How to speak from the grave. Really.

When you die ... you're dead. 

Most of us have lost someone and then wished, fairly desperately, that we could hear something from the one we lost. Just one more thing. We can't. When we die, it's all done. 

As I go through my life, finally figuring things out, achieving my small victories, I find myself imagining that somehow I'll share all this with the ones who follow ... my kids, grandkids, their kids and grandkids. All the stories, the hard-won advice, the warm words. 

There is a way to do this but you have to do it now. It's no good if you wait. It's called a memoir. Don't let that scare you. It's just a bit of remembering or story-telling that will linger after you're gone.

As simple as writing a letter.

Some people sit down in front of a video camera ... a smart phone works. Or they record audio, or ... heaven forbid ... they sit down to write.

It's not difficult. Think of writing a letter. You can send them now or, if it suits you, have them delivered after you've gone. 

What to write about? Family stories, history ... the things you already know people get confused about. "Why was Grandpa in prison?" 

It's your one best chance to have the last word about something, if that's important. 

Sometimes photos are a good jumping-off point. Pull out a collection of the ones that need explaining, maybe number them, and begin explaining. Who were these people and why are they all naked ... or whatever ... so that after you've gone on, people can make sense of who you were and why you were here. And who they are. 

A memoir is not an autobiography

So what is a memoir? Just an episode. A memoir is just one small part of the whole picture of your life. It can be quick, easy and painless. You don't have to do the whole thing from A to Z. 

You already know where to start ... with those stories you find yourself telling after dinner, around the table or the campfire ... "tell the one about ..." 

Start with that one. "The one about ..." 

But, life is uncertain. Start today.  

        

"Grantchester?" In Alaska! Meet Father Hardy.

An email from an Australian reader.

Okay, I had never heard of Grantchester, or of the vicar/detective Sydney Chambers. And I've still not read any of the books. But I'm very much enjoying the British series which I'm seeing on Amazon. 

My reader said: "Hardy has a contemporaneous colleague ... an Anglican priest detecting  in Cambridge (England). The series is written  by James Runcie, son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury (so not so different to you) ..."

Set in the 1950s

He's right. My Hardy character is very loosely based on my own father, an Episcopal (Anglican) priest who served in Alaska at Nenana and later in Sitka, starting in 1955. 

I had long wanted to write a mystery but couldn't find a character who hadn't already been written. Until Hardy. 

Alaska was remote in the 1950s, not a state, not a lot of law enforcement, not much communication. At the same time, just down the road from Nenana, the government was building a huge RADAR installation, to track incoming Russian bombers. Of course, who ever heard of a project like that one that didn't come with hot and cold running spies! At least in my mind. 

It's also worth mentioning, that I was attracted to a character with moral code in place. We all know what he believe from page one, and we expect to watch him be true to those beliefs. Being true to himself is part of the attraction to any of the great mystery characters.

Did you know there are said to be more than 300 clergy detectives in fiction!

"Will it make me blush?" 

Recently at a book show, a reader picked up the first Father Hardy, "Indecent Exposure," and asked if it would make her blush. I told her I didn't think so. In Alaska, the natural result of being indecently exposed isn't blushing, it's freezing! She bought the book. 

If you like Grantchester, I'm pretty sure you'll like Father Hardy

Here's one more quote from my reader: "These are real ripping, roller coaster yarns ... The action never flags: there are murders aplenty to solve, conspiracies to unmask, near-death experiences to survive, moose meat to eat, love interests to follow and a psychopath around every corner."

Sounds pretty heavenly, for mystery readers.

Available on Amazon in paperback or ebook, Smashwords (in any e-format), or order from your favorite bookstore. And I'm always most grateful for your posted review. 

A NY Agent Requested My New Novel. Go Figure.

I've been sending writing samples to agents since my teens. It's largely been a waste of time and, back in the day, postage. Why do I still do it? I'm an optimist. My wife says I look at a manure pile and start digging, certain there's a pony in there somewhere.

I've published six books!

It's true. I've self-published six books in two series ... three Alaska adventure books for middle-grade, and three Alaska mystery books for adults. I have a fourth book finished in the mystery series, now in the publication pipeline, and a fifth book begun. 

But in what we laughingly call my spare time ... yes, I'm also helping to renovate an 1893 house in Oregon ... I've written a couple of other books. At this point in my life I write about three new first drafts a year. I'm actually writing books 10 and 11 right now. Am I selling? Yep. 

Somehow, later in life, I got the rhythm of it. It's somewhat easy. I show up at my workstation at about 6:30, coffee in hand, and start typing. The pages fill. 

Then, out of the blue, an agent. 

The working title of the requested book is "The Dead Boy," a title no one admits liking. Except me. It's exactly right. In a nutshell, it's about a boy who has made it all the way up through Jr. High without anyone knowing he can't read. He's created an elaborate—and successful—deception, based on help from his best friend, Ozzie. In Chapter 1, as school ends, Ozzie dies. What will he do?

I didn't realize until I'd written about half of the book, that the dead boy, is the one who is still alive. His fear of being found out keeps him from really living. 

I like the book and a few of my tried and true early readers also like it ... except for the title. 

Without a lot of hope, I submitted it. 

I submitted thirty pages and a synopsis to an agent with the Jennifer De Chiara literary agency in NYC, home of all things literate. I remember telling my wife that it would take about six weeks to be rejected, best case. 

I picked the agent out very carefully and deliberately. I looked at each of the books he had repped within the past few years, checked out online interviews he had done ... about what he liked and didn't like, what he was tired of ... and so forth. I even examined his photo. He has good teeth. 

I hit send.

The next day ... the next day! ... I got a note from him. Here it is: "I like this. Could you send along the complete manuscript?" 

Could I? Oh you bet. 

What happens next?

I honestly don't know. It would be nice to have some professional person want to work with me on my literary career. It's a surprisingly lonely business. But I know it's a numbers game. A kind of literary lotto. And the odds are long. 

What will I do if I'm not chosen ... if he doesn't want to rep the book? I'll keep doing what I'm doing. He's already told me the important thing: I'm writing at a literary level that he recognizes. It may be as close to a gold star as I get ... from that world. 

My real gold stars come from my existing readers ... many of them ... who tell me they couldn't go to bed without finishing the book, or that they're having withdrawals waiting for the next one. 

Can I live with that? Oh, you bet. 

So this ghost shows up in my mystery...

Illustration by Celina Hicks

 No Ghosts Allowed!

 About five years ago, I started out to write a  mystery—and did—the first of three books out  and a fourth due in September. 

 And they're doing pretty well. The first, Indecent  Exposure, sets a young, widowed  Episcopal  priest in a small village in Alaska, and gets him  involved in village life and in finding the  solution to a murder. In fact, the story opens  when he goes out to collect the body of the  victim, found deliberately spread-eagled, frozen  solid in a snow drift ... darn hard to haul home  by dogsled. 

My big problem with this book, early on, was the scene when the ghost shows up. I found myself typing the ghost scene that I never planned to include and frankly, didn't want. "This is a mystery! No ghosts allowed!

But, as many writers know, you don't always get to choose your characters ... and you certainly don't get to choose what they say or do. It can play heck with plotting your narrative.

So, is it a Ghost Story or a Mystery?

The answer is "yes." But ultimately it's a mystery. The main character, the young mission priest, is based on the broad outline of my father, at about that same age, moving our family to the town of Nenana. 

We had been going to go to Africa, to Liberia. Even at age seven, I was so relieved to not go. Today, after having worked a bit in southern Africa and in the Middle East, I'm still not a hot weather guy. I loved everything about moving to Alaska and can still feel my roots in that little town, and the muddy river flowing on in my heart and in my soul. 

I've been re-reading an unpublished manuscript of my father's from 2001, titled Nenana. There was an excerpt published that year in the literary Massachusetts Review. In it, my father, whose mukluks were planted pretty firmly in the snow, talks about a kind of thinning of the membrane between those alive and those dead. He met people in Nenana who talked—and listened—to 'old ones,' long gone. And easily felt that presence in the abandoned, and frankly spooky, old mission school, the land slowly being devoured by the river. It gave him a kind of three-dimensional view of life and death. One that stayed with him. 

Standing here in this moment, Nike's firmly planted, it's easy to think ... "well, that's silly." But we recently met a woman here who summed it up pretty well: "If you believe in the Holy Spirit, then believing in other spirits isn't that much of a reach. 

Writing from the gut. 

Years ago, a woman I was fond of, said "don't ever write about me." And I haven't, at least not intentionally. I don't do that. If I write about a real person, like Alaskan Orie Williams, who used to run the movie projector at the Pioneer's Hall, I just say so. 

But the point is, a writer brings everything to a book, not just the neat and tidy stuff, and not always by intent. I remembered this, recently, doing a reading from one of my books, when I saw that woman walking through a scene, unmistakable. 

It is very much a mystery, but I left the ghost in ... all the ghosts in ... where they belong. 

This morning I visited a class in Vermont!

Let's hear it for video-conferencing!

This morning, at about 8:15 Eugene Oregon  time, I was meeting with a reading class in Vermont, not far from Montpelier. We had a great class together, even though they were 3074 miles away. 

It was interesting and fun for all of us. So much that a handful of students didn't want to leave after the session ended.

They had read my middle-grade first novel "Cheechako." They'd had a chance to think about it and to discuss it, and came to the session ready to ask real questions. It was a hoot, really.  

Video conferencing lets me visit nearly any classroom, anywhere.

I couldn't help thinking how excited I would have been, as a 7th grader in Nenana, Alaska—way back in the late 1950s—to have gotten a visit from a real author. To have been able to ask any question. I had already told my father I wanted to be a writer. He told me, essentially, to get serious. A second opinion would have been helpful. 

Now Internet makes these amazing things happen, easily, quickly ... and free! Programs like Skype, Apple Messenger, or Google Hangouts are available to bring writers like me—or any professional— into schools anywhere. It's the best time to connect to kids who are already starting to figure out what they'd like to do, what they can do, and questions they'd ask of a person already doing it ... if they could. 

I'm available!

If you know a teacher, librarian or reading specialist who would enjoy a virtual visit from a writer, please pass along my contact info. It doesn't matter if they've read any of my books. I've made at least part of my living as a writer, since I left teaching jr. high, way back in the early '80s, and enjoy talking about the process. 

What I like best? Saying to them, "yeah ... why not ... give it a try!" 

J. Edgar Hoover Helped Me Write "Holy Oil"

J. Edgar Hoover

It started with a letter.

It started with a letter from one of my long-suffering pre-readers ... the people I test my new books on. 

He had just finished reading my third Father Hardy mystery, Holy Oil, a mouthwatering mystery compote of romance, murder, disappearance, lust, pre-Alaska statehood intrigue—my best nail-biting climax ever—and some funny stuff.

He said, "I love it!!!!" But then he said that one of my characters, William ... the government agent ... "always seemed to have a near magical solution to the situation. For example, a fully equipped bunker only a short walk from town.

"It just seemed a bit far fetched," 

Hoover and me. 

"Hah!" I replied. And that's when I told him about the secret, Cold War Operation "Washtub," I had  discovered while researching. 

Washtub was an FBI project to train Alaskans to be ready to resist the Soviet invasion. 

Really! Here's the link: https://www.rt.com/usa/184164-soviet-invasion-alaska-washtub/

Under the plan, "stay-behind agents" would hide in so-called survival caches – bunkers loaded with food, warm clothes, message-coding material and radios – and report on enemy movements.

A mystery series set in 1950s Alaska

Return with us now to those thrilling day ... a version of Nenana, Alaska, where I was a child in the wild 1950s. I've written four books about Father Hardy and his friends: Evie—the woman he loves—smart, beautiful and handy with a knife, Andy—the sharpshooter and Italian coffee gourmand, William—the mysterious government agent, and more. 

It's a quirky bunch of people, in a quirky town, at a time when Alaska was changing, oil riches were on the horizon, and the Cold War was hot. 

The first book is called "Indecent Exposure," ... people in Alaska who are indecently exposed, freeze. Followed by "In Gold We Trust," "Holy Oil," and soon, "The Old Rugged (Double) Cross." 

I need reviews!

Photo by Billie

As a self-published author, magazines like the "The Library Journal," or "School Library Journal," won't review my books. I think they only review from big publishers who also buy ads. 

So I rely on you. Thanks to so many of you who have taken a chance on me, read all the books, AND uploaded reviews to Amazon. 

And of course, thanks to Mr. Hoover, who came up with a completely outrageous idea that I could kick some mystery butt with.

Tell your friends, tell your librarians. Thanks for your support and good energy.

Want to write? Write a letter today.

I was finishing grade seven, already "a peck of trouble," as my Kentucky forebears might have said. So my parents and I agreed that I would leave Nenana, AK, and travel to private school near Sewanee, TN. A darn long way away.

I would stay there, fall to spring, not come home ... spend school vacations with relatives in Ohio and Kentucky. Nine months away is a long time when you're twelve or thirteen.

I didn't count on being homesick. Whew! I would have laughed at the notion. I found myself not only not laughing, but for the first week or so, surreptitiously weeping.

Suddenly, the idea of getting a letter from home became very important.

Checking the mail.

Back in Nenana, a very kind woman, Mrs. Heacock, kept a cookie jar filled. My mom wasn't so keen on baking cookies because people kept eating them. Not so Mrs. Heacock. She didn't seem to mind that any route I took, from any part of town to another, included a path through her kitchen. 

I mention this because at St. Andrews, any path to anywhere took me through the main entry of the main building, where the mailboxes were. They were just like the post office, brass fronts with little glass windows and combination dials. Although the mail only came in once a day, and only on weekdays, I never passed—on any day—without checking for a letter from home. 

What's special about a letter.

My father was a great letter writer. Mom was good, too, but less frequent. Dad typed his letters, usually two pages, usually weekly. What did he write? Anything, everything. What he was doing, thinking, planning. Who he ran into at Coghill's store, how deep the snow was, anything about my dog, what he read, what he fixed around the house. Anything was fair game. 

Later when I was first married, Patti and I lived outside Bellingham with our one-year-old. We were attending Western, and even though she was from nearby Seattle—not so far—we still hung on those weekly letters from Alaska. Dad could write about going to the grocery, shopping for dinner, and we'd read it aloud to each other, pleased and relieved to have someone on the other end of that lifeline. 

What letters mean.

I still go out each day, with interest, to check the mail ... "snail mail," as they say in Harry Potter, as opposed to air mail, which is delivered by owl. 

I'm not really getting letters anymore, unless my name has become "occupant" or "current resident." But old habits die hard. 

So the one writing letters is me. No paper, necessarily. But I am a ferocious sender of letters by email. The heck with 140 characters, or typing with my thumbs. With all my digits in play, I can blast out a whole letter in ten or fifteen minutes. 

I don't write as much as I used to. The kids are grown, not homesick, and their reading time is limited. But I try to send out a paper letter now and again. When I'm gone, and I will be, sooner than they think, a paper letter from me will look pretty good. Just as the regrettable few that exist from my dad look to me. 

Take ten minutes and write a letter today.

When you send a letter, in any form, you send a tiny bit of the essence of yourself. It's saying "I love you" the true way—time and caring—without having to include any funny little symbols or faces, though you can, of course. 

You don't have to say anything great, because anything you say IS great. Where you went, what you did, what you thought ... what great scheme you're hatching. Plans, dreams, feelings. 

Go ahead. Take ten minutes today. And I hope you liked this one from me.