The Art of Letter Writing

 

Kathleen Kaska

 

When was the last time you wrote a letter or received one?

With texting, tweeting, emailing, and Facebook messaging available as popular (and expedient) forms of communication, people rarely write letters nowadays. Why bother, you might ask? I just order the book, Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E. B. White and Edmund Ware Smith. When I saw E. B. White on the cover, I ordered it immediately. I love his writing. I didn’t pay attention to the subtitle, so I was surprised to see that it was a collection of letters between two friends. I haven’t read the book yet; I’m savoring it for a vacation when I don’t have to focus on a bazillion other things. But it got me thinking.

I’m fortunate to have a friend who still prefers to communicate this old-fashioned way. We met several years ago when I interviewed her for a book I was writing about her father. Although she uses email, she does so mainly for business. She and I chat on the phone, but we also write letters to one another. I have kept every letter she has written me, as well as copies of those I’ve written to her.

Beyond my correspondence with my letter-writing friend, I write a Christmas letter to my family, though not every year. I write letters to my young great-niece and nephews, since they live in Texas and I’m in Washington State. I don’t want them to forget about me.

I think the reason letter writing is rare is that it takes time and effort. Getting started is especially hard. I could begin with a comment on the weather, how I’m feeling, or what I’ve been up to, but those topics seem humdrum. What helps me get past “Dear Stephanie,” is a reminder to start with a quirky thought that’s been brewing in my brain—something like why
I choose to have two olives with my martini on one night and three on another. After that first paragraph is written, I’m off and running with three or four pages pounded out in a few minutes.

Electronic communication fosters little forethought as to what to say, or how to say it. “I have a question; here it is.” Or, “I have some information you need; read this quickly.” I also find that if I send an email with too many questions, most of them go unanswered. Sadly no one seems to read lengthy emails. I even had a publisher who consistently ignored most of what I asked. I soon learned to ask just one question per email.

Letter writing, on the other hand, takes thought, creativity, and consideration for the recipients of the letters. You don’t want to bore them to death with mundane information. You want to make them laugh and understand what’s really going on in your head and your life.

I look back on the first letters I wrote to my friend; most contained questions about her father’s activities. But after my book was published The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story University Press of Florida, 2012) we began communicating on a more personal level, and a true friendship developed. I enjoy reading her letters, being able to hold them, stick them in my purse, and reread them. I know she’s put time and effort into her letters to me—and that makes me feel special. I hope she feels the same way when she receives one of mine.

I’m not sure what I will eventually do with all our correspondence, but I’m glad to have it. My friend lives across the country, so I rarely see her. Our letters keep us close. 

Do you know of other similar books that are collections of letters? 

Kathleen Kaska is the author of The Sherlock Holmes Quiz Book (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group). She is the founder of The Dogs in the Nighttime: Holmes Society of Anacortes, Washington, a scion of The Baker Street Irregulars. Kathleen writes the awarding-winning Sydney Lockhart Mystery Series and the Kate Caraway Mystery Series. Her passion for birds led to the publication The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story. Kathleen’s collection of blog posts, Do You Have a Catharsis Handy? Five-Minute Writing Tips won the Chanticleer International Book Award in the non-fiction Instruction and Insights category.

 

Go to her website and sign up for her newsletter. Look for her bi-monthly blog: “Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town” because sometimes you just have to laugh.

 

http://www.kathleenkaska.com

http://www.blackopalbooks.com

https://twitter.com/KKaskaAuthor

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Three “Red” Short Stories

by Paula Gail Benson

During this time when we are celebrating our new red stilettos logo, I thought it might be fun to seek out some “red” mystery short stories. Thanks to the internet, I quickly located three--two familiar and one new to me--with the word “red” in the title.

The earliest is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Red-Headed League,” a Sherlock Holmes adventure, which, according to Wikipedia, was published in The Strand magazine in August of 1891 and ranked by Conan Doyle as his second favorite Holmes story. The person who instigates this investigation is “a florid-faced, elderly gentleman, with fiery red hair.” This gentleman, Mr. Jabez Wilson, a pawnbroker by profession, responded to an advertisement for “the Red-Headed League” and was hired to fill the opening, to write out portions from an encyclopedia for four pounds a week (again, according to Wikipedia, that’s currently equivalent to 400 pounds a week). Mr. Wilson’s job ended as abruptly as it began and he came to Sherlock Holmes to find out why his stream of income had vanished. Holmes begins by laughing at the situation, then considering it in earnest. The answer was: Mr. Wilson had been diverted from his ordinary business so he would not notice some pending criminal activity.

Second, is O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief,” published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1910, and now known more for its parodies than the actual story of thieves who kidnap an important man’s son, but end up paying to have the father take him back. The “red” comes from the kidnap victim’s hair color and the fact that he refers to himself as “Red Chief.”

The last is a new story to me, but one Raymond Chandler fans will recognize as a Philip Marlowe tale. Initially published in 1938, “Red Wind” begins with Marlowe having a drink at the bar across from his office and watching a man enter, then be killed by another man.

Often writers are advised never to open with the weather. Not only does “Red Wind” break that rule (“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”), but uses the wind throughout the story as a symbol of the unrest in the characters’ lives.

Finding Doyle’s and Henry’s stories is easy with versions available on the internet. Chandler’s is in an anthology that costs $30 plus or in an audio version read by Elliott Gould for just under ten dollars. I downloaded a Kindle version that had been translated into Korean, but also had the English text. Marlowe’s narration is so absorbing, I hurriedly skipped over the interspersed translated portions!

What “red” stories have you read lately?

Archaeology Can Be Murder

By day, I’m an archaeologist at the University of Illinois. At night and on weekends, I morph into a mystery writer. My series is the Lisa Donahue Archaeological Mysteries, and my protagonist is a lot like me. She’s a museum curator trained in Classical and Near Eastern archaeology, she spent a junior year in Israel, and she has a daughter, a cat, and a medical husband (not necessarily in that order!).

So how does one go from archaeology to murder? I grew up in a household full of moldering old paperback mysteries (mostly Golden Age British novels), and my parents liked to read aloud to us from Sherlock Holmes (The Hound of the Baskervilles) and the like. Then I got a job in a dusty old attic museum where broken windows allowed pigeons to fly in and out and leave their deposits on Greek statues and suits of armor. While working on an interdisciplinary mummy project, I realized that my workplace was the perfect setting for murder.

Thus my first novel, “Bound for Eternity,” was born. In this story, Lisa discovers that an Egyptian mummy holds the secrets to two murders in her Boston Museum. (My old museum was moved from Illinois to Boston to protect the innocent). The prequel, “The Dead Sea Codex,” allowed Lisa to revisit Israel, hook up with an old boyfriend, and crisscross the desert looking for an ancient manuscript before Christian fanatics destroy it. Book 3 in the series, “The Fall of Augustus,” takes Lisa back to her museum at a time when the staff is supposed to move enormous plaster statues of Roman emperors and Greek gods down through an old elevator shaft. Sounds dangerous, right? Some of my colleagues actually did this at Illinois without misadventure, but naturally I changed the facts in my mystery so I could have the vicarious thrill of killing off two museum directors.

Book 4, “The House of the Sphinx,” takes a new direction. Lisa and her radiologist husband, James, take a delayed honeymoon in Egypt, where they stumble upon a plot to infect Western tourists with smallpox. I like to say that this plot (instead of another archaeological caper) is my husband’s fault, and that he’s a ghoul. Actually, Charlie’s a retired pathologist, and a great source of information on all things medical. He used to work for the Centers for Disease Control, and pointed me to their website. There I found a public, fully detailed plan for dealing with a modern smallpox epidemic. Scary stuff. While I Googled bioweapons and tried to figure out how to weaponize smallpox virus, the thought did cross my mind that someone out there might be watching my Internet use…fortunately, no one showed up on my doorstep.

I see many similarities between mystery writing and my “day job.” Archaeology is like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing; constructing a mystery is like solving a jigsaw puzzle, but all the pieces must be there and should fit at the end. Archaeologists deal with layers (stratigraphy), with the stuff on top being the most recent and the stuff deep down being the oldest. Similarly, the visible story in a mystery is the top layer (what the writer wants you to see), and the deeper layers hold the motives, the clues, and the detailed plot that is gradually revealed. If you want to see how far this analogy can go, check out the wonderful free ezine, Mysterical-E, and the article I wrote for them.

For more on my mysteries, visit http://www.sarahwisseman.com/

Happy digging!

Sarah Wisseman

Sherlock Who?

I think it’s a generational thing. ***Spoiler Alert*** for books and movie.

We walked out of the movie theater: husband and wife of a certain middle age; son and daughter, young adults. The movie? Sherlock Holmes. The reviews? Nothing short of fantastic, according to the younger set.

For us older folks, it was a perfectly fine movie. Entertaining, beautifully shot, incredible costumes, and zero relationship to the books by Arthur Conan Doyle. Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law are terrific actors – but bear almost no resemblance to the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson that I know.

I confess that I have special feelings about the Holmes books. It was probably the first mystery series I ever read – eagerly returning to the library to get another book as soon as I had finished the one I had in hand. Doyle taught me two things that have affected my writing. First, it never crossed my mind that an author could kill off his protagonist – but that is exactly what Doyle does in “The Final Problem.” I still love his mother’s reaction when Doyle informs her, “I think of slaying Holmes…and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.” His Mom points out (and let’s hear it for Mom’s intuition), “You may do what you deem fit, but the crowds will not take this lightheartedly.” And guess what, Mom was right.

Which taught me the second important lesson – well maybe third, since learning that Moms are usually right is a point I often try to make with my own kids. But as to writing, under pressure from the public, Doyle brings Holmes back to life in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” and I discovered that an author creates and controls the fate of her characters. You may have some unhappy readers – you might even lose some of them – but as the author, it’s up to you.

But back to Sherlock Holmes, the movie. It’s been said that Holmes as portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr. has become an action hero, a romantic leading man. It’s not that Doyle doesn’t make reference to Holmes’ knowledge of the martial arts – but that’s not the focus of the novels. It’s his deductive powers that always resolve the mystery. Maybe having an actor who is good looking and in good physical shape made it an easy decision to have Holmes in one fight scene after another – preferably without his shirt. And the scene of nude Holmes, handcuffed to a bed and a pillow strategically covering his private parts is funny – and gratuitous.

Which leads me to Irene Adler, the romantic heroine for Mr. Holmes, played nicely by Rachel McAdams. But let’s put Irene Adler in perspective. In the Doyle books, she appears but once, in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” although she is mentioned in other stories. There’s no question that Doyle makes clear that Irene Adler is smart, a fitting intellectual foil for Holmes, but Ritchie puts the emphasis on the unfulfilled romantic longing between these two characters – and that’s a plot invention of the director’s imagination, not Doyle’s.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that Ritchie has essentially taken a well-known character and morphed him into someone that fits today’s movie standards. I don’t miss the deerstalker hat, but I do miss the concept that being smart is as valuable as being good-looking or an outstanding fighter. But maybe, a movie of watching someone think wouldn’t draw in the crowds? Instead, for me, one of my new year’s resolutions is to reread the original Sherlock Holmes books. Cheers to Mr. Ritchie for producing a pleasant afternoon's interlude. Bravo to Mr. Doyle for creating characters that have lasted for generations.

Marian aka The Northern half of Evelyn David

Secret Messages & Mysterious Codes

Mr. Stratton straightened. His smile faded. “Now, who is to be spokesman?”

“I am,” said Trixie. Jim was co-president of the Bob-Whites, but Trixie usually did the talking.

“Trixie, the School Board doesn’t want secret societies to exist in Sleepyside schools, when clubs – really gangs – can be the source of so much trouble. The board feels…that your club will have to disband.”

“We couldn’t!” Trixie almost shouted…

Most people can think of a book that impacted them. In my case, Trixie Belden forever changed my fiction reading, and especially #7, The Mysterious Code. The section above is from the back cover. The series, first from the 60’s and 70’s, featured spunky Trixie, her brothers, their wealthy friends, lots of horseback riding and the crimes they solved in their Sleepyside town. Trixie had a crush on Jim, and in #7, he gets her a corsage for a Valentine’s Day event. Here began my love of a few things including romantic suspense and codes.

The Trixie books seemed more real than Nancy Drew, as Trix made lots of mistakes and got in trouble a lot. She was terrible at household chores. I won’t say why that seemed more real. No one can say these books are multicultural or politically correct, especially the Asian brothers portrayed in #7, but it was a beloved series for me and many other. Author Denise Swanson has a Trixie Frayne (what her name would have been had she married Jim) in her series as a tribute. I even saved up the back page ads of those books when I was young for a t-shirt. I see those now on Ebay for big bucks.

My favorite Sherlock Holmes is The Adventure of the Dancing Men. I still have an old copy of the children’s book Alvin’s Secret Code by Hicks. Puzzles and codes always fascinate me, and I busily made strips of paper to wrap around sticks with my friends when I was younger (to read vertically). I set some papers on fire trying to brown lemon juice messages on them.

While my handwriting now seems like a code to lots of folks, I miss the note passing and other forms of coding I did when I was younger. Texting is not the same! I was delighted that the cover of Missing is a jigsaw puzzle, and I promptly had a puzzle made from the cover photo when it came. Puzzles are the closest I get to my secret message days.

What got you into mysteries?

-Amy Alessio

Amy Alessio is a YA librarian and author. Her most recent short story is featured in Echelon Press's new mystery anthology, Missing. Amy has a personal blog, Vintage Cookbooks. She also blogs for the Love is Murder conference and for Echelon Press’s Teen Scene.