The Suicide Squad

There are bad movies, things like MegaTime Squad, that you can laugh at. There are terrible hodge podges, like Battlefield Earth, or Water World. Then there are awful things like The Suicide Squad.

I guess it's The Suicide Squad to distinguish the 2021 version from the 2016 version, which was called simply Suicide Squad. Both included the Harley Quinn character and a few others. 

The 2016 version was simple-minded and forgettable, which is why I don't recall much about it and I don't feel like watching it again to refresh my memory. The 2021 version had about the same plot, only worse: Maximum security prisoners with sooper-dooper powers sprung by the government to accomplish some sort of mission in return for remission of part of their sentences.

There's one thing that distinguishes the latest version from the first one: I really, really hated it. If I was a critic, I'd give it a no stars rating.

For startsies, stories set in mythical South American countries are a turn-off. I know, O. Henry did a few of them and they were good, but I can't recall any others that were. Why not set it in Costa Rica? Probably because they don't have coups. Venezuela or Nicaragua, maybe, or El Salvador or Honduras. I'm sure they wouldn't mind.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn is amusingly brainless. She was the star of the show, the only actually memorable character because she's so over the top. I'm sure Sylvester Stallone had a grand time playing King Shark. John Cena played Peacemaker and Joel Kinnaman played Rick Flag. Both are improbably handsome and the only time I could tell them apart was when Peacemaker was wearing what looked like a stainless steel hat. 

I know all this is based on a comic book, but I guess you had to read it to know what's going on. To me, it was mostly pretty pointless violence from start to finish.

The plot, from Wikipedia:

Intelligence officer Amanda Waller assembles two Task Force X teams—colloquially known as the Suicide Squad—that comprise Belle Reve penitentiary inmates, who agree to carry out missions for Waller in exchange for lighter sentences.

The Amanda Waller character is ruthless and bullying and offensive. There's no subtlety, no finesse, no persuasion, just "do as I say or your daughter goes to prison" sort of things. I'm not sure she even makes it to one-dimensional. 

They are sent to the South American island nation of Corto Maltese after its government is overthrown by an anti-American regime, and are tasked with destroying the Nazi-era laboratory Jötunheim which holds a secretive experiment known as "Project Starfish".

The movies have been tripping over Nazi-era laboratories for years, probably seventy five years, maybe even the same ones. I don't know. I don't know how they managed to invade Poland, they were so busy building secret laboratories. I'd say the edges are all worn off them as a plot device.

One team is led by Waller's subordinate Colonel Rick Flag, who are almost entirely wiped out by the Corto Maltese military upon landing.

They were sold out by one of the inmates. How'd he manage that, being in a maximum security prison and all? 

This distraction allows the other team to enter the country undetected. The second team is led by assassin Bloodsport, who accepted the mission in order to prevent his daughter from being incarcerated at Belle Reve, and consists of Peacemaker, King Shark, Polka-Dot Man, and Ratcatcher 2. They find Flag at a base camp for rebel soldiers and convince rebellion leader Sol Soria to assist them.

Where to start?

The X Men Task Force X team find Flag (not even Flagg) at the rebel base camp after mercilessly and gorily wiping out all the rebels guarding it. King Shark eats one, rips another in half. Heh heh. CGI blood and guts. 

Turns out the rebels are the good guys, fighting against the generals. Whoops. Our bad. I think we were supposed to laugh uproariously at that point.

 Harley Quinn survives the attack on the first team and is taken captive by the Corto Maltese government. She learns of the new regime's plans to use Project Starfish against other nations.

She does this by sleeping with the new regime's president, who is infatuated with her. Then she shoots him because he intends to hurt children. More laughter here. Some other military guy decides he's the president now. Hop into the barrel, bub.

In the Corto Maltese capital, the second team captures the Thinker, the lead scientist in charge of Project Starfish.

The Thinker has what appears to be vacuum tubes instead of hair. He regularly frequents a whorehouse gentlemen's club so he's easy to snatch.

Harley escapes and joins the others, who use the Thinker to break into Jötunheim.

"Hi! What're you guys doin'?"

"Umm... Rescuing you." 

Most of the Squad rigs the facility with explosives as Flag and Ratcatcher 2 enter the underground laboratory with the Thinker. He reveals that Project Starfish is Starro the Conqueror, a giant alien starfish that creates smaller versions of itself to kill people and take control of their bodies.

Starro has to be the dumbest-looking villain to grace the silver screen since the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man rampaged through Manhattan, though he's not nearly as cute. Contrary to my expectations, a giagantic Spongbob doesn't appear. The little starfish generated paste themselves over people's faces, digging into the CGI flesh underneath.

Starro was brought to Earth by the U.S. government, who have been secretly funding experiments on him in Corto Maltese for the past thirty years using thousands of the island's citizens as test subjects.

Sure. The U.S. government makes a fine villain. It's done so in a long string of bad movies. Why not this one too? Astronauts pick up all sorts of dangerous things in space. Why, once they brought moon rocks back! That was probably where they picked up Patrick Starro.

An enraged Flag decides to leak a hard drive containing evidence of this revelation, but is killed by Peacemaker who is under secret orders from Waller to cover up the U.S.'s involvement in the experiments.

Peacemaker's the guy with the stainless steel hat. Flag looked just like him, except for the hat, so it must have been hard to pull the trigger, kind of like shooting your reflection. Of course, he could have simply shot the hard drive to destroy it, and avoided having to murder his clone.

Meanwhile, a skirmish between the Squad and the Corto Maltese military leads to Polka-Dot Man accidentally setting off the explosives prematurely.

Insert laugh track here. The crumbling tower reminded me of the Twin Towers on 9/11, so I didn't find it particularly appetizing. Bloodsport surfs a large piece of concrete floor down to shoot Peacemaker, so it's RIP Peacemaker. Too bad they couldn't surf like that on 9/11. Something about flesh and blood not being able to take the impact when they hit bottom.

As the facility falls apart, Peacemaker attempts to execute Ratcatcher 2 for knowing the truth about Starro, but Bloodsport shoots him and takes the drive.

At no time do any of the sociopathic team express any concern or remorse for any of the people they've wiped out by the dozen, friend or foe. They're reduced to the status of bowling pins. The dead soldiers, rebels, and innocent bystanders have no families to mourn them, no wives, husbands, or children to starve. They're just faceless brown folk who speak with-a fonny assents. Ptui.

SPOILER ALERT! STOP READING HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW IT TURNS OUT!

After that we have Starro rampaging through the city, emitting smaller copies of itself to eat the citizens' faces and destroying buildings and cars and such. All the while it's being chased by or chasing Our Heroes. The repulsive Waller tries to execute them remotely, just like you'd expect from the government, but her staff rebels and conks her on the head with a mop or something. Harley dives into the monster's single eyeball and Ratcatcher sends hundreds of rats after her to consume Starro from inside. Starro pegs out and all the little starros die with him, along with all the local populace they'd infested. That scene looks like pictures of the aftermath of Jim Jones' Kool-Ade party. Hilarious.

No stars for you, Starro!

After a long, long hiatus...

 

Asmodeus and the Wicked Wizard of the East is done. It's not very long, only 78,000 words, unless I go through it again. 

This was a fun write. It's my first first-person novel, and it's my first foray into fantasy. It uses the same reality-jumping alternate universe trick used in Andi, expanding on it a bit. I'm guessing it will expand in future novels as well. It's also the first that at least starts outside Carbon County. That's because I moved, and I like my new location in Delaware. Further novels will probably be set there -- not that I have any idea what they're going to be about. When I finish a book I have no idea what I'm going to write about next.

Asmodeus J-for John Jones is Summoned by Nevianne the Witch to combat the evil Palegos, who's oppressing the countryside. She's expecting someone nine feet tall, with fangs, and she gets him. He not only doesn't believe in magic, he suppresses its use for a mile in any direction. There's no way she can send him back. He's capable of slipping between reality streams, but he's far away he can't find his way back.

How far away? Nevianne and her coven live in the Really Later Roman Empire. There was no battle at the Milvian Gate, no "In Hoc Signo Vinces." Emperor Julian reigned for thirty two years, not three, and he declared parity among religions, establishing a Ministry of Religion, to enforce it. Nevy and her coven are pagans. Athaulf the Visigoth king wasn't murdered in his bath. He reigned with Galla Placidia as Emperor Athaulf I. There was also an Emperor Genseric. There's a synagogue in Flumen Martii, the capital of Agus, which covers Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and part of New York. Asmodeus learns magic from the Archbishop of the Church of Saint Simon Magus.

Under Roman rule North America was settled around 1000 A.D. The population of Agus is about a third native, a third Saxon (and Celtic Briton and some Dane), and a third Latin. The official language is Latin. I don't mention it in the text, but there's also an official Latin Academy and an official Latin language, so there's no official French or Italian or Romanian; there are just different accents. The natives in Nevy's area speak Lenape, and there are Iroquois living to the north. The Susquahannocks aren't extinct. Nor are passenger pigeons.

Nevianne and Asmodeus fall for each other immediately, and hard. She first saw him as her future husband in her first vision when she was nine. Demons can be summoned only by maidens. Once they complete the task, the maiden is theirs forever. Nevy expected to be a human sacrifice to the demon. She and Asmodeus get to mess around a lot, but she has to remain a maiden at least until the wizard is vanquished.

As soon as Asmodeus (he prefers Jack) is Summoned, Palegos sends Nannakussi, his Lenape minion, and his men to kill the entire coven. Blaeda, Nevy's best friend and a member of the coven, who's a Seeress, warns them. Jack constructs an IED from the witches' gunpowder and flour, with rocks for shrapnel, and kills all of Nannakussi's men, burning Nevy's house down in the process. He conks Nannakussi in the head with a chunk of cord wood, defeating him in personal combat. Nannakussi and his wife and five-year-old daughter become Jack's slaves by law. They were Palegos' slaves before.

Besides the witches and the archbishop, there are flying monkeys, monkey-faced bears, a precocious five-year-old witch, a fire-farting imp, and a fight to the death between Asmodeus and a real demon.

Flash Gordon

Don't take a date. Don't take your kids. Don't take Grandma. If they ever have it on TMC, don't watch.

"Fragments of moon rock!" sez Doctor Zarkov, enjoying the glowing, golf ball-sized object on his floor.

"Strange object in the Imperial vortex!" alerts a ruthless minion of Ming the Merciless as they approach Mongo.

Really cheesy dialogue. Really cheesy costumes. Really cheesy effects. Probably the cheese at dinner is cheesy. I suspect the Empire of Mongo subsists on macaroni and cheese, with an occasional cheeseburger for variety.

Ming the Merciless's daughter wears a diamond-studded booby holder! All the aliens are bilaterally symmetrical, upright bipeds wearing funny costumes, many of which don't allow any freedom of movement. They all speak English too, but, y'know, they all got fonny assents.

Leather short shorts--on Flash?... Gassed!... Saved by the nefarious princess!

"Don't you have telepathy on Earth?" she asks as they flee to Arboria.

Dale makes her getaway! She turns cartwheels when she fights! No idea why. No idea how she was trained into her ninja-like ways. She was introduced in the beginning of the movie as a travel agent.

I do like the booby holders all the babes wear, especially the ones who jiggle. But then I do have pretty low tastes.

I suspect the average IQ in the Empire of Mongo isn't precisely 100.

"A young man is being initiated! But we must hide outside until it's done!" Look out! It's a squishy green scorpion thingy! "Send me on my way!" cries the young victim. "Spare me the madness!"

I' pretty sure that was the only way he could think of to get out of the movie.

"You are playing with fire, Aura!" sez Prince Whatsisname. Oh, yeah. Prince Barin. I forgot from one scene to another. "Of course I am!" Have a fireball?

"We can team up and fight him, Barin!" sez Flash. "Lower them into the swamp!" sez Prince Barin. That sort of thing has ruined so many dinner parties!

"Seize the Imperial surgeon on suspicion of treason!" "You're mad!" "Prepare him for torture!"

"Confess!" "No! Never!" "Bring me the bore worms!" "No! Not the bore worms!"

"Sleep well, you traitor! We hang you in the morning!"

"One year in a cavern of ice will cool her blood!" sez His Majesty the Merciless about his only daughter.

"Do you know where you are?" asks Prince Barin. "Up the creek!" sez Flash, in one of his more memorable witticisms.

"Leave him!" hollers the prince. "He's mine! I hunt him alone!"

"Would you leave us alone?" requests Dale, just before the big fight scene, after Flash smooches her and sez something about their impending children. "Ooh! I just got engaged!"

"You tortured Aura!" sez the prince. "Interesting girl. I think she found it rather enjoyable!" Princess Aura is kind of kinky. You can tell that from the way she does her eyebrows.

"We shall return to the Imperial rocket! Leave the Earthling here to his doom!" That always works, doesn't it?

Dale and Principessa Aura meet as Dale's being prepared for her wedding to Ming the Merciless. Pillow fight ensues!

"Dispatch war rocket Ajax to bring back his body!" That's Flash, remember? Last seen left to his doom. Or maybe there were a few scenes in there that everyone, including the actors, forgot.

Ummm... The massed forces of the Hawkmen look like flying monkeys? And one of the Hawkmen looks like he used to sing with Spinal Tap.

So Ming the Merciless is gonna marry Dale (rather than just keeping her as a concubine, which was his original intent) and they're playing Mendelssohn at the marriage ritual.

The Imperial engineers are big on single points of failure. And the Imperial Storm Troopers or whatever they are, are just about as good shots as Emperor Palpatine's.

Verdict: Made as a spoof (of some kind, at least I hope it is), Flash doesn't make the "So Bad It's Good" cut. It's the difference between campy and bad. It's one of those movies you walk out of twenty minutes into it, assuming you last that long, so most people don't get to see the predictable ending. Flash is played by Sam J. Jones. I read somewhere that he beat out Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kurt Russell for the part, to their great relief. Dale is played by Melody Anderson, for whom this movie was the peak of her career. I thought until I looked them up that those were assumed names. The film was produced by Dino De Laurentis, who wanted Fellini to direct it. De Laurentiis also considered hiring Sergio Leone to direct it. He should have gone for Terrence Hill, who could at least have made it funny.

As an aside, George Lucas wanted to make Flash Gordon in the 1970s, but de Laurentis had the rights. Instead, he cobbled together something he called Star Wars. 

Honest to God.

Andi's Published

Andi is complete, at 90,440 words.

I was going to go directly with Amazon, but instead I published with Smashwords again. The process is simpler, though the EPUB check is aggravating. The things it finds are the things you have a hard time noticing when writing in Open Office (or in MS Word), like empty blockquotes.

This was a hard book to write, given the gamy subject matter, but I do find the characters likable. I always base my characters on people I've known and liked, just putting them into situations they've never been in.

The books are also coming together better as a series, though I'm going to have to do some serious timelining. I want to use Amazon or maybe Lulu for print versions of all the books, and market them in Jim Thorpe. They'd make nice souvenirs, except maybe for Dolly, but I could market her and maybe the Ben and Lenie book if I ever finish it in Mineral Wells. All I have to do is get off my butt and do it.

For relaxation, I've been watching movies and reading. Arrival (2016) was good. It raises the idea of non-sequential time, which is interesting. In Andi, I suggested that very idea to account for the fact that it didn't take ten years for them to travel ten years into the past, though I lean more toward time stored kind of squished up, like an accordion. That way she can just hop from peak to peak or trough to trough (there wouldn't be an "up" or "down.")

I'm reading Sabatini again, most recently The Lion's Skin. It's one of my three favorites--that and Saint Martin's Summer and Mistress Wilding. That's probably because I'm a romantic at heart.

Andi's First Draft

Andi's draft is somehow complete, currently around 86,000 words, probably to top out around 90,000. Now I'm going through the tedious part, reading it and re-reading it, until I'm sick of looking at it, tying up loose ends, fixing wording, smoothing the flow. It's basically in three parts:

• In Part One the long lost lovers are reunited. The multiverse is an idea that's discussed, but neither party really believes in it.
• In Part Two the honeymooners realize that multiverses are real, and that Andi has the talent for traveling between them.
• In Part Three Andi knows how it's done and and the newlyweds do it. 

When I started out on it, the parallel universe thing was kind of a throw-away. Then the more I wrote, the more central to the resolution of Andi's problem it became. Funny how that works.

I didn't set out to write a science fiction novel; I set out to write a novel about human trafficking, using the Rotherham scandal as my model. There is lots of material available on Rotherham, and on human trafficking in general, MS-13 and similar gangs in particular. It's really pretty seedy subject matter. I've tried to explore the effects of going through an ordeal like that on an intelligent young woman.

I did have a lot of fun discussing parallel universes and time travel. Does the entire universe clone itself whenever there's a decision point anywhere? If a tree falls in the forest and no one notices, does a new universe still spin off? Will the luck of a fisherman on the Caspian Sea effect the world of a Manhattan socialite? How about something happening in the Lesser Magellanic clouds? In some galaxy that's so far away we can't see it? A single ovum getting fertilized presents millions of alternate chances, one for each spermatozoon, and there are a lot of critters breeding every day, including flies and rabbits.

Then there's the question of a law of conservation of matter, akin to the law of conservation of energy.

What would a person do if he seriously had to travel in time? How would he do it? Where does the money come from? Andi and Elliott only go back a dozen years, but the currency's changed within that time. How do you buy a car? How do you identify yourself to rent an apartment?

Details, details. I've addressed all of them I could think of, and I'll address more as I proof and rewrite, but I'm sure there will be some of them unaddressed when I'm done. The more I think on the problem, the more I'll notice.

Life in the World of IQ 60

Andi's story has reached 66,000 words and is (slowly) building toward the blow-off. It's decided to become very much a science fiction story, and I've tossed in a couple science fictiony jokes to amuse myself and any readers. In the course of all this, I've been to Texas for extended stays twice, had another hip replacement, and done a bunch of other things of a more personal nature. What with writer's block and not being able to properly feel my fingers, I'm surprised that I've gotten this far, given the unpleasant subject matter.

I've come to like Andi. She's smart and tough without (I think) being smart-assed or hard. We've all done stupid things at one time or another; hers were just dumber than most. My premise is that we all make our occasional trips into alternate universes that are so similar we don't really notice the difference. As I've seen it described in other science fiction, a new universe is created whenever there's a decision point reached. One time travel movie I've watched recently (I can't recall the name of it and can't find it browsing my collection) uses that as part of the time machine; the guy has to shoot himself to create the alternate universe where he... does whatever it is he does. I think I said to myself "this is dumb" and put a Clint Eastwood movie on.

What happens if the decision point is in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud somewhere? Does that effect us as well? Or is the effect localized. With, last I saw, 250 billion galaxies, with umpty two gazillion planets in each, many inhabited by some form of life, that represents a lot of binary choices every second of every day. I do have some fun discussion these ideas in the course of the setup.

Beyond whatever that other movie is, Mega Time Squad features time travel via an ancient Chinese bracelet that has what's apparently a battery-powered green lighted button. I'm not sure if it's about time travel--he's able to go ten minutes or so into the past--or if it's about life in a world populated by Three Stooges clones. John, the hero, or I suppose he's an antihero, looks like a skinny New Zealand version of Curly. At one point there are a half dozen versions of him in one place, trying to steal the money from a Chinese gang while being chased by the wily minions of his boss, Shelton. One version is stabbed, one has his throat cut, one has his head blown off by a shotgun, the original "John" doesn't die. John has an IQ of approximately sixty. His girlfriend is a little smarter. The minions are a little dumber. Shelton, the brains of the outfit, may make IQ 70.

As it happens, Andi and Elliott are currently in a similar situation, with four versions of Andi having flinched into the same parallel universe after a traffic accident involving one of the human traffickers from her youth. Andi and Elliott have a lot better understanding of cause and effect, and Elliott has a pretty good (I think) handle on quantum physics and research into the nature of reality. They're now setting up to rescue Jane, actually four Janes, one for each of their baseline universes. It's been fairly writing itself for the past few chapters, so maybe my muse is awake.

Andi in the Multiverse

I'm around 30.000 words with the adventures of Andi and Elliott. No, I don't have them traveling through alternate universes. That's merely Elliott's approach to helping her assuage her conscience. I've added in Joe King and his wife, retired Philadelphia vice detectives, to track down Janie. I've started doing some serious research into the subject of human trafficking, which is even uglier than I thought it was.

I'm probably beating the horse to death on the subject of sin and redemption, and probably religion is playing a more pronounced role in my characters' lives than is currently fashionable. But without sin there can't be redemption -- we're all imperfect, some moreso than others. Andi is developing as, I think, a likable young woman with a justifiably bad conscience. Elliott has a little complexity to his nature. I don't like making my characters exceptionally rich, but he works hard and comes from a prominent family, which makes knowledge of Andi's past becoming known more of a threat. It also gives him the resources to finance the search for Janie.

As an aside. I want to pull my books from Smashwords, where they sit amidst a pile of junk -- poorly written books, gay and lesbian stuff, "erotica" (that in the heady days of my youth would have been described as pornography), fantasy, and the usual post-apocalyptic vampires. You're known by the company you keep. I'm also looking into getting them into print and marketing them in the Poconos.

Better now, I think

The ideas keep coming, lots of them discarded, but I'm writing again. I'm going to put the books I've written on Amazon, and I'm looking into their "print on demand" option. If I can handle the costs, I'll do that, which'll put my books on paper.

Del and Kenan are now on a ship off Novy Kruz, around the 80,000 word point, heading for the blowoff, if I can keep all the pieces moving right. They're about to take down one bad guy. I still trying to figure why they're not taking down the big bad guy too. I had a reason when I started this part, but I've forgotten what it was.

The book I'm working on now involves Andi and Elliott. They're meeting up after a ten year hiatus. He's a nice fellow, and Andi is a nice girl who wasn't nice in her teen years. She was her brother's personal sex toy from the time she was twelve, and he started renting her out when she was fourteen. When she was sixteen and a half she trafficked, sold off like a cow with her friend Janie, for a life hooking in Amsterdam and Berlin -- from where they could be sold off to any other destination. It's a pretty nasty background.

This demands a lot of character development. Andi's a nice, pretty, intelligent girl, who was led wrong from an early date. She carries an enormous guilt over those teenage years, both for what she did and for the loss of Janie. On a bad day, her self worth is dipping into negatives. When she escapes from her training house, which she doesn't realize was Elliott's doing, she enlists in the Army, trains as a combat medic, and goes to Afghanistan. She reenlists, trains as a practical nurse, and goes back to the 'Stan. When she's discharged, she goes to New Mexico and trains as a registered nurse. So she's actually made something of herself, trying to put the sins of her youth behind her.  Still, she doesn't date, lives a solitary life with her cat in her old student apartment. She's now scared to death of sex and by extension men.

Elliott isn't scared of sex. He's scared for Andi. He was the one who bought out her contract. He had expected to take care of her and assist her in getting her life on track. Instead, she ran off, effectively dropped off the face of the earth. He had thought she was dead, and he had mourned her for ten years, throwing himself into his own work as a micromechanical engineer working in the field of gene surgery. I'm at that point in development now. I'm hoping it will all come together in the end without too much reliance on coincidence, deux ex machina, or space aliens.

Writer's Block

I'm coming out (I think) from an extended writer's block. That doesn't mean I haven't been writing anything, just that I haven't been finishing anything. There's a difference.

I've also been reading, not so much my usual diet, but some amateur attempts, trying to compare the quality of my own writing with others. A part of that's been ego massage -- some of what I've been reading has been outright crap. There's been a continual stream of stories with too many (and too descriptive) sex scenes. There's been lot's of misplaced apostrophe's on display, pronoun approximation, and misspelings. Lots of heroines have been saved by millionaires and vice versa.

On the other hand, there have been a few that I've liked. One is Island Mine, which was recommended by a friend of mine. It's a science fiction story, nicely paced, with sympathetic characters and a nuclear blowoff. Some agent should pick it up and make some money.

How far will governments go when you have something they want? All Waylon Eckermann wanted to do was to go to college and figure out the rest of his life. It wasn't going to be that easy, not even with a little extragalactic help.

Then I read two other stories the same guy wrote and I was disappointed. I hope Island Mine is the third work, and not his first effort.

Tangent by Gina Marie Wylie is nearly as good, though it's fan fiction, using the story line of H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. It follows a man and four young girls stuck in a world where North America was settled by Indo Europeans, rather than Indians, with a later migration by the redskins so they can be battling the Aztecs.

The Mountain, recommended by a (another) friend, was a surprise, found on an erotica site. There's sex in it, but it's part of the story and it's not described stroke by stroke. It's also part of the story -- they think they're going to freeze to death. It was very well written, nice story line, and well worth the time. It's another story that should make some agent rich.

Then there are my own efforts.

Poor Del's still stuck, as they're about to chase down the criminal mastermind just as the empire is about to strike back. It's time to kill off a few sympathetic characters and I'm hesitating to pull the trigger.

When we went on vacation to Canada last year we stopped at a steakhouse. In a booth behind us there was a deaf old man who'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (he was discussing this on his phone so loudly we couldn't hear out own conversation!) So now I'm also writing Grampy, which is his story, set in about a year. He's got the death sentence, and he has a granddaughter Francine, whom he wants to marry his partner, John Ward. Frankie and Johnny don't like each other, so the romance will span the last days of Grampy's life.

Then there's the romance of Lenie and Ben Cooper, back in Palo Pinto County. I think I'm going to change their names, since I started it as a prequel to Dolly of Palo Pinto and now the characters have taken on different personalities and they're strong enough to stand on their own.

I'm also going to rewrite the first part of Mistress Peterson. Actually, I'm going to delete it. The story stands on its own without it, and parts of it would fit in Cinderella and the Devil better.

The Idea Grinder

I've been struggling with the same cold for the past ten days. I went to the doctor today, finally. My lungs are clear, my sinuses stuffed. The nice lady doctor told me it's probably viral, but she gave me an antibiotic just in case it turns bacterial. Rest, liquids, the usual.

I've got an idea for another book and I'm trying to lay out the timeline. Its hero and heroine are a couple background characters from Dolly of Palo Pinto, Ben Cooper and Lenie Garcia, along with her father, Mando, the Gonzales brothers, and my usual cast of characters. I'm having a problem laying out the timeline, but I've gotten myself interested with the first three chapters, so I'm hoping it comes together.

I still haven't forgotten Del of Kerao. He's gotten back from his trip, Netti's with child, Baito's married, Del's fingered the bad guy but he hasn't laid eyes on him yet physically. Now I've got to figure how to write the blowoff, bringing a handful of strings together in the big clash between Empire and Loyalists. I think I keep putting it off because I've got to kill off a character I've come to really like. If I don't, then the sequel won't work.

I'm also poking over the idea of The Bigamist's Wives. It'll be based on a true story (not out of True Crime Tales, just a story I know.) Having poked the idea, I discover I don't know quite enough about the story. So far we've come up with seven wives, but there my be more. There are six children I know of for sure, plus three or four more probables. I'm pretty sure there are kids with each of them. There are a few mistresses in there as well. There's lots of story, but not a lot of point of view, since the common element is the guy. He's dead now, so I can't ask him, and I can't write it from his point of view because I don't like him. I'm tempted to name him Raskolnikov.

The Bigamist, I think, isn't really going to be Rodion Raskolnikov, even though he does have an enormous ego. His crimes don't involve murder, at least not that I know of, but the serial abandonment of his numerous progeny. His interest isn't the kids, but the women. He's a serial seducer, and I think he's too soft-hearted to say no and too prominent to run away when the subject of matrimony comes up. His resemblance to Raskolnikov comes in his assumption that he's smart enough to get away with it, which in fact he mostly does.

Perhaps the way to tie it together would be for one or two of the kids to do a little research, and then all I'd have to do would be to build the scenarios.

I think I'll write the Ben and Lenie story first though.

Captain Ravenshaw, or the Maid of Cheapside

Some books are interesting. Some are amusing. In the best of them you can fall into a time and place you've never been, and in the very best of them you can have laugh-out-loud fun.

Here's roaring Captain Ravenshaw, an officer whose unit has been disbanded, set afoot to live by his wits in Elizabeth Regina's England. He falls in with a poor scholar, Holyday, after a dispute culminating in a flung capon in a tavern. Falling in with three other gents of quality they free a country fellow, in town without his wife's permission, from the watch after curfew. Then they come upon a Faire Maiden, being accosted on the street, have a little fun roaring at the accosters, and let her go scampering back to her father's house from which she's run away.

Now that's the setup. Ravenshaw's a bully boy with a foul reputation. Holyday's a poor, mostly meek scholar who's scared of women. The guys in the alley are a couple of hard gents getting ready for a sea voyage that'll maybe make them rich -- think Drake, Hawkins, Grenville -- unless they're lost at sea or eaten by natives or something. They're not above kidnapping cute girlies roaming the streets after dark. In fact, one of them, Jerningham, is fascinated by the girl and must have her, by hook or preferably crook, since he has no intention of offering matrimony to the daughter of a merchant.

Ravenshaw, being an actual gent rather than having merely been born to that station, is determined not to let that happen. Maid Millicent, who seems to be about seventeen or eighteen and is pretty as a portrait, ran away from home rather than go through with her engagement to Sir Peregrine Medway, who's, I'd guess, around seventy but trying to appear forty, or maybe even thirty. Ravenshaw's determined not to let that happen either.

The convolutions that follow are laugh-out-loud funny. You think you know who's going to get the girl in the end. Then you don't. Then you do. The only certainty is that Sir Peregrine's not going to spend any time lying between those comely young thighs.  I may not have ever read an adventure novel quite so adventurous, and given my love of Sabbatini that's saying a lot.

The Lone Star Ranger

This is kind of a goofy book. It's certainly not Grey's best. It's not one of those books you want to read a second, or even a third time, like The Light of Western Stars. For one thing, it's two romances in one. For another thing, the ending is crappy.

Buck Duane is the son of a famous outlaw, and he's inherited his father's speed with a gun. In the first chapter the innocent young Duane is called out by a dumbass cowboy named Bain. The two have a shootout in the street. Duane shoots Bain in what is clearly a case of self defense. Bain made his brag that he was going to kill Duane. Rather than hang around and make his case, he grabs a horse his Uncle Jim's prepared and lights out of town. I know it's just setup so that Duane can become a famous outlaw, but Jeez! A false accusation, or mistaken identity or something would have worked better, without much more typing!

So that's the setup. Duane falls in with the Bland gang, down on the Rio Grande, in a cattle rustling operation. Duane, being pure of heart, doesn't want to be a part of it. Bland is holding pretty young Jennie prisoner. He's using her as a scullery maid and Mrs. Bland mistreats her. He has to make love to Mrs. Bland -- which in 1915 still meant sweet-talking her, just like it did in the 1870s, when this is set. Well, by golly, Duane manages to rescue Jennie in the midst of dozens of vicious outlaws, gets himself shot through the body, and Jennie nurses him back to coherence if not health in an old hut out in the middle of nowhere. Then they ride for safety, find a friend on an isolated ranch, she again nurses him, this time all the way back to vibrant health. They ride again, amidst descriptive Zane Grey verbiage, to take Jennie someplace where she can get back to her family.

I think Grey probably wrote all this in 1912 or 1913. He got bored with it -- this is my guess, not history -- and set it aside to write something else. He needed some money or he had a contract in 1914 or 1915 and he figured "I've got a half-written manuscript.I might as well finish it." Maybe it was "I've got to come up with 100,000 words, and I've got two novelettes, so maybe I'll glue them together somehow." Regardless, he's got Duane riding hell bent for Naugahyde for the Neuces with Jennie, but then

Suddenly there came an unmistakable thump of horses' hoofs off somewhere to the fore. Then a scream rent the air. It ended abruptly. Duane leaped forward, tore his way through the thorny brake. He heard Jennie cry again—an appealing call quickly hushed. It seemed more to his right, and he plunged that way. He burst into a glade where a smoldering fire and ground covered with footprints and tracks showed that campers had lately been. Rushing across this, he broke his passage out to the open. But he was too late. His horse had disappeared. Jennie was gone. There were no riders in sight. There was no sound. There was a heavy trail of horses going north. Jennie had been carried off—probably by outlaws. Duane realized that pursuit was out of the question—that Jennie was lost.

And with that bit of deathless prose he pretty much writes Jennie right out of the book. That really cheesed me off when I got to the end. Jennie was sweet, she was pretty (naturally), she was spunky once she was rescued, and she was loyal. All we get is unsubstantiated rumor that Jennie died shortly after being kidnapped. He tracks down and shoots a guy named Sellers, who kidnapped her. but no circumstances are elaborated. The poor girl could still be alive, at about the age of 120, hiding in some mesquite hut, waiting for Duane to come and rescue her, though probably not.

Duane goes into a funk, as you'd naturally expect, but since this is a novel you'd expect poor Buck to be reunited with Jennie after trials and tribulations, with his name cleared, at the end of the book. It didn't happen, even though it should have. Instead, Buck kind of goes wandering through a few adventures, never killing an innocent man, until Captain McNelly offers him a free pardon if he'll join the rangers.  Thus endeth the first part of the book.

After that comes the second half, where Buck's a ranger. A bad guy named Cheseldine's running a rustling operation that's go the Big Bend country treed. The guy's a criminal mastermind, by gum. Chances are a thousand to one against Buck getting out alive, or even breaking the case. Buck ID's the bad guy through a process of pure, dumb luck. It's Colonel Whatsisname... Oh, Longstreth. Buck runs into him as he's bringing his Beautiful Daughter®, Ray, which was probably short for Raylene or something, and his niece, Ruth, to his home from his other home in Louisianna. Raylene has no idea her father's a criminal mastermind. Ruth hasn't caught on yet, either. All the answers keep plopping into Duane's lap, except for the time he's eavesdropping on a conversation between the Colonel and his ruthless henchman, Floyd, and the adobe crumbles out from under his hiding place and he has to go hide in Raylene's room, where they kinda sorta declare their love for each other and he hides in the closet.

Ray's an okay lady love, I guess. She makes a pretty good Beautiful Daughter®, though she's a bit lightly drawn. But the second part of the book is such a hurried jumble you don't really grab onto her like you did to Jennie. You don't grab onto Longstreth like you did to Bland, nor to pardner Fletcher like you did to pardner Euchre. Buck's inner torments over being a gunny start to wear. He could take the train to New Hampshire and spend the rest of his life never getting close to a gunfight.  His penchant for eavesdropping also gets under the reader's skin. Finally, rather than shoot the Colonel, or arrest him and have him brought to trial and hanged as a criminal mastermind, all he has to do is give up the land and cattle he stole and go back to New Orleans or Baton Rouge or wherever he came from and has more of them. I don't know how that resurrected the guys he ordered murdered, like Laramie, who gave Buck so much of his information and who left behind a wife and five children, one of them in diapers.

And I have no idea what the hell happened to Ruth. Maybe she's with Jennie.

Mason of the Bar X

Some books a person remembers for a long time. They bear reading and rereading. Others are kind of middle of the road. Some, a body has to wonder how they got published. Mason's the latter.

This was published in 1920. The Virginian had been around for years. Zane Grey, Max Brand, and B.M. Bower were writing. Mason reads like a six-reeler from the picture show.

Jack Mason, the scion of a banking millionaire, gets the choice of going to Dad's old friend's ranch and making good or getting disinherited for his scapegrace ways. This is kind of standard opening number 28 for westerns. In the better ones, Jack would go west, learn how to be a cowboy and a man, maybe fight a grass fire, deal with a stampede or two, track down some rustlers, and win the love of the beautiful daughter of the rancher.

In this one, Jack hangs around the house, and fiddles with his motor car. Josephine, the beautiful daughter falls for him right off the bat, but at least she tries to keep him jealous until the end. Every time she goes riding without an escort she gets kidnapped by the bad guy, who intends to force her to marry him. She says things like "You beast!" The beautiful Mexican girl is named Waneda and addresses Jack as Signor. She seemingly manages to fall in love with him at a glance. There's a Marshal who's a Master of Disguise. He shows up at the ranch, says he had to come west for his health, and would the old man mind if he stayed at the ranch. Sure. No "who sent you," no questioning of bona fides. One character, Percy, shows up when Mom and sister Ethel come to visit and has no significance except maybe comic relief. Jack's aviator friend flies in, finds the kidnapped girls by coincidence, then flies out.

This is the sort of book you read with your mouth open, stunned by the awkward, complicated plot, the lack of motivation, the lack of work it takes to run the ranch, and generally how bad the book is. It's actually so bad it's to be treasured.

Nellie Moriarty

Nellie is published on Smashwords. I changed the title from Sweet Nell to Nellie Moriarty because of the identification of Sweet Nell with Nell Gwynne. I changed the cover to a Poconos scene instead of Afghanistan. It's just short of 77,000 words, by Smashwords' count.

I feel like this might be my best book yet. I think I've painted Nell as a human character, not as a damsel in distress. Her feelings and her thoughts are rational for the person she is. Quincy might be a little bit too Country Prince Charming, but I think he's pretty human too. He's looking at content, not container. Both characters might be a little old-fashioned in outlook, but I'm pretty old-fashioned myself.

Sweet Nell

Sweet Nell isn't quite finished yet -- almost there, but not quite. It's around 72,000 words, and I doubt greatly it will reach 80,000. I had a slight case of writer's block as I was reaching the end. I had two alternative endings, one of them too abrupt and the other one a potential second half that would have been another 60,000 words to resolve. I went back, added a chapter in the middle and that fixed the too abrupt ending. I took part of the second ending, and rather than following it all the way down the road to a tedious resolution I just used it to finish the other thread, rather neatly, I think.

I'll go through the whole thing another time or two, to take out a few of the repeats, or to try and smooth them over. Nellie spends lots of time dwelling on her problems, and the problems are the same ones: her missing arm, her missing leg, her scars, and her self-image. Considering that it's a story about an attractive woman whose husband rejects her after her physical trauma as a pilot in a combat zone, she kind of has to spend a lot of time agonizing over the same things; her entire persona is wrapped up in them.

I like her though. She's a tough babe and she's been through a lot. She's got guts. She's just trying to be tougher than it's possible for a normal person to be. She's like lots of vets: she's reluctant to rely on other people. Having her home knocked out from under her -- her husband is a slimy lawyer who dumps her cat while she's deployed in a combat zone, then has multiple affairs while she's in rehab -- reinforces that tendency.

Nellie ends up Going Home to Mother. She moves back into the room she occupied as a girl. Her brother takes her out with his girlfriend and their friends for a night at a beer joint, where she meets Quincy Holmes. Naturally, if I was going to write a love story involving Holmes, Nellie's maiden name had to be Moriarty. So I could write a story about a Dustoff pilot and one of her former transports, set it in the Poconos where most of my other novels are set, use existing characters from the other books, and come up with something new.

I've consciously made it a very lower-middle class story. Quincy and Nellie grew up in the same town, a year apart in school. She went to Penn State, he went into the Marines. He's working framing houses, her brother Todd's stuck laboring for a bricklayer, and his girlfriend's a horny hairdresser. Quincy and Todd get into a fistfight with a couple dirtbags the first time they take Nellie out. He takes her to a hog slaughter on a "date." Quincy and Todd do under the table work for Pete the Plumber, and strike a fountain of shit when a slumlord want to unblock a sewer line on the cheap. (Pete says "Smells like money to me, boys!" -- true story.) Quincy buys the house both he and Nell separately grew up wanting to live in, a 1600 square foot rancher built in the 1930s. They have advice from other people, some of them wealthy, but they're the ones who solve their problems, and they're the ones who'll make a success of themselves.

Now I've got a bit of cleanup to do. I'm not a helicopter pilot, and I've never been one. I've never worked in Medevac. I've never been to Afghanistan. I crewed (didn't pilot) on fixed-wing aircraft in Vietnam. I worked with the Marines, but I was in the Army. I was an EMT in my younger days, but not an Army medic. Probably my terminology and my references are slightly (if not wildly) off.

I've never, thankfully, been an amputee. I got to thinking about the problems amputees face listening to Mary Dague's talk to a VA group. I've done research with the help of Google on artificial limbs, but as far as I know, Nellie is a member of a small to non-existent group of right arm-right leg ATE-ATK amputees. I've had to do a lot of theorizing on how she would cope with life, and probably I've gotten lots of details wrong. It would be nice if I could find a Dustoff pilot, a double amputee, a current Marine NCO, a small farmer, and probably a few other people with specialized knowledge that I lack as proof readers.

The photo for the (first hack) cover is a modification of a DoD photo of Dustoff operations at Camp Blessing in Afghanistan. I don't know at this point if I'm going to go with that idea or if I'll emphasize the amputee aspect.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Some books are pretty neat the first time read, less so on a second reading. Some books, if you allow enough time to go by, stand a third and a fourth, maybe even a fifth reading. It's best to stop at the first with the Scarlet Pimpernel. You get it all on the first reading, and on the second all you see are the flaws. I know it's a classic, but there won't be a third, fourth or fifth. It's been years since the first time I read it, so a second reading should have been almost a first.

I think my irritation comes from the perfection of the protagonists. Marguerite Blakeney, Sir Percy's French wife is described as "the sharpest wits in Europe," yet she's remarkably dumb. She goes for a year not realizing her husband isn't the silly fop he pretends to be, despite the fact that he's the richest fellow in England and somehow manages to administer his extensive holdings and he's friends with a coterie of rich and gallant fellows who'll do anything for him, to include the Crown Prince. Somehow he was intelligent and fascinating enough for her to marry him in the first place. Duh.

After accidentally betraying him to the evil Frenchie Chauvelin, she grabs one of those gallant friends and sets out for Calais to rescue her genius husband with absolutely no idea where to go or what to do. It never occurs to her to merely give the friend the message and send him, since he'd be less conspicuous  and he'd know where to go and he could defend himself. Duh.

The sneering Chauvelin is dumb enough to leave Sir Andrew and Lord Tony alive after having them conked on the head and stealing the compromising letter. He's dumb enough not to recognize Sir Percy disguised as a Jew, and to "come back later to deal with" him and Marguerite. Duh.

Robespierre is dumb enough not to have Chauvelin's head chopped off, like they were chopping the heads off anyone else who screwed up big time, which is why he got to appear in so many sequels. Duh.

Meanwhile, I'm typing. Most of it is writing. Del's got most of a new chapter and he's around 70,000 words. I've roughed out the story of Nellie Moriarty and Quincy Holmes. It's at 30,000 words right now, so the bones need a lot of flesh, otherwise I end up with a tale of lightning courtship, which isn't what I want. Its purpose is to let the characters' personalities take shape, which they are.

Nellie is pretty and she's competent, but she's damaged both physically and emotionally. Obviously it's a tale of courtship -- most novels are. Quincy has to serve as her catalyst, to bring her out of the funk she's fallen into after the breakup of her marriage and the realization that her husband found her ugly. Amputation stumps really aren't pretty, and an explosion powerful enough to deprive a person of an arm and a leg will leave lots of other incidental damage. In the first draft I've probably spent too much time on the things she has difficulty doing, anything from taking a bath to fishing. Quincy, on the other hand, comes across as slightly too perfect. The conflict comes from Nell's reluctance to accept the fact that someone can still find her attractive. She has to go through friendship and to accept the support of the people around her.

I've seen "Nellie" on several occasions, though I'll admit I've only ever seen her missing a leg or an arm, not both. I've seen pictures of Mary Dague, minus two arms but with both legs, and I've seen guys minus an arm and a leg. Nell's still pretty real to me, despite her approximation, every time I go to Walter Reed.

Quincy's not a millionaire. He's got a moderate amount of money saved up and he wants to go into business. He's got another fund to buy a house, not outright but with a mortgage like everybody else. He's the poor but honest lad, and Nellie is his princess. His "wealth" lies in his network of friendships.

We'll see how they work out.

The Door Into Summer

At the moment I'm listening to Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz, which I like, but at the same time I'm wondering if I shouldn't just put on Cavalleria Rusticana, which would be a demonstration of workmanlike competence followed by a work of genius. When you've put Turiddu and Santuzza and Lola and Alfio and Mama Lucia to music, what do you do for the rest of your life?

I re-read Heinlein's The Door into Summer yesterday evening and this morning -- it's a very quick read, obviously. It's one of my favorites and I haven't read it for a few years. It was written in 1956 and set in 1970 and 2000. The Del Ray edition had 304 pages, and I don't remember the type being extraordinarily large, so a 24-hour or less read means it's very smoothly written, which Heinlein's best is. It's of interest to see how Heinlein imagined the world a mere fourteen years ahead of him at the time. He saw a nuclear war or two ahead, for one thing. The capital's in Denver and Washington is no more.

Yet the society he sketches for 1970 is more the society of 1956 than it actually was in 1970, and much like it in 2000. I take that as a sign that we're all trapped in our own amber. The protagonist, Daniel Boone Davis, is a mechanical engineer who gets gypped out of his half of the company he founded by a dame (not a girl or a woman) named Belle and his Army buddy Miles. He's got a cat named Pete and he's fond of Miles' little girl, Ricky. Dan puts on a toot, decides to have himself frozen for thirty years, then changes his mind and and decides to go have it out with Miles and Belle. He ends up drugged and frozen anyway, at another company. That sets Dan up for a one-way trip to the year 2000. We eat bacon made from yeast and use fasteners instead of zippers and they can regrow teeth, but other than that it' still 1956.

As an engineer Dan designs Hired Girl, which we actually have today as Roomba, which hasn't had the impact Hired Girl was expected to have on society. That's the company he gets ejected from. He's got other things on the drawing board, to include a drawing board that sounds like approximately CAD. Thirty years later (after he's been frozen for thirty years) he gets a job with Hired Girl, which is now a company comparable to General Motors. He's "chief engineer emeritus" or some similar pompous title and they want to use him for advertising, at one point wanting to dress him in a derby and spats. He meets Belle plus thirty years, now fat, frowzy, and failed, which is fine revenge. Miles died two years after Dan got the freeze, likely murdered by Belle.

He's still got a grouch on about losing Pete, and he wants to find out whatever happened to Ricky. She'd be 41, which would make her ten years older than Dan. A few convolutions follow, with him finally put in touch with a professor who might, possibly, be able to send him back thirty years in time. Naturally it works. He gets the goods on Belle, forms a second company that competes with Hired Girl in the future, steals and destroys his working model of Flexible Frank the night of their coup, finds Pete, finds Ricky, and saves the stock. He -- and this time Pete -- go back to sleep for thirty years at the original company he contracted with. Ten years later Ricky does the sleep, is met by Dan in 2001, and Happily Ever After ensues.

It's a nice story, very sentimental. I get choked up in places. But boy, is the background off! First, Hired Girl and the other products Dan designed were all stand-alone. They didn't communicate. They did use "Thorson Memory Tubes," which kinda sorta implies computing power. But all of information technology is missing. I know Heinlein couldn't be expected to envision the internet in 1956, but the actuality overlays the story, a sort of alternate universe thing. Unix was first used the year before Dan's story is set. We could and in many cases are developing Dan's niftiest products. Here we are finishing up sixteen years on the other side of Dan's future.

It just doesn't feel like the future.

Not Quite Sabbatini

There has been the usual bustle of a household at Christmas and mine's been no exception. We live in a townhouse, with three finished levels, a son and his family -- two girls, one of them angelically beautiful -- temporarily occupying the lower level. My wife's been out shopping for multiple families, putting up a tree, decorating the front yard, and cooking.

We had dinner at my brother-in-law's on Christmas Eve. He and his wife, Faye, entertained on that evening by tradition. She would make lasagna and have an enormous salad that never quite got finished, and one or two other dishes. We ate at the table for years, then buffet style as their son married and their daughter-in-law's father and his girlfriend (he's a widow) would fly in from Buffalo. Faye was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in September, a couple years ago, and she died close to Christmas that same year -- maybe on Christmas Day. I can't remember precisely, either because I'm getting old or because I'm trying to forget. The point is that it was a very pleasant little party. My wife did the cooking, with two lasagnas made from scratch (the best she's ever made, in fact), and an enormous salad we threw together out of bagged grocery store salads and store-bought dressing. I was expecting it to be maudlin, but I think I could hear Faye's laugh more than a few times.

I read Robert Neilson Stephens' Philip Winwood. It was the first book of Stephen's I've read, and I doubt it'll be the last. The setting is New York just prior to the time of the Revolutionary War. The plot's fairly simple: Philip the stray boy, taken in by Margaret, a little girl of his own age; her younger brother Tom; her sweet sister Fanny; and her older, ne'er do well brother Ned, all narrated by Bert, the boy next door. Margaret's stern patriot father takes the boy in, raises and educates him. Margaret's thing is that she wants to go to see the sights of England. She and Phil get married and at that point the Revolutionary War starts. She's a spoiled little creature and when Phil goes to join the rebels instead of sailing for England she turns on him. Little brother and boy next door join the Loyalists, so 'tis a tale told from both sides, with understanding and sympathy for both. The villain in the whole piece is Ned, not even actually Captain Falconer, who sullies Margaret's reputation, fights a duel with Tom -- the younger brother -- and kills him.

I can see where Sabatini picked up the mantle of writing adventure stories from Stephens. Much of the feel is the same. The main characters are nicely drawn. You can see their motivations, you can feel the friendship among them, you can feel sympathy for them. When Philip first appears he's carrying two suitcases and a kitten in a sack slung over his shoulder. Fanny could be a lot more developed -- Bert ends up marrying her, so you'd think he'd give her a bit more attention. I can see where Ned has to be a nasty fellow. The plot as constructed wouldn't work without him being the way he was, and God knows there are enough people in the world who follow the path of least resistance, whose empathy with others, even close family, stops at the inside of their own epidermis. Most aren't quite as overtly unpleasant as Ned.

Stephens presents both sides of the story of the Revolution, Philip and Mr. Fairingfield, Margaret's father, adhering to the rebels, Bert and Tom to the Loyalists. They don't hate each other and they remain friends. All do their duty as they see it. That keeps it interesting. Having all murderous villains on one side and all cleft-chinned, muscular heroes on the other would have made it boring. Even though the reader know how it's going to turn out (SPOILER: The rebels won) the reader wants to see how this particular drama plays out, feeling sympathy with all the characters but Ned and sometimes Margaret.

I believe reading Philip Winwood and Sabatini's The Carolinian back to back would present little difference in the quality of the writing. Philip is no Captain Blood, or Scaramouch, but he's of the same quality as The Lion's Skin or Bardelys the Magnificent, which is saying a lot.

As for my own productivity, I finished the chapter I was working on and  wrote a part of the next on Del of Kerao, but the ideas are tangled and my thoughts have been on other things, including the holidays and my health. I wrote the first chapter and most of a second on a new book, featuring a heroine with only one arm and one leg. I had to fight the temptation to simply write a romance based on Mary Dague.  I've made her a helicopter pilot, but that could change -- it's irrelevant to the rest of the story. She could be Quartermaster or Signal Corps, could even be a Personnel Officer. Quartermaster would probably be best, in fact. I've named her Cornelia Catherine Moriarty and her love interest will be named (probably) Quincy Holmes, just so I can make jokes about that and eventually have them start Moriarty & Holmes, Inc.

In the first chapter, which might just be a prologue, C. Catherine (she hates her first name) tells her husband she's getting a divorce after his fourth affair. The same thing happened to Mary, and she doesn't blame her husband; she was a burden, and their relationship had become more of a nurse-patient. A burden that's light when you assume it weighs more after a couple miles. If you've assumed it for a lifetime it can be really heavy. C. Catherine, single and at large, is trying hard not to any burden to anyone, to include her family. I look at what life is like for people with disabilities, following her through the abominable processes of taking a bath and going to the gym. With half the number of limbs she's got to be twice as strong and capable. I think one of the themes will be reliance and trust in others. C. Catherine (Quincy names her Nellie) is something of a hard ass, unwilling after her divorce to admit that sometimes she does need help. That's a problem lots of military people have, despite the emphasis on teamwork. "Suck it up" is the usual phrase, and it becomes a way of life. In the event of major problems, like loss of limb, it can lead to depression, so there's something for me to write about.

It's not Sherlock

I spent an overnight in the hospital the other day, then had unrelated appointments the day after they let me out. Lots of reading time is to be found in two days and a night in the hospital, especially when combined with a drive from Baltimore to Bethesda.

So I read Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company. Coincidentally, I read Bernard Cornwell's 1356 recently as well, so I've been vicariously living in the 14th century off and on. I'd recommend either book, and, if you have the time, both of them back to back.

Neither book is perfect, both are very good, and it's interesting how both make the period come alive with different world views. The Conan Doyle book has what I think is a romanticized view of the period, where Cornwell's goes a bit, I think, in the other direction.

The White Company tells the story of part of Prince Edward's campaign to reinstall Pedro of Castile on his throne. The protagonist is squire to Sir Nigel Loring, whose daughter Maude provides the (minimal) love interest. The main characters are nicely drawn and sympathetically treated. Historical characters abound, so thickly that it's hard to keep track of them -- many are mere walk-ons, with no development.

The amount of chivalry depicted is slightly overwhelming. Clearly Froissart was a major source. Sir Nigel spends much of his time looking for someone to cross swords or break lances with him, a kind of romanticized bully boy who would be outlandish if he was the only one. You wonder: Can human nature be bent to that extent?

It's not bent in the Cornwell book, which is an account of the battle of Poitiers, eleven years before the battle of Najera, the climax of the Conan Doyle book. Thomas of Hookton leads a company of archers similar to the White Company. (Was Conan Doyle one of the inspirations?) The characters are more human to 21st century readers. The cities are stinky; at one point Thomas escapes hidden in a shit cart. The concept of chivalry is treated condescendingly -- one of the main characters is a virginal knight, because he was visited in a dream by the Virgin Mary. Naturally he's smitten by a beauty who ran away from her (disgusting) husband. 

I like Cornwell. I've read all his Sharpe stories, the Viking series, the Grail series, and a few stand-alones. His heroes are impervious to pain; in one book a character cuts off the protagonist's little finger. He's at work in the trenches a few days later. Thomas, prior to 1356, was tortured, his hand maimed by an evil Dominican. He's using the hand to pull his bow in 1356. Having once maimed my right hand with a table saw, I can tell Cornwell hasn't actually had a similar injury.

Visited by the Muse

I woke up yesterday morning with the current chapter in Del of Kerao finished in my head. All I had to do was sit down and type it out. I'm hoping the muse hangs around for the last half dozen chapters.

I also started reading, this time Sabatini's King in Prussia, which isn't his best, but is at least interesting -- the youthful Frederick the Great and his brutal father, Frederick Wilhelm. This is the first time I've read it, and there are a lot of characters to keep straight, but I've been to Berlin and Potsdam, Wittemburg, and many of the other locations. I can only imagine traveling to them on horseback or in a carriage.

King in Prussia is my nitey-nite reading, so it's going slower. I read a chapter or two before I go to sleep. In my waking hours I've also re-read Dolly of Palo Pinto. It's been long enough since I published it that I can read it with a bit of objectivity (I think).

I like Dolly. She's a genuine person, a girl I knew as a child, many years ago. The story is fiction, but the Dolly in the book is real, or at least the way I remember her personality.

It hasn't been quite as many years since I was last in Mineral Wells, but it's been a long time -- the year I went to Vietnam. It's probably changed since I was there, but I liked it. There's an actual YK ranch, that I think is near there, but the Y bar K is a product of imagination, partly populated by people I've known. I invented the place, making up the name at random and then not Googling it to see if it was in existence. Probably ranching has changed since I saw it up close, too. It's really a lot of interpolation.

I grew up with the inhabitants of Water Street: I ate Minnie's cooking, heard her holler at a few people, knew Old Sadie and Uncle Ivo and Cindy and Sandy and Randy. I even kissed Yvonne once; we were drunk at the time. The episode with Bella is true. It happened to someone else, under different circumstances. but I'll never forget it. I'll always grieve. I was Nate in that little story.

I don't have Sabatini's gift for description, but I think Dolly is pretty solid as far as characters. If I was to rewrite it from scratch I think I'd develop Elvis more fully. He's approximately a couple men I knew long ago as well, but on rereading he comes across as kind of a straw man, there merely to torment Dolly. That's probably because I knew him too well. I've known enough women who had leech husbands or boyfriends. I've never known anyone who went complete Elvis, but I've known enough people (male and female) who were starring in their own private movie.