might want to mimic. For example, in Three for the Chair by Rex Stout, Archie uses a characters mannerisms to describe the character, but he does it in a clever and funny way (see more here) but I wouldn't dream of actually cutting and pasting the entire section into my book.

Not a big fan of plagarism. Avoid it at all costs!

Not a Great Start, But Seems Like It Will Be A Fun Book

I've just started the Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson and I just have to say that it's a good thing I read a good review of it (here) if only cause the first line didn't thrill me into wanting more.

"Citizens, gather round your loudspeakers, for we bring important updates! In your kitchens, in your offices, on your factory floors-wherever your loudspeaker is located, turn up the volume!"

Now, the second paragraph is where he starts the appetite whetting both for Kim Jong Il propaganda and some humor.

"In local news, our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il was seen offering on-the-spot guidance to the engineers deepening the Taedong River channel. While the Dear Leader lectured to the dredge operators, many doves were seen to spontaneously flock above him, hovering to provide our Revered General some much needed shade on a hot day. Also to report is a request from Pyongyang's Minister of Public Safety, who asks that while pigeon snaring season is in full swing, trip wires and snatch loops be placed out of reach of our youngest comrades. And don't forget citizens: the ban on stargazing is still in effect."

Who could crack a smile at the doves hovering to provide shade.

Need vs Want

I've written about this before, . . . probably many times. . . but it's a huge part of my life, and a major theme in the novel I'm currently pecking away on in my Reedsy account. I have a good clip going, got some momentum, and Reedsy hooks you up with an editor, so hopefully, this time, I won't get reviews that say "could really use a professional editor."

But I'm writing about Need vs Want. I wrote earlier that men want to be needed and women need to be wanted. I think I wrote about this in terms of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. The way that men and women communicate, and fail to communicate and the challenges and problems that grow from that. 

One Last One?

For a long time I kept alive a series of posts,  . . . poems and lines that I found via other sources mostly, that helped me deal with different aspects of my life and challenges I was going through. I logged them all under the rubrick of Evershade Posts (see HERE). 

I know I've recently closed down this thread but there always comes that time that you see that perfect post for a thread, and it doesn't matter if it's no long-running or not, you realize it has to be added.

Summer Wind in Winter?

Apparently my pseudonym is Molotov Scotch Tale. I mean, she could be my clone. We think the same things. Anyone who follows these posts would know that she has been a big part of these Evershade posts (see HERE). 

This first is from her. 

Exactly my State of Mind

As a part of the ever growing series with the Evershade label (see HERE) are these next few, I have to say these are pretty close to what I'm feeling, eerily close. 

This first is a quickie, from Patti o'Malley, who I have never reposted before. But it's quick, easy, and feels about right. 

Series Continues Forward

So, this series continues to grow . . . why? Well, first I love these lines. It's a good thing to find these little gems and appreciate them. Secondly, they help me figure things out in my own life. They resonate with me and linger, sometimes they emanate other light and other understandings. 

Regardless, it used to be that Great White North was my best sourse for these Evershade posts (see HERE), but lately it's been Molotov Scotch Tale. 

The Series Continues

So the series continues (see HERE), the evershade labeled posts keeps moving forward. This time thanks in large part to Top Shelf Bourbon Elf (again). 

First, from MolotovScotchTale (a great profile name), ther is this that is simple. 

More for the Series

 Here are a few more for my ever growing "Evershade" series (see HERE). 

These came by way of all my friends on the Twitter and on Reddit. Again, I think they're worth capturing. 

Seems a Bit Short (and Spooky)

Something remarkable happened. I got an apology from someone and it was wholly inadequate. Like meteorically unimpressive. I was thinking about it and and wondering what to respond or think about it ultimately, when I ran into a Seinfeld clip that summed it up perfectly.

What's funny is that it wasn't just summed up perfectly about how to think about it . . . it was the EXACT SAME APOLOGY! It was spooky infact.   

More and More

To continue the Evershade series (see HERE) I now offer these!

First, another simple and quickie, from Purple. Similar to the simple ones from before.

want to hold on . . .

BUT . . 

 . . . will let go

Always Collecting More

 I'm always out there trying to find new quotes, phrasings and lines that help me make sense of things. I put them here in my Evershade series (see HERE). It's my one sop to poetry. 

This first is from missing piece. 

Actions Speak

 

We Look Away the First Hundred Times or More

 

Bubbles

"Thin line between heaven and here."

Because of work, life, and school demands I have not had enough time to read for fun. I have still been writing for fun. In fact, I'm hoping to release a book of short stories soon, so my writing life is still going full bore. And I've started writing this blog again, so if anything, my life has changed positively for writing, but not as much for reading.

Short Story Sunday

Although I've been working with my Kenyan thriller novel, I've started a new tradition, Short Story Sunday. I have a library of short stories, some finished (here), most unfinished. Worse than unfinished stories are stories not even started. I've decided to fix this by dedicating Sunday morning to short story writing only, and Monday's to giving snippets of those stories to this audience. So, enjoy:

 Breakfast With the Lifers

By Dick Hannah

If asked, I doubt if I could pin it down to just one action or happenstance. Maybe it was the shades, maybe the good cooking, perhaps like so many odd coincidences in this world it was just a series of unrelated incidents that coalesced to create one huge, crazy, pre-midlife drama for me. Like so many other things in life what happened to me was probably not the result of one event, or even two, but a combination of many small things. It could have been Michaelson talking too much, my apartment being in a flash in the pan neighborhood where shops and people drift in an out of favor as quickly as teenage pop stars, or it could have been my not putting my a stop to things quickly enough, but one thing is for certain, Hoffman opening the shades that first morning was the pivot point, and if not it certainly acted as the catalyst that started the whole Rube Goldberg like mechanization that led to my restaurant.

I never wanted to become a restaurateur, I never had that calling. I’ve thought about it, thought about it a lot, and it boils down to the fact that it is just too risky. There is no safety net, no assurances, the customer base is too fickle, the market is too precarious, too many avenues where things could go sour. I like my life planned out and orderly. I rejected the idea of owning or operating or even working in a restaurant a long time ago. I’ve patronized too many establishments too often, and regarded them with a practiced eye toward failure potential, to make the mistake of investing in them myself. I don’t gamble. I go into all my ventures, few they may be, with a wealth of research and always a well thought out plan consisting of a feasibility phase, a production phase, closure, extraction and so on.

(if you'd like to read the rest, please follow this link: here)

Evershade, evershades, ever shade, ever shades

Felix is No Dick

Nope, as I said in a post last week, Felix Francis is good, but he's not at all as good as his father. I finished Damage this weekend, and although it was good, it wasn't a five star story like many of his father's are. Why? Several reasons.

First, it's not original. My favorite comic (of all time) is the Bloom County about there not being any truly original ideas anymore (I posted it at the end of this post for you). The fact that Felix is not using an original idea is a problem with me. It's as if he's trying to reproduce a story and he's not done it very well. I mentioned this in last week's post as well (see here).

I had to create a form for our business a few years ago. When I had come up with just the right form on my computer my boss told me, "Go and copy it about 10 times and see just how legible all those lines and shaded areas become." I'm glad I did it. The text became illegible in the shaded regions after just a few copies. They would have become illegible in our field locations as well. This is the way Damage felt. As if after several copies the story became fuzzy and not as good as the original. And yes, I blurred the image above for just this reason.

Secondly, he uses cheap and easy mystery/thriller techniques. Guess what? The main character, Jeff Hinkley, gets hit by a car and gets hurt. Happens in most of his books. He happens to put a tracking device in a rugby ball, the perfect vehicle for throwing it out a train window later? How did he know he'd have to do that! Additionally, Jeff figures out who the villain is about three quarters the way through the book, but Felix doesn't let the reader in on it till the end. He has Jeff and his wife sit outside the villains house for a full day and never let's his main character mention to the reader who it is they are watching. They follow him, they discuss him with others, and always Felix writes "I told him what I thought," or "I showed him the proof that I had against our target." It's a pathetic way to build suspense and it doesn't work in this case at all. If anything it only gets the reader mad.

I have given (and will continue to give) Felix Francis the benefit of the doubt because I love reading Dick Francis' books and wish that there were new ones to read. But this has me wondering if I should give up on the endeavor. Three star at best. Perhaps two is more realistic. I hope that Vincent Lardo offers a better bridge to more from my favorite authors than Felix.

(Here is that comic I mentioned)

More First Lines . . . This Time as "Scene-Setters"

As a follow up to yesterday's post on my own first lines (see here) as well as last week's first line on Frederick Forsyth's first line of The Veteran, I offer two more. I inadvertently stumbled into a nest of short stories. Didn't mean to. I was looking forward to a nice, long, British, spy-thriller. I got a series of shorties.

Still, the first lines of each help illustrate exactly what I was writing about yesterday. In both of the below cases the first lines act as scene-setters. I like reading the way Forsyth is able to produce a fantastic word picture of exactly where the reader is finding themselves in the story.

THE ART OF THE MATTER 

The rain came down. It fell in a slowly moving wall upon Hyde Park and, borne by a light westerly wind, drifted in grey curtains of falling water across Park Lane and through the narrow park of plane trees that divides the northbound and southbound lanes. A wet and gloomy man stood under the leafless trees and watched. 

The entrance to the Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom was brightly lit by several arc lights and the endless glare of camera flashes. Inside was warm, snug and dry. Under the awning before the door was an area of only damp pavement and here the uniformed commissionaires stood, gleaming umbrellas at the ready, as the limousines swept up, one by one. 

As each rain-lashed car drew up by the awning one of the men would run forward to shield the descending star or film celebrity for the two-yard dash, head down, from car to awning. There they could straighten up, plaster on the practised smile and face the cameras. 

The paparazzi were either side of the awning, skin-wet, shielding their precious equipment as best they could. Their cries came across the road to the man under the trees.

Forsyth, Frederick - The Veteran

THE MIRACLE

The sun was a hammer in the sky. It beat down on the clustered roofs of the walled Tuscan city and the medieval tiles, some pink but mostly long baked to umber or ashen grey, shimmered in the heat. 

Shadows dark as night were cast along upper windows by the overhanging gutters; but where the sun could touch, the rendered walls and ancient bricks gleamed pale, and wooden sills cracked and peeled. In the deep and narrow cobbled alleys of the oldest quarter there were restful pools of further shade and here the occasional sleepy cat sought refuge. But of local humans there was no sign, for this was the day of the Palio. 

Down one such alley, lost in a maze of tiny cobbled ways, hardly wider than his own shoulders, the American tourist hurried, red as beef. Sweat trickled down to soak his short-sleeved cotton shirt, the tropical-weight jacket felt like a blanket dangling from his shoulder. Behind him his wife tottered painfully on unsuitable platform sandals. 

They had tried to book far too late for a hotel inside the city, in this of all seasons, and had finally settled for a room in Casole d’Elsa. The rented car had overheated on the road, they had eventually found a parking slot beyond the city walls and now scurried from the Porta Ovile towards their goal. 

They were soon lost in the labyrinth of alleys dating back five hundred years, stumbling on the hot cobbles, feet on fire. From time to time the Kansas cattleman cocked an ear towards the roar of the crowd and tried to head in that direction. His well-upholstered wife sought only to catch up and fan herself with a guidebook at the same time.

Forsyth, Frederick - The Veteran

I find it interesting that the first one is about rain coming down near Hyde Park, then the very next one is sun in Italy. The rain soaked start is for a revenge fantasy regarding a painting con. The sun is the first line for a story about a miracle. Forsyth is a good enough author where I think both of those are intentional.

Ran Across this Blog Called "The Self-Made Writer"

I found this blog through Google Plus and a couple of writer's links that I'm a part of. This one come via Deb Vanasse and her blog The Self-Made Writer. This is Ten Truths You Need to Know about Publishing, No Matter How You Do It (see here).

It's a good looking blog and I look forward to tooling around and finding out more about it, but this post intrigued me and I read it through. Some of the stats were a tad tough to hear, but based on her accompanying image that says "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie" I'm thinking she knew some of the numbers would be startling to most writers. Still, some great nuggets of information for the aspiring author. My favorites?

There’s a content flood, and it’s not going to recede anytime soon. As reported by author William Dietrich in a piece published by the Huffington Post, an estimated 130 million books have been published throughout human history. That number is growing by the minute—and with e-books, titles stay in print forever. Bottom line: the supply of books far exceeds the demand.

This bullet goes hand-in-hand with some of the stats she comments on in other bullets. I'm stunned when I go online to find a book to read every now and then. The number of books out there is staggering. If you don't know what you're looking for you're going to get lost. I love the line; "The supply of books far exceeds the demands."

Wonderful books are overlooked, and some that aren’t so wonderful sell more than anyone could have predicted. As they say, there’s no accounting for taste. But if sales are steady, and if a title stays in print long enough and is popular within a niche market, it may in the end outsell certain flash-and-burn bestsellers.

This bullet made me think of a conversation I had with my neighbors on our back patio after a dinner party. It was about the time that 50 Shades of Grey the movie had just come out. Turns out several of us tried to read the book and among the four that tried, not any of us got through the first few pages and wanted to read on. Yet, that was a very successful book. Key words "popular within a niche market." It's finding that niche then development the foot hold into something more that's the goal.

Write what you love and make each book the best it can be. That’s the one aspect of publishing over which you have complete control.

Finally, and this goes directly against what I wrote a few years ago about why I writer (see here). Just write what you want and do it as well as you can. Be proud of what you wrote and hope that others enjoy it as much as you do.

Deb has some good points and despite being slapped with the truth, it's good stuff to know and helps to accentuate the positives. I look forward to more posts from her.