Aliens Versus Ghosts

By Mark W. Danielson

Lately, we’ve read some interesting ghost tales, and no doubt they are real. So in keeping with this theme, I’m adding a ghost tale and a couple of UFO stories just to keep things interesting.

The first involves a WWII pilot’s flight through The Devil’s Triangle off the Florida coast. For decades, this fabled region has been swallowing airplanes and ships, but that didn’t stop the Army Air Corps from flying C-47s (DC-3) loaded with virgin passengers through it. Capitalizing on the area’s superstition, one flight crew decided to board their plane with two pair of white gloves tucked away. At cruise altitude and just prior to reaching The Devil’s Triangle, the pilots applied sticky glue to these gloves and fastened them to their control wheels. After engaging the autopilot, they climbed from their seats and strolled to the back, much to their passengers’ dismay. One soldier nervously asked what was going on in a manner I’ll forgo. Meeting this young man’s wide-eyed gaze, the pilot calmly explained that they were now in The Devil’s Triangle so they turned the flying over to the spirits. He told him not to worry and assured him they would return to their pilot seats once they had safely exited. With no cockpit door to hinder the passengers’ view, everyone on board was now staring at Mickey’s hands steering both control wheels, certain the spirits were in control. Imagine the roar at the Officer’s Club when the pilots shared their story that night. But here’s the clincher: while I was completing Air Force water survival training in The Devil’s Triangle, the ship’s captain was the son of a pilot who’s KC-135 (Boeing 707) was lost in The Devil’s Triangle. The crew never made a Mayday call and there was no sign of any wreckage. You decide whether The Triangle is cursed.

Now onto UFOs. In the 45 years I’ve been piloting airplanes, I have never seen a UFO, but I know two pilots who have. I’ll preface this with having made numerous Atlantic crossings on indigo nights, with the Milky Way illuminating my cockpit, I realize that from space Earth is nothing more than one minuscule dot. So considering the billions of stars and countless galaxies out there, it seems ludicrous to refute alien life any more than we do spirits from other worlds.

The first incident involved a fellow instructor pilot who, at the time of the occurrence, was an Air Force F-106 fighter pilot assigned to the Air Defense Command. One day he was scrambled to intercept an unidentified flying object, meaning any airborne target that had not established proper radio communication. The supersonic F-106 was such a capable interceptor that it could probably reach Heaven if gravity never tugged on its leash. With the fighter’s radar showing the target well above his aircraft, my friend centered the target by raising the nose and in full afterburner eventually established visual contact on the shiny object. By now, his F-106 had exceeded fifty thousand feet, far in excess of what was normal for this, or any other aircraft of the day, could fly. As he closed on the object, the target suddenly shot straight up and disappeared off the fighter’s and NORAD’s radar, never to be seen again. To this day, no aircraft in the world is capable of such a maneuver; especially from that altitude.

The second sighting involved an airline crew who, while flying the Atlantic red-eye, spotted a brightly lit craft much larger than any airliner flying next to them. Every crew member on board saw this unusual craft and reported it, but the air traffic controller saw nothing on his radar screen. The object disappeared without explanation, but later that night, reports of the same craft came from people all over Europe. In an apparent effort to protect us from panic, governments bury such events by fabricating stories that most of us buy into. If our fiction sales were as successful, we could all retire.

The beauty in these true stories is they allow mystery writers opportunities to explore unlimited dimensions and still convince their readers that it “could happen”. Ghostly reality shows are popular because on some level most of us believe there is an afterlife. UFO shows excel because many believe that aliens have visited our planet. Whether you’re using ghostly or alien themes for humor or drama, there is a wealth of related reference material in libraries and through the Internet. Ghosts and aliens never whine, complain, or shed tears, so try weaving one into your next story.

Mystery's History

by Jean Henry Mead

Edgar Allen Poe's first detective story is credited with creating the mystery genre in this country, but “What’s happened to the mystery since [Sherlock] Holmes hung up his deerstalker hat and started keeping bees?” Carolyn Wheat asks the question in her book, How to Write Killer Fiction.

Wheat says that mysteries have been split into three distinct strands: the classic whodunit, the American hard-boiled detective story and the procedural. She further divides up the whodunit category into the regional mystery, historical, comic relief, niche mystery and the dark cozy. Her book was published in 2003, and a number of subgenres have since been added to the list, including the science fiction mystery.

I love niche mysteries such as Carolyn Hart’s series featuring a red haired ghost who returns to earth to solve murders following her own death in a boating accident. And former NASA payload specialist Stephanie Osborn not only taught astronauts what they needed to know about space travel, she wrote a mystery involving the disappearance of a space shuttle after her friend was killed in the Challenger explosion.

The American hard-boiled detective story evolved from The Great Detective, who solved crimes with his intellect. The list isn’t complete, however, without the books of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald, Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block. The plots take place in urban areas where murder and mayhem happen on a regular basis. You’d be hard pressed to find a hard-boiled detective story set in Cabot Cove, Maine, or St. Mary Mead, England. Or as Chandler once said, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished or afraid.” The phrase epitomizes the hard-boiled detective story that's alive and well in any number of currently written series.

The police procedural evolved when writers came to the conclusion that the majority of crimes were actually solved by detectives who used scientific methods to track down and apprehend criminals--much like Sherlock Holmes with modern equipment. They weren’t bunglers like the cops in Agatha Christie’s St. Mary Mead or mainly corrupt like the cops in Bay City, California. No one seems to know who first wrote procedurals although the genre was influenced by Wilkie Collins’ Sergeant Cuff in his book, The Moonstone, published in 1868, and TV’s Sgt. Joe Friday of the LAPD of the 1950s. Joseph Wambaugh and James Ellroy later refined the subgenre and placed a spotlight on the corruption, violence and racism of the Los Angeles police.

The dark cozy has lightened considerably in this country. I still love Christie’s sleuths and have written a few of my own, adding comic relief to my Logan & Cafferty senior sleuth series. The dark cozy came into being with Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, the first novel to use fingerprinting as a method of detection, long before it was used in real-life police work.

With all these great subgenres to choose from, which do you prefer?

What Makes a Cozy by Christine Duncan

Recently I've noticed a lot of talk about what makes up the cozy genre. Basically, if people don't read cozy they tend to view it as sort of old-fashioned or as someone said on one of the mystery sites recently, give off the... scent of camphor balls and old wet wool. One of the nicest things said in that discussion was that cozies were set in a small setting like an old English manor house and the hero/heroine was an amateur sleuth.
I am here to set the story straight. The only thing true about any of that junk you read in the last paragraph is that cozy heroines are amateur sleuths. There is no graphic language or graphic violence. Cozies are more about a puzzle to solve. But cozies today are hardly old-fashioned.
Today's cozies are set in the real world. Probably a lot more like YOUR world than the PI novel you just set down. They can be in a small town (doesn't have to be in the UK let alone a manor house.)And they can deal with some pretty harsh problems. For instance, Sarah Graves, who writes one of my favorite cozy series--Home Repair is Homicide, has the heroine dealing with her son's drug addiction, and her own not so wonderful childhood.
My own cozy series, is set in a battered women's shelter.
Cozy writers like Jennie Bentley, and Joyce and Jim Lavene have fun series with savvy heroines. Others, like Monica Ferris may have a hobby type setting.
Folks, don't trash 'em, till you've tried 'em. And if you haven't read a cozy since Miss Marple, you really haven't tried 'em.

Christine Duncan is the author of the Kaye Berreano mystery series. Book two of the series, Safe House is available now.

Those Dark and Stormy Nights

It was a dark and stormy night...Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, may have been overly melodramatic with this pearl of fiction, but it wasn't a bad idea. The weather can be a great way to set the mood of your story or provide complications to the plot. One blogger listed a number of ways the weather can be used symbolically, such as:

• Rain: cleansing, renewal, mixed emotions, depression
• Thunderstorm: anger, danger, strong emotion
• Blue Skies/Sunshine: hope, happiness, absence of trouble, purity
• No Wind  or humid: stagnant, unable to  move forward, smothering
• Windy: change, things moving too quickly to grab onto
• Snow: inner coldness, sadness, cleansing, covering the bad, a quiet calm, purity
• Blizzard: overwhelmed, trapped, helpless
• Fog: unknown, fear, confusion, foreboding danger

Despite Elmore Leonard's famous rule "Never start a book with weather," it has been done successfully by several authors. He went on to explain that its use should be related to how the weather affects the characters in the story.

Hurricanes have been particularly useful to mystery writers. Randy Wayne White's Dark Light, a Doc Ford mystery, involves the retired CIA agent in the aftermath of a Category 4 hurricane that ravaged the Florida coast. Others have used the massive storms to create havoc for their protagonists.

Thunderstorms, snowstorms, floods, and heat waves have provided backdrops for novels. If you're using one of these meteorological wonders, though, it's best to do some research to make sure your facts are right. Strange things happen during these storms, but sometimes they're a bit too strange to make it in fiction. If you've never been through a hurricane, it's a good idea to talk to someone who has. Of course, everybody has a good thunderstorm tale.

Have you read any good weather-connected books lately?

Chester Campbell

Here are the authors to watch for

 The Private Eye Writers of America have announced the nominations for the Shamus Awards for 2010. My favorite category is Best First P.I. Novel because some of these nominees in the past have become the stars of the genre. I make it a point to find and read each nominated book each year. This year we have a Tinseltown private eye, a sexy Bronx sleuth, a Scottish P.I., a Newark gumshoe, and a New York shamus. The winner will be announced at Bouchercon, but, in my opinion, they are all winners. 

Congratulations and good luck to the nominees and good reading to the rest of us.

Best First P.I. Novel:

• Loser’s Town, by Daniel Depp (Simon & Schuster) 

Private investigator David Spandau, an ex-stuntman familiar with the ins and outs of Hollywood—a smart, tough, and wickedly funny observer of la vie L.A.—finds his patience almost sapped when he's hired to protect actor Bobby Dye from a blackmailing scheme gone wrong. Dye—young, brash, and on the verge of becoming a major star—has been set up by gangster Richie Stella, a nightclub owner and drug dealer with dreams of becoming a Hollywood producer.

• The Last Gig, by Norman Green (Minotaur) 

Alessandra Martillo is just another Puerto Rican girl who's run away from the projects in the Bronx until her uncle takes her in and teaches her how to take care of herself. Now she's working for a sleazy P.I., repossessing cars and trolling for waitstaff on the take. But when the head of an Irish mob family, Mickey Caughlan, wants to find out who's setting him up from inside, Al is exactly the woman for the job.

• The Good Son, by Russel D. McLean (Minotaur)

There is something rotten behind the apparent sucide of Daniel Robertson and it’s about to come bursting into the life of J. McNee, a Scottish private investigator with a near-crushing level of personal baggage. James Robertson, a local farmer, finds his estranged brother’s corpse hanging from a tree. The police claim suicide. But McNee is about to uncover the disturbing truth behind the death. With a pair of vicious London thugs on the move in the Scottish countryside, it’s only a matter of time before people start dying. As the body count rises, McNee finds himself on a collision course with his own demons and an increasing array of brutal killers in a violent, bloody showdown that threatens to leave none involved alive. 

• Faces of the Gone, by Brad Parks (Minotaur)

A shooting can rattle a city, even if it's gun-choked Newark. Investigative reporter Carter Ross finds himself with gruesome front-page news: four bodies in a vacant lot, each with a single bullet hole in the back of the head. Soon, Carter learns the four victims have one connection, and this knowledge puts him in the path of one very ambitious killer...

• Chinatown Angel, by A.E. Roman (Minotaur)

Chico Santana is a likable, but not perfectly sympathetic New York PI. Hired by a wannabe movie star Kirk Atlas to track down his beautiful cousin, Tiffany, he gets involved with the apparent suicide of Kirk’s maid. He finds out Kirk’s family has a lot of secrets they really don’t want to be uncovered.

Mark Troy

Hawaiian Eye Blog

Mark's Home Page

E-Book Revolution?

I wrote this for my own blog but thought I would share with Make Mine Mystery.

It's amazing to me that people want to call what is going on an e-book revolution.

E-books have been around for a long, long time. When I was first published as an e-author the only way to read my books was on a computer.

Next came the Rocket E-Reader--a wonderful device. It was back-lit, you could download books from e-publishers (there were and are lots of them), and it shut off if you didn't turn a page for a long while. Perfect for reading in bed. Unfortunately, the sold out to Sony, who didn't come out with a new e-reader for a long time, and in my opinion, wasn't nearly as good as the old Rocket.

Other readers came along in-between and after, but the first to really take off--as everyone knows--was Amazon's Kindle.

New York publishers took awhile, but they finally saw the hand-writing on the wall and included e-rights in their contracts and hung onto a much greater percentage for themselves then any of the e-publishers do with their authors.

Dorchester/Leisure Books recently announced they now will only print POD books (standing for Print on Demand which is just a printing process which allows the publisher to only publish what is needed) and electronic books. Some say they are going this route because of financial problems--authors are gossiping about the fact that royalties are not being paid on time. How much is true, I have no idea.

Things are definitely changing in the publishing world--but they have been for a long, long time. Good changes for the author, in that we can now send queries and whole manuscripts in as attachments and receive out contracts the same way. When I get royalties from my publishers it's spelled out exactly where the sale came from: print book from a book store, Amazon, or the publishers' website; e-book from Amazon or other e-book seller or the publishers' website.

And of course, many authors are submitting their work directly to Amazon.

Do I still read paper books? Yes. Do I have a Kindle? Yes. Do I miss the smell of a book when I'm reading my Kindle? No. As far as I'm concerned, a book is a book.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com/

Wildlife in Novels by Morgan Mandel

Lots of critters seem to be in my neighborhood lately. Friday night, our dog, Rascal, was very interested in an area by one of the bushes. Being dark, I couldn't tell what was our there. I managed to distract her and get her to go to the back of the yard instead. The next morning, I discovered a rabbit in the front yard, so I'm assuming that's what had her attention.


Along with the usual squirrels, on Saturday I also noticed something small with a long thin tail in our driveway. Turned out it was a mouse. It was kind of cute, so I had to go inside and get my camera to take pictures and a video. I didn't want to hurt it and was hoping it would leave before we took the van out. I'm glad it obliged. Here's the link to my video of the mouse -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIx6rjOKXBw

A falcon also seems to be hanging out in the neighborhood lately, which is unusual for our area. I did see a fox once a few blocks away, but that was last year, so maybe it moved its quarters.

On one of my blogs, I asked whether or not any of you've written or read novels in which insects played a part. Today, I'm asking if you've included any forms of wildlife in your novels or read any novels where non-domestic animals played a part. Or, maybe you just want to share sightings of animals in your neighborhood.