Celebrate February

Let's celebrate February!

It's the shortest month of the year. It occurs in the dead of winter. Except for the Superbowl, the only sporting event of consequence is the publication of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

February has perhaps the weirdest collection of holidays of any month.

• On February 2, we have Ground Hog Day, where we honor a reclusive little burrowing mammal, which, on this day, takes on the status of oracle.  
• February 14, Valentine's Day, is the one day of the year that creates more anxiety for men than a group prostate exam. What's so hard about Valentine's Day? Finding the right gift. The right gift is one that gets you, the guy, what you want, which is to get laid. But can the gift say that? No. The gift must say the opposite. It must profess undying love and commitment. A gift that screams, "I want to jump your bones," will get you an evening alone. 
• Mardi Gras this year falls in February. What do we do on Mardi Gras? We engage in all sorts of excesses and debauchery in preparation for six weeks of atonement for excesses and debauchery. 
• Finally, there is President's Day, which is, in my opinion, an equal to July Fourth in importance because we celebrate all US presidents, and especially George Washington, the founder of our country, and Abraham Lincoln, the preserver of our country.

February birthdays are awesome. I don't think there is another month with an all-star birthday line-up to match February's.

Let's take just two dates.

• February 12 is the birthday of my granddaughter, Morgan, who is the cutest, smartest dancer in the world. It is also the birthday of two of the greatest thinkers of the world, two men of genius whose accomplishments are still being felt--Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.
• February 22 is my birthday. Okay, maybe that's not much, but look who else was born on this day. George Washington, Edward M. Kennedy, Robert Baden Powell, Drew Barrymore and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Pulitzer Prize winner Edna St. Vincent Millay penned what might be the best paean to excess and debauchery.

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

A list of other notable February birthdays can be found here.


To celebrate February, I am giving away FREE electronic copies of my short story collection, Game Face. This offer expires at the end of the month, but, because this is a leap year, February has an extra day for you to take advantage of it.


To get your copy, click on your preferred ebook format:
mobi (for Kindle)
epub (for all other e-readers)

Mark Troy
Hawaiian-eye Blog
http://www.marktroy.net

In the bleak midwinter by Mark Troy

Ah February. What better month for a mystery writer? The middle of winter is the time to get some writing done with fewer distractions than other times of the year. It’s too cold to work in the yard in most parts of the country, too severe to even go outside in some places. Football has ended. Baseball hasn’t begun. Basketball is in the boring middle part of the season. The Academy Awards are still weeks away.

This February we have the Winter Olympics, an event that can be as much inspiration as distraction. The writer who knows where to look will find plenty of fertile ground for a story. Probably no other event, except perhaps a bullfight, combines artistry, grace, courage, and the threat of serious injury or death. In ski cross and snowboard cross, athletes chase each other at high speed down snow covered mountains. It's like watching two weeks of James Bond. The spin outs and tumbles are just as horrific. What about those people skiing through the forests with rifles on their backs, stopping every so often to shoot? An Alistair MacLean story? No, it's the biathlon.

We already have a tragic death in the Olympics with the accident suffered by a Georgian luger when he slammed into a trackside pole at 90 miles an hour. The sad event was made worse by the actions of authorities who denied the track was unsafe and attempted to shift the blame to the victim while covering their own asses.

If I want inspiration for characters, I need look only to Bode Miller and Lindsay Vonn. Miller is the flawed hero. Need a model for a screw-up cop or detective with a checkered past? Miller's your man. His story is one of redemption. He’s a talented athlete trying to atone for letting the country down in 2006 with his disappointing performance and his bad behavior. He wraps the package in a zen attitude that would drive superiors crazy. What does Bode think about winning medals?

"You don't want to go the Tonya Harding route of winning medals," Miller said. "If you wanted just strictly to win medals, you could go through a whole long start list of racers and just go to their house in the offseason — break a leg..."

If Miller is a flawed hero, Vonn is the perfect action heroine. She’s skilled, courageous, and beautiful. She doesn’t hesitate to hurl herself down mountains at high speed, risking serious injury, to be best of the best. Injuries? You name it, she’s had it. The pain from a shin injury was so bad she couldn’t even put on her ski boots to practice. When asked how she’ll handle the pain in the Alpine events, she said, “I’ll just have to grit my teeth and push through it.” That's the kind of fighter I want on my side. I want her in my stories

Vonn appears in a sexy picture on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Olympic Preview issue. She appears in equally sexy photos inside the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue (pages 84, 87, and 98). S.I. Swimsuit definitely counts as a February distraction. But wait, there’s also the germ of a mystery story in those pages.

The Olympics have already given us the elements of a potboiler: setting, action, likable heroes and a cover-up by people in high places. What else do we need? We need a macguffin. A macguffin is something that gets the plot moving. It could be the object of a heist like the jeweled dagger in Topkapi. It could be the briefcase with unidentified, but glowing contents in Pulp Fiction. Whatever it is, it's worth stealing, worth killing for. What could be so valuable? Gold? Yes. Olympic gold? No. The honor and prestige aside, an Olympic gold medal is worth between $200 and $250 dollars. So what is this object? I already gave you a hint. It can be found on page 164 of the S.I. Swimsuit issue. It’s a bikini. Not just any bikini. This one is worth a million dollars. It’s made out of 24 karat gold.

I don't know how this story will end, yet, but I have five more weeks of winter to work it out. Me and my itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie, million dollar macguffin.

I love February.

Mark Troy
http://www.marktroy.net
http://hawaiian-eye.blogspot.com