But we also must not despair. Such an obsession would only drain our wills to fight back.

It’s a bright beautiful day in lower Manhattan. Lots or positive things are happening here. I know for sure that if there is a person falling down somewhere here in NYC, there are complete strangers rushing to make sure that person is okay and getting help if it’s needed.

There is a bride getting dressed for her wedding.

There are Knicks fans embracing complete strangers who are wearing the same jersey.

In fact, human beings all over our sacred planet are reaching out to help someone who needs a hand.

Listen to Louis Armstrong, his words and his song.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=U9_JMOnMjms&si=7i5AUPTNr8aAchUG

The following images match the imagery in the song. They are my proof that that what Pops is saying is true. What a wonderful world. I know it’s true. I have seen it with my own eyes. Here are my their pictures!

AMEN

A half-dozen years ago I wrote a post (freely borrowing from the brilliance of others) giving my take on how to find your voice as a writer. In the years since then much has changed in the writing game. And with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, ‘finding your voice’ now means for many simply hitting the right keystrokes for a minute or two.

But for those of you who do not wish to cede your creative juices to the megaverse, this post is for you. The obvious place to start is with what I mean by “your voice.” The answer is really quite simple to state, for it’s what distinguishes you from everyone else on the planet. It’s shaped by your generation, your media and music, your life experiences, your very being. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a man writing as a woman or a woman as a man, just be what you see that person as being, not what you think someone else would expect that person to be.

Let us never forget that writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar, and that what you are—as opposed to what you know—ultimately will determine your style. Put differently, your voice takes its final shape more from the attitudes of mind than from principles of composition.

I can’t tell you how to find your soul, but finding your voice is about as close as you’ll ever come to doing just that. That’s why you want a style that suits you as an expression of yourself, one that is satisfying to you, not simply some trend you think your reader might like. Chasing trends will doom you by drawing you away from your unique center as a writer, even though it might make you a good living. 

Having peppered you with generalities, I do have a few suggestions on how you might go about finding your own voice, learning more about it, and even training it. If it sounds like the modus operandi of AI pirates, use your better knowledge of yourself to beat them at their own game.

—Study the work of authors you think you write like, or people say you do. Read their work, learn how they come to do what they do, and by osmosis you’ll find yourself gaining hints. It’s a way to train your voice. But it must be a voice you’re comfortable with. And for those of you who have no idea whom you may write like, I suggest taking a gander through a book like Making Story which reveals the very different styles of twenty mystery writers and may give you a hint of your own. (Yes, I’m one of the authors, but the royalties play no part in the recommendation).

—Seek out the voice of great poets and playwrights; great poetry for introducing rhythm to your prose, great plays to see how dialog and movement carry the story along.

—Abandon what you thought was the way you should write and go with how you feel you should write. Say what must be said and damn the torpedoes. Unless libelous.

With all that said, the bottom line inevitably returns to you finding your own way to being comfortable with yourself and natural in your voice. Do not try to be someone else, but concentrate instead on making your natural voice sharper, clearer, more understandable.

Finding your own voice takes time, a long time, for it comes with confidence acquired after a lot of reading, experimenting, criticism, and keeping the faith. But if you persist, at some point comes that WOW moment when your entire being shouts out, “I’ve got it!”

I know, because it happened to me.

––Jeff

[Karen Odden, every other Thursday]

26 years ago yesterday, with much assistance, I brought my daughter Julia into the world. 9 days ago today, with much assistance, I brought my sixth book An Artful Dodge into the world.

Let’s just say, we are all grateful that the gestation periods were not the same. From first idea to publication, An Artful Dodge took over four years.

Aside from that, and the fact that both “baby” and “book” are four-letter words beginning with B, there are remarkable similarities between bringing a baby and a book into the world. They both take nurturing and time and patience; it takes a village of people offering advice and support and guidance. The last month before birthday and pub day can feel exhausting and exhilarating and nerve-wracking. Perhaps to different degrees, but still.

The lovely thing about this book, An Artful Dodge, is that my baby, when she was 21, was present for the moment this book idea appeared.

Julia had been doing a semester abroad at Oxford in fall 2021. You may remember, this was during a lull in the Covid pandemic. I rented a tiny flat in Notting Hill on VRBO, went over for a fortnight after she’d finished, and we bopped around London doing Mom/Daughter things. We both love long walks, museums, tea and scones the size of our heads, shopping, and discovering the unexpected. (This is Julia, in one of my favorite cafes, inside the Victoria and Albert museum.)

The December days were gray and umbrella-worthy and the nights were blustery and cold. One evening, we ducked into the Great Scotland Yard Hotel in Whitehall. It’s not far from Big Ben, and it’s built on the cobblestone yard that in the 1870s smelled of horse dung and served as the “back entrance” to 4 Whitehall Place, the official address of the plainclothes division—what we now call Scotland Yard, in shorthand. (This photograph of the hotel was taken in WAY nicer weather than we had.)

The Victorian-themed hotel was built in 2019 by LuLu Group International (an Abu Dhabi-based hospitality and investment group) and is run by Hyatt. When we entered, to my delight, in the foyer were glass cases filled with Victorian crime memorabilia! Mug shots, poison bottles, police helmets, truncheons, police whistles and rattles, judge’s wigs, and more! (Be still my nerdy little heart.)

After browsing this, Julia and I went to the formal restaurant to see if we could have dinner. They regretfully informed us they were “full up,” but we could go across the way to the bar called The Forty Elephants. We could get a drink and a bite to eat.

On our way across the hall—pausing to admire some very unique furniture, including this rhino-shaped chair—I puzzled over the bar’s name. With the hotel being Victorian-themed, I assumed it had something to do with India or Africa, those being the geographical homes of real, gray-skinned, floppy-eared elephants. Britain was expanding its empire into both India and Africa during the 1800s. So I was half-expecting hunting memorabilia on the walls, or perhaps Imperial art. But no. Instead, there was a portrait of a beautiful woman above the fireplace.

A QR code stuck to the table promised “More Information about the Forty Elephants.” Of course I clicked. I’m like Pavlov’s dog with those things.

The Forty Elephants refers to an all-women thieving gang operating out of the seedy neighborhood of Elephant and Castle in Southwark (pronounced “South-ehk”) south of the Thames. From the early 1700s, a famous stagecoach inn was situated at the hub of six major roads coming in from Dover, Canterbury, and various parts of London.

The Elephant and Castle Inn was known for thieving, drugging (giving wine and laudanum to travelers, so they fell asleep by the fire and could be robbed), and dragging (the practice of clambering onto the back of a stagecoach, then cutting the ropes to pull luggage off the top).

When I finished reading about Elephant and Castle and the women thieves, I looked up.

Julia is smiling at me. “You’re thinking this is a book, aren’t you?”

What I didn’t expect were the dozens of features that make a qualitative difference. Together, they add to the city’s personality.

1. Dogs Rule

The first thing you notice is that dogs aren’t simply common—they’re everywhere.

They’re walking through parks, waiting outside cafés, riding elevators, and accompanying their owners into daily life with remarkable confidence. There are, in fact, more dogs in Oviedo than children under 15.

What fascinated me even more is the social network they create. Two dogs stop to sniff each other, their owners pause, and suddenly complete strangers are chatting as though they’ve known each other for years. The dogs become the icebreaker.

For someone coming from Los Angeles, where conversations between strangers can be rare, it’s a delightful piece of everyday urban life.

2. Living in Oviedo, Spain: Smoking Is Impossible to Ignore

This is the one surprise I’ve written about and still haven’t embraced.

Oviedo is clean, beautiful, walkable, and very livable. Yet cigarette smoke is a constant, pervasive, and for me, annoying companion.

People smoke while walking, sitting at café terraces, standing outside businesses, at bus stops, in parks, doorways, and on apartment balconies.

Secondhand smoke is not an occasional inconvenience—it’s a significant part of the environment. Deadly warnings on cigarette packs about what smoking can result in seems to be of little deterrence.

It is far the biggest blemish on an otherwise bright picture of a city.

3. Pharmacies Are Part Medical Center, Part Beauty Store

Spanish pharmacies (and “parapharmacies” are places to browse.

Forget the image of endless aisles of over-the-counter medicine. Here, the medications stay behind the counter, while the shelves are filled with dermatologist-approved skincare, sunscreens, serums, and haircare products from brands like La Roche-Posay, ISDIN, and Vichy.

But one difference stands out immediately: medications stay behind the counter, even those that don’t require a prescription like acetaminophen or cough medicine. You simply ask for what you need.

4. Fresh Bread Is a Daily Ritual

Many people buy bread the way others buy coffee.

Instead of stocking up for a week, they’ll stop by the neighborhood bakery and pick up fresh bread for the day. Sold as a conventional loaf or a baguette, he bread, especially whole-grain, is delicious.

It’s a habit that fits well in the rhythm of life here: frequent walks, neighborhood businesses, and food that’s meant to be enjoyed fresh. I’m lucky enough to have a bakery just across the street from my apartment.

5. Sundays Really Feel Like Sundays

American cities rarely stop. Oviedo does.

Most small businesses are closed all day Sunday, and many also close by early Saturday afternoon. At first, it was a source of some annoyance that a large shopping mall should be closed on a Sunday. After almost a year here, it seems perfectly normal and forces me to relax for the day.

6. Fresh Orange Juice Is Everywhere

One of my favorite discoveries is zumo de naranja natural/fresco.

Whether I’m sitting down for lunch, taking an afternoon break, or simply stopping at a café, there’s a good chance someone will feed whole oranges into a machine and hand me a glass of juice a minute later.

No concentrate. No bottle. Just oranges.

Months later, it still feels like a small luxury that’s somehow become completely ordinary.

Bottom Line

Living in Oviedo, Spain has taught me that the biggest adjustments aren't only language or bureaucracy. They're everyday details: dogs that introduce strangers, pharmacies that resemble beauty boutiques, quiet Sundays, and cafés where fresh orange juice is squeezed to order. None of these experiences appeared in the guidebooks, yet together they define daily life far more than the famous landmarks.

We’ve had quite a few absolutely gorgeous spring days here in NYC. Particularly the silvery beautiful sunlight on the green leaves of the trees has been wonderful to behold. Perhaps, I imagine, the proximity of the river gives it is special glow. Just a walk to the grocery store has been splendid enough to set me to thinking that it might have been this gorgeous light that inspired several mid-19th century artists to form the Hudson River School.

The studio building, sadly now gone

That group of landscape painters coalesced right here in my neighborhood; many of them had studios in 51 West 10th Street, three blocks away from were I now sit. Allow me to introduce them:

The founder was Thomas Cole, an Englishman who began his work in New York by sailing up the river and painting pictures of the nature he found upstate.

He was joined by Asher Durand—

Frederic Edwin Church—

Albert Bierstadt—

And others.

The works of the Hudson Valley School have gone in and out popularity, as have the work of the generality of the American Impressionist artists. As also happened with their European counterparts: Claude Lorraine, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner.

I still find their works beautiful. And I do wonder what it would be like to be able to see the sunlight on the leaves through their eyes.

Unusual rock formations dot the globe, often in hard to reach places, and showcase nature’s wonders. Be it volcanic eruptions, creeping glaciers, tectonic plates on the move, the slow, steady handiwork of water or wind, or even quarreling gods – pillars, spires, buttes, arches, hoodoos, and spheres have perplexed and inspired those of us who stop and stare.

Our American west has amazing rock formations. Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, the balancing Mexican Hat, and the otherworldly hoodoos in Bryce Canyon – all in Utah – come to mind as does Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. You probably have your favorite.

In New Zealand, four favorite formations pop into my head. The first is Split Apple Rock in Abel Tasman National Park on the South Island. My husband and I kayaked to it. The tide was just right so that the ‘apple’ was surrounded by water. (You can reach Split Apple by tramping through native bush to a beach or by boat.) Geologists believe the cleaving-in-two of the granite sphere is a result of ‘ice-wedging’ 120 million years ago.

The Māori name is Tokangawha, which translates to ‘burst open rock.’ According to Māori legend, two gods fought over the round boulder. Since they could not settle their conflict, they split the boulder, ala King Solomon, so that each of them could have half.

The next of the Fab Four was an hour’s drive from Christchurch, also on the South Island. Reminiscent of medieval castle ruins, Castle Hill cast its spell on us. In the midst of grazing land, braided rivers, and the Southern Alps in the distance, a jumble of limestone tors (boulders) appears dreamlike. We went each time we had visitors from the States, like my daughter and niece below.

We loved winding our way up to and through the maze-like monoliths, like my sister is doing below. Can you find her?

The boulders and towers, as much as 164 feet in height, attract climbers who were fun to watch from my nest below.

The Māori name for Castle Hill is Kura Tawhiti, which means “the treasure from a distant land.” The Māori used the area for hunting, gathering, and spiritual practices. The Dali Lama himself, during his “A Celebration of Kindness” visit in 2002 to New Zealand, declared Kura Tawhiti ‘the spiritual center of the universe.’ Now that’s an endorsement!

Head south from Christchurch to visit my next fave: the Nuggets. As a bonus – there’s a lighthouse, perched 76 meters above the sea. To reach the lighthouse and view of the Nuggets, we walked along the spine of the headland, the wild Pacific Ocean clamoring below. In Kiwi-speak the trek is ‘easy as.’ (Ha!) It certainly was ‘gorgeous as.’

Explorer Captain James Cook named the clump of rocks sticking their heads out of the water beyond the lighthouse ‘nuggets’ because they looked like pieces of gold. What do you think? (If you are interested in the New Zealand gold rush, read my fifth book, The Hungry Bones!)

The area is considered taonga (treasured possession) by the Māori, who have names for each nugget.

Between the lighthouse and the Nuggets are rocks basins full of fur seals and sea lions, and if you’re very lucky – yellow-eyed penguins or elephant seals.

Drum roll please, for the fourth geological marvel located up the coast from the Nuggets: the Moeraki Boulders. Looks at these odd balls! Scattered along the remote Koekohe Beach, the fifty-or-so Moeraki Boulders popped out from the surrounding mudstone 60 million years ago.

Weird fact: the boulders, which are made of calcite concretions, occur in two sizes. Thirty percent are between 1.6-3.3 feet and the rest are in the 4.9-7.2 feet range. Isn’t geology wondrous? My husband and I had fun climbing on them!

Māori legends explained that the giant bowling balls are the remains of eel baskets, calabashes (gourd containers like those below), and kumara (sweet potato) washed ashore from the wreck of a large sailing waka (canoe.)

The locals have great nicknames for the formations: hooligans gallstones, giant gobstoppers, alien brains, and the bowling balls of giants.

What are your favorite rock formations? I’d love to know. Until next month, friends -

Sara E. Johnson, 1^st Sundays

—Jeffrey Siger

I’ve had the great joy in past years of twice teaching an intense college level course on mystery writing. On the third day of class I gave my students the only objective test in my course, one based on The Elements of Style, the classic, very brief manual also known as Strunk & White, after its original author William Strunk Jr. (who composed it in 1918) and its 1959 reviser E.B. White (a former student of Strunk at Cornell and author of Charlotte’s Web).

I don’t think there is a more important book for writers to read and re-read regularly, and not just because Time magazine a few years back named it one of the most influential books written in the English language since 1923.

Even for avant garde writers—and what college class lacks that breed—until they know the basics of clear, direct writing, they really can’t properly mess around with the forms. Grammar and word usage are the basic building blocks of all writing. They are the writer’s toolbox, and practitioners must know and not fear their tools.

The most experienced writers, too, should re-read it at least every couple of years, and keep it close at hand. After all, we do forget things as we travel farther down this writing road, and need a tune-up every once in a while if for no other reason than to recall how we still confuse lie and lay.

And for those of you who are not—nor never intend on being—a “writer,” I have news for you: You are a writer, even if it’s only composing an email, letter, or memo to your boss. As much as you may not want to hear it, the substance of your thoughts will in some measure be judged by your command of grammar, style, and spelling. It’s just human nature.

So, read and re-read everything you write, especially those emails, and put your composition out there as clearly as you can…helped along I suggest by at least some familiarity with “Srunknwhite,” as its affectionately known to English teachers. Trust me, you’ll thank me.

Okay, today’s lecture is over—except for this brief excerpt from the introduction to Part V of The Elements of Style. It is a selection I always find challenging, humbling, yet ever inspiring:

There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rule by which writers may shape their course. Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.

May the Force be with you on the journey…or at least Strunk & White.

—Jeff

While I was away on a trip up the Queensland Sunshine Coast to commune with dolphins and fruit bats, a new writing scandal broke. Each year the Commonwealth Foundation awards prizes for the best short story from a Commonwealth country (countries who formed part of the old British empire and agreed to stay part of that British “club” after independence). The stories must be between two and five thousand words, and the judges selects winners from each of five geographic regions and then a grand winner is chosen from those. The competition favors countries whose writers have less opportunity to be locally published and who have no or few published works. (Thus Canada and Europe constitute only one region.)

The five 2026 regional winners were announced last month. I read them all, and I’d recommend anyone who enjoys or is interested in short stories to do the same. They are all published by Granta and you can read them on line at the links given below. (Granta also produced the images illustrating the stories shown below.)

After the winners were announced, three of the stories were accused of being largely or entirely generated by AI. All the stories were run through an AI checking program called Pangram. Two were identified as 100% AI and one as 63% (about two thirds AI generated). The other two were rated at 0%. Unsurprisingly, given the geographical and cultural differences of the regions, all five stories are written in very different styles and voices. Pangram looks for patterns and syntax use, claims to have been tested by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Maryland, and is estimated to give only 0.5% false positives.

Before we discuss AI or not AI, you may want to read the stories for yourself. So here are the links:

https://granta.com/me-and-maam/

https://granta.com/the-serpent-in-the-grove/

https://granta.com/mehendi-nights/

https://granta.com/second-skin/

https://granta.com/the-bastions-shadow/

Megan McArdle’s article in the Washington Post, AI Fiction is the New Fast Food, picks up a human perspective. She writes that the world still needs human authors “to generate wild ideas”.

She’s particularly scathing about Jamir Nazir’s story, The Serpent in the Grove. According to the Granta website, Nazir is a “Trinidadian writer of East Indian heritage whose work explores the cultural intersections of the Caribbean and the Indian diaspora. A prolific poet and author, with books published and others forthcoming, he is particularly known for his love of poetry. His writing draws on the landscapes, histories and emotional rhythms of Trinidad, where memory, heritage and identity converge to shape voice and imagination.” Searching for his “prolific” work didn’t yield much, and seems to contradict the requirement of the award being for emerging writers anyway. I found the plot jerky with minor inconsistencies and the text is peppered with similes and metaphors some of which seem to mean very little. For example, describing a sexy woman, he writes:

“They called her Zoongie. Maybe it was a name; maybe rain took a shape and decided to keep it. She had the kind of walking that made benches become men.” Hmm. Rain’s shape? Benches becoming men?

It is possible, of course, that this writer has images from another culture and words of other languages working in his head, and that this flow of peculiar phrases expresses those. That has been suggested. (However, these sorts of excesses are a characteristic of AI generated fiction). So then is this what the judges are looking for? Are they searching that hard for new voices in English fiction? My money would be on AI writing the story perhaps based on the short poem that rather prosaically concludes the work. Pangram gave this one a 100% AI rating.

The Bastion’s Shadow by John Edward DeMicoli also received a perfect 100% AI rating, but here, as a reader, I was less sure. The writing is much less overdone, and perhaps the supernatural overtones of the story raised Pangram’s hackles. Certainly, the idea of inanimate objects preserving memories, even personalities, and harboring ghosts is hardly new, but the setting and execution is original. However, I’m surprised that the story made best of breed for Canada and Europe. (The author is from Malta.) If it is AI, then perhaps the LLMs have learned not only the fast food aspect, but also what Michelin expects for the award of its stars.

Oddly, Mehendi Nights by Sharon Aruparayil received a one third human, two thirds AI rating. That’s quite puzzling. Apparently it means that AI supplied two thirds of the work. Does that mean it did the writing from a human outline or that the human did extensive editing? Certainly, I could detect no change of style within the story. McArdle could hardly be disappointed by the wild ideas aspect. This seemed to me the most striking of the stories in terms of theme. I liked it very much. And the author already has two other prizes. (Yes, of course those could be AI also, but if so the LLM is doing something right, isn’t it? Maybe what the author is telling it to do?)

The other two stories, Me and Ma’am by Lisa-Anne Julien set in Johannesburg, and Second Skin by Holly Ann Miller set in New Zealand, are well written, intriguing, and with strong finishes. They received 100% human ratings.

I’d love to know what you thought of these stories and what is your verdict on the AI or not AI issue. After all, Pangram is also an AI program. Maybe it was just jealous!

The “three steps, one bow” ritual at Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery for Vesak Day sounds simple: You walk three slow, mindful steps forward, then bow. Another three steps forward, then bow again. And you’ll be doing it in the night with hundreds of people. The bow is a full prostration, down on your knees with hands and forehead on the ground, palms upward to symbolise releasing negative attachments.

This year, in typically Singapore fashion, the ritual was diverted because of construction work. So instead of the previous two and a half hours, most people took about an hour this year. But the ritual remains: three steps forwards with curiosity and openess into adventure. Then the bow of humility with the reminder to accept that we aren’t ready to understand everything.

I walked too, with Sophia. She’s a bit unwell, so we’ve been walking a little slower than usual and pausing more than usual. But moving more slowly means I get to see more around me.

Like this gorgeous but deadly Duranta.

All the parts of this beautiful plant with its purple flowers and golden berries are highly toxic to humans and dogs (fatalities to cats and dogs have been reported).

Yet birds thrive on these berries and insects love the nectar—on this section of our walk there are always bulbuls, wax wings and thrushes as well butterflies and bees.

Just another reminder that in our shared spaces, not everything serves everyone the same way. A sacred holy day for one family is pleasant rest day for their neighbours.

I also (finally) got to read Taiwan Travelogue, something I’ve been meaning to do for some time. I’ve been hearing so many good things about it I was almost afraid to, in case it didn’t live up to it!

But I didn’t need to wait—I LOVED it!

The food, the characters, the meta elements, the ‘colonised’ living under current (Japanese) colonisation who were themselves descended from earlier (Han Chinese) colonisers… it was a wonderful, sweet, poignant, thought provoking read.

I can’t recommend it too strongly. If you haven’t picked it up yet, please think about it!

And at home, I’ve tackled a small project: this is the my office window, looking out between two balconies—

I removed the old curtains because they were too heavy, but the sun is getting bright again. So I hung up some (plastic) ivy culled from my late dad-in-law’s apartment.

Having it hanging here brings his presence closer than a photo on an altar would.

(and yes, they’re on curtain rings, so they can be pulled across to wherever the sun is too bright.

And it looks pretty good in the early morning with the light coming in too!

Yes, it still needs some work… but I’ll take it step by step and know it’s okay to bow out if it doesn’t work for me. Like the Deadly Duranta berries, things that nourish one person can be enjoyed by other eyes if not mouths.

Regular visiters to Murder is Everywhere are likely aware of my concerns about AI. Until now, most of what we have heard about on the news has been positive, defining all of AI’s coming great contributions and capabilities, with little discussion of the downside risks.

Lately, the commentators (the ones I follow anyway) have finally begun to talk about the financial risks of this chancy phenomenon. Pundits have been especially vocal about the predictions that AI could be a bubble, one of those investment schemes that expands and grows, larger and larger until it bursts, leaving almost nothing. The folks I have heard talking about this bring up the huge amounts of money going in and highly profitable uses not being realized. Skeptics are warning that these great expectations may never come about. From some points of view, though AI will have some important uses, in other ways, it is nothing more than an interesting toy. Its creators, with the trillions invested, may never be able to deliver on their overly optimistic projections.

From another point of view, AI is a rip-roaring success. It is the perfect tool for Cyber Crooks!!

Thieves, who used to employ amateurish and clunky attempts to pilfer people’s hard earned cash, now have the perfect aide in AI. Everyone, regardless of age, needs to be very careful about this. The elderly, however, may not be completely up to date on the latest technology, and therefore may be the most vulnerable.

Purloiners trying to rob from the savings of the elders is not a new problem. But with AI, the scammers have found an enormous aide. I see this in my own inbox. I am part of the crooks’ best target audience - an old person assumed to be vulnerable. They used to call on the phone. Then technology gave them emails and texts and lots of ways to sneak around the internet to find the victimizable. But until AI, their attempts were often amateurish. Especially, their emails and the texts were full of bad grammar and amateurish sentence structure. But then enter AI, and suddenly the crooks can use ChatGPT to get there hooks into grandpa's bank account.

They might even call great aunt Sally and ask for her to send her money. Using your face and your voice.

The Phishers can now take that photo that Uncle George put on Facebook and using AI’s help, pretend to be him and to access his investment account.

Searches of what’s being done about AI-Driven Cybercrime reveal that most of what is being talked about has to do with corporations and their need to protect themselves from CyberCrooks. Little is said about what ordinary people can and must do to protect themselves.

Imagine: the little old lady who lives next door to you gets invoices from her doctors in texts. She can click on a link in the text and pay the bill with her credit card. But what if one of those bills is from, not her doctor, but a grafter. He will then have her credit card number and info needed to charge.to it And then soon he will charge her monthly. A grafter with enough “marks” could make a nice living doing this.

How come with all the airtime about AI and its wonders, we haven’t heard about this threat to ordinary people?

NEWS BROADCASTER PLEASE TAKE NOTE

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Jeff—Saturday

For those of you perplexed by the Frederick Remington-style sculpture atop this post, that’s not the gift I’m talking about, because the pictured one stands tall and proud in Glasgow—not Mykonos— as I’m certain our much-missed former blogmate, Caro Ramsay, will confirm…if you dare ask her.

More about the sculpture below.

The gift I’m referring to is of a different sort. Each summer, for thirty years or so, I’ve shared breakfasts on Mykonos with a born and bred Glaswegian, Richard McFadzean, and his glorious wife Barbara (albeit from the Midlands). Yes, all Barbaras are simply wonderful [paid political advertisement].

Scotty in foreground, Barbara photobombing, as is Barbara-kind’s wont.

I’ve learned a lot from Scotty—as he’s lovingly called by the locals—all delivered in a burr/brogue/accent far deeper and mysterious than the buried haunts of Nessie’s Inverness Loch home. He’s regaled me with grand tales, and the wisdom of the ages, all delivered in a vernacular that would make Sheriff Lobey Dosser (and his cartoonist creator, Bud Neill) proud.

Lobey Dosser and Rank Bajin astride Elfie, the only two-legged horse in the West (photo Dave Souza)

I hadn’t realized at first how great a gift Scotty had passed on to me. I’d never understood why many English-speaking friends (both UK natives and not) attending European mystery conferences said they had such a difficult time keeping up with the Glaswegian accent. As tone deaf as I am to languages, I’ve never had trouble understanding my mystery mates hailing from Glasgow.

That’s not to say I understood the meaning of all the words, let alone the idioms or puns, but I clearly heard the words. For example, “pissed” in the UK means something different in the UK than in the US (drunk (UK) versus angry (US)) and when one party to a conversation asks another if they’re interested in a certain style of carpeting, I’ve learned the subject has nothing at all to do with decorating.

For those of you who think I’m exhibiting bad taste in what some might take as poking fun at accents, trust me, coming from Pittsburgh as I do, yinz prolly member I’m comin’ at this from a very fragile glass haus.

Still, it’s been an invigorating epiphany to learn that my many Mykonos breakfasts have yielded such a serendipitous reward.

Hmm, perhaps I should hang out with more Texans so to better understand my grandchildren who are being raised down in that neck of the woods. On second thought, that’s likely a more generational than accent thing.

And speaking of Texas, time to come back to that cowboy statue. I’m lifting the following from a story appearing on the Discover Glasgow Org website, titled “Buffalo Bill.”

The bronze statue of Colonel William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody riding a bucking bronco is in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow, in a small public garden on the corner of Whitehall Street and Findlay Drive, two blocks north of Duke Street, and was erected in 2006 through a commission by the owners of a new housing development in the area.

It’s on the former site of the East End Exhibition Centre, where Cody ran his world famous Wild West show, “The Drama of Civilization,” from 16 November 1891 until 27 February 1892, wowing tens of thousands. While Buffalo Bill was the headliner star, he featured sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and members of the Lakota Sioux tribe.

If you’re interested in learning more about Buffalo Bill’s carryings on in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland, take a look at this article from The Scotsman.

And if you’re looking for a better grasp of the magic of the Glaswegian accent, I’ll be more than happy to introduce you to my buddy, Mr. McFadzean.

Away an’ boil yur heed, ma freind.

—Jeff

In a few weeks, I head off on a trip to the south of France. Just Tony and me, I thought—but a tagalong friend has become part of the planning.

This friend is a writer I greatly admire: the late Edith Wharton. Obviously, Edith Wharton and I haven’t met. But I call her friend because I see in her writing and wanderlust my own longings and occasionally, a sharing of humor or pain.

Edith Newbold Jones was born in 1862 and died in 1937. She first visited France when she was four years old and spending time on the Continent with her wealthy parents. She sailed back to France on frequent visits after marrying Teddy Wharton in 1885. This marriage dissolved, first as a separation in 1911 followed by a divorce in 1913, on the grounds of Teddy’s embezzlement of her trust fund to support his mistress. Many of her books set in France have middle-aged American characters who are divorced and have complicated situations such as faraway children and the dubious chances for remarriage or acceptance back to their original families. These themes present in Madame de Treymes and A Son at the Front. The most powerful and heartbreaking of her France books that I’ve read—because she has 12-plus French books and stories, I have a way to go—is The Mother’s Recompense, a tragic novel about Anne Clephane, an American woman living in Nice, where she’s fled after painful divorce that granted her ex-husband sole custody of her daughter. After Anne’s ex’s death and her estranged daughter’s coming to adulthood, she’s invited by her daughter to return to New York, where she learns of the terrible coincidence that her daughter is planning to marry Anne’s former lover, Chris Fenno—an artist-turned-war hero, fourteen years younger than Anne, who vanished from her life. This novel is the very definition of romantic suspense with twists and turns as Anne struggles with whether to tell her daughter or not.

Wharton’s Paris and South of France for exiles in the early 1900s is beautiful, privileged, and a kind of alternate reality for rule-bound Anglo-Saxons to explore. Edith praised the French people for many virtues. In French Ways and Their Meaning, I chuckled at reading: “The French physiognomy, if not vividly beautiful, is vividly intelligent; but the long practice of manners has so veiled its keenness with refinement as to produce a blending of vivacity and good temper nowhere else to be matched.”

Yes, based on my short experience, I do like French people!

Edith rented a gracious townhouse in the 7^th arondissement of Paris, the capital city where she volunteered and raised funds for relief for the WWI soldiers and their impoverished families. She also spent years in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, a few miles north of the city, where in 1918, she bought and restored a magnificent house called Colombe and its gardens.

In the 1920s, she bought a winter residence in Hyéres, in the Var region of Southern France, not far from the Riviera. This home, Castel Sainte-Claire, was a place where she could escape the cold winds of winter and relax with an entirely new social circle, many of them foreign writers and artists.

During Edith’s thirty-plus years in France, she wrote dozens of books yet still attended and held parties, especially literary salons which had guests as famous as her old pal Henry James, the lawyer who served as her muse, Water Berry, and Marcel Proust. She also made touristic trips regularly by motor car, which in the early 1900s meant traveling without a roof or windshield. Car travel was for the hardy, although she always had a chauffeur, maid, and friends along. Some of these driving capers included her dear friend Henry James, although he is never named in A Motor Flight Through France, a travel guide published in 1908 that competed with hundreds of other tour guides for English-speakers interested in France. In the photo below, Edith is motoring with her husband Teddy and friend Henry James (in the United States).

After World War I was over and transatlantic tourism resumed, Edith penned French Ways and Their Meaning, a highly-opinionated primer on what to look for beyond the sights, and inside the people. This was certainly the book that made me smile the most—often in amusement at her strong opinions on feminism and of the United States. Yes, even though she was urging people to come to France, she was also letting loose on what in America made her want to leave.

As I pack my suitcase, my anticipation rises. I hope that Edith’s France is still there for me to explore. I envision myself in Nice, stepping out of a hôtel particulier onto the Promenade des Anglais: “The glare of the promenade, where the top-knots of struggling palms swam on the wind like chained and long-finned sea-things against that sapphire wall climbing half way up to the sky.”

Edith loved gardens, and she equally adored beautiful small towns and large, old cities. In multiple works, she laments the industrial building landscape of New York and Boston, comparing it with superior France. In French Ways and Their Meaning, she speaks of ‘taste’ as . . . “the reason, for instance, why the French have beautiful stone quays along the great rivers on which their cities are built, and why noble monuments of architecture and gardens and terraces have been built along these quays. The French have always felt and reverenced the beauty of their rivers, and known the value, artistic and hygienic, of a beautiful and well-kept river-front in the heart of a crowded city.”

In the novel Madame de Treymes, an American businessman John Durham, finds unexpected emotion in landscape. “He was always struck anew by the vast and consummately ordered spectacle of Paris: by its look of having been boldly and deliberately planned as a background for the enjoyment of life, instead of being forced into grudging concessions to the festive instincts, or barricading itself against them in unenlightened ugliness, like his own lamentable New York.”

John Durham has fallen in love with Madame Fanny de Melrive, a friend from childhood days who’s now an unhappily-married American lady with a half-French son and a philandering French husband. She longs for a divorce. In his efforts to marry her, John runs up against the formidable in-laws in the form of a spokesman sister-in-law, Madame de Treymes. Madame de Treyme is tiny and dark and more than formidable, embodying another of Wharton’s beliefs: that French women are powerful players in society, even without being equals under the law. This was a controversial concept to put forward during the time of growing feminism in the US and England, which she denounces in French Ways and Their Meaning as being mostly women talking to each other. She has no time for the fact that women were being kept out of colleges and professional societies, so this couldn’t happen.

She points out that since the 1600s, French women had been involved in intellectual conversations with men at dinners, parties, and intellectual salons, and because of this, they enjoy more freedom and life satisfaction. She wrote about how upper-class women have played a role in France’s political movements, society building, the arts, and when it comes to common women, they share the operation of family businesses, serving as sales managers, bookkeepers, and the like. Furthermore, her declaration that throughout history, French women often held true friendships with men meant that their husbands were mindful to treat their wives very well, so as not to lose favor. In general, she sees French women as “grown up,” describing it this way:

“If then, being ‘grown up’ consists in having a larger and more liberal experience of life, in being less concerned with trifles, and less afraid of strong feelings, passions, and risks, then the French woman is distinctly more grown up than her American sister; and she is so because she plays a much more interesting and lively part in men’s lives.” She acknowledged that romantic affairs existed along with friendships, more strongly in her fiction than in her travel nonfiction. Below, Edith is picnicking with her beloved friend, Walter Berry, who also spent many years near her in both countries.

‘Grown-up’ is one of Edith’s favorite adjectives, and the compliment extends to the country’s national character—especially with respect to their honesty, and long-honed appreciation of culture. She also admires French taste, talking about how French statues sit just within an alcove in grand church architecture; there are no accidents of scale. French people have a “seeing eye” and are an “artistic race” as opposed to the British, who are excellent at writing, and appreciate art from Greece, Italy and France.

As mentioned earlier, it seemed impossible for Edith to refrain from being critical of the wealthy Americans she saw in Paris and the South of France. And this is just as much fun to read today as it might have been one hundred years ago. The Mother’s Recompense tallies up the cluster of mature women who meet at their “social nucleus,” an American rectory:

They were all there: the American consul’s wife, mild, plump and irreproachable; the lovely Mrs. Prentiss of San Francisco, who ‘took things’ and had been involved in a drug scandal’ the Comtesse de Saint Maxime, who had been a Loach of Philadelphia, and had figured briefly on the operatic stage; the Consul’s sister, who dressed like a Flapper and had been engaged during the war to a series of American officers, all of whom seemed to have given her celluloid bangles; and a pale Mrs. Marsh, who used to be seen about with a tall tired man called ‘the Colonel’, whose family name as not Marsh, but for whom she wore mourning when he died, explaining--somewhat belatedly –that he was a cousin. Lastly, there was Mrs. Fred Langly of Albany, whose husband was ‘wanted’ at home for misappropriation of funds, and who emerging from the long seclusion consequent on this unfortunate episode, had now blossomed into a ‘prominent war worker,’ while Mr. Langly had devoted himself to the composition of patriotic poems . . .”

All these things, whispered in confidence, reimagined to protect the guilty when Edith lay in her soft bed, writing.

Raised in a conservative old-money family from New York—the elite people who built high society before the Vanderbilts showed up—Edith had led a stultifying, if scandal-free, life. She positively reveled in the freedoms of France. As she says in French Ways and Their Meaning:

“Because the French write and talk freely about subjects and situations that Anglo-Saxons, for the last one hundred years (and not before) have agreed not to mention, it is assumed that the French gloat over such subjects and situations. As a matter of fact, they simply take them for granted, as part of the great parti-coloured business of life, and no more gloat over them (in the morbid introspective sense) than gloat over their morning coffee.

“To be sure, they do ‘gloat’ over their coffee in a sense unknown to consumers of liquid chicory and health beverages: they ‘gloat,’ in fact, over everything that tastes good, looks beautiful, or appeals to any one of their acute and highly-trained five senses.”

Based on my reading of Edith Wharton, here’s my to-do list for my trip to the South of France.

Check out French towns from a boat on the Mediterranean, in order to properly regard buildings and monuments.

Attend an expat gathering, knowing all the while that the people may have committed sins in the US they’re not talking about.

Prepare for the French correcting me, because they are being honest, and I need to know.

Gloat with gusto over the café créme, croissants, and everything else.

Last week, Michael Sears invited Andre Louw to write a guest blog, where he shared the ups and downs and the 1600+ days’ journey from the initial inspiration – a dead body in a boat – to publication day for his debut, Phantom Pass. Andre described how he got 30 pages in and realized he hadn’t plotted the book; how he wrote at the margins of the day, sometimes until 2 a.m.; and how once he’d finished the manuscript, he was told no one would buy a debut that was 250,000 words long, and he had to cut the book into two.

So the roadblocks and challenges of a writing journey were on my mind.

That same night, I attended the May virtual (zoom) meeting of Desert Sleuths, my local chapter of Sisters in Crime. We always have a good speaker or panel (thank you, Kris Bock!), and this month, four authors spoke about writing from the viewpoints of multiple characters – the pros and cons of it. One participant was Brendan Flaherty, who I’d met on a panel at Bouchercon, where we were talking about point of view. (His first novel, The Dredge, is terrific, by the way. Crisp writing, good suspense, multiple narrators.)

I had invited Brendan to the panel, and after the zoom meeting, he sent a note thanking me. He closed the email: “AN ARTFUL DODGE is your 6th book?? That is amazing and impressive. Congratulations! What is the secret?”

I found myself chuckling a little. The secret of my success? Well, I gave it some thought, and I came up with these five tasks, from my own, personal experience. Some are hard to do, so good luck!!

1. Collect enough rejection emails that you could decoupage at least one wall in a medium-sized room in your house if you printed them out. (A powder room does not count.) This clever idea of using rejections to decoupage something is not mine, by the way; credit goes to Amy Stewart (bestselling novelist of the Girl Waits With Gun series), who tells a funny story about decoupaging a dresser, back when rejection letters came snail mail.

2. Be dumped by three publishing houses and orphaned by at least three editors. If possible, have an editor leave within six weeks of you signing your contract.

3. Have at least two manuscripts in a drawer, rejected by everyone. If you have time, completely rewrite one of them and have that rejected as well.

4. Find a publisher who will grimace at your next book idea (about women thieves in 1870s London) like you’ve just made him swallow sour milk.

5. Wait at least 3-1/2 years before your next book (about women thieves in 1870s London) comes out, with yet another, different publisher. Have people ask what took so long.

These are the secrets to my success. I hope they serve you well.

Okay, I’m joking a little, but not really. So here’s another story.

After my third book, A Trace of Deceit, was published, my editor at Harper Collins was gone (she’d left for her dream job) and I was let go. I didn’t really blame them; if you don’t have a champion in-house, it’s hard for a mid-list author to get marketing and gain traction. Despite some nice reviews, the book didn’t sell as well as they hoped. And I was miserable because my writing career was over.

Until one day, my agent called. To my memory, the call went something like this:

Josh: “What are you working on?”

Working on?

I reminded him: “Uh, I don’t have a publisher.”

Silence, and then a chuckle. “Oh, that’s okay. Write something new. What was that story you were telling me about? An inspector at Scotland Yard and some dead girls in boats? Something about revenge, wasn’t it?”

“Uh … yeah.”

Josh: “Write that. I can sell that.”

That idea eventually became Down a Dark River (2021).

(Note: I do think it is coincidental and funny that Andre and I both have dead bodies in boats! We were also both around 50 years of age when our first books were published.)

Here’s one last story. I once saw an interview with Jeff Bridges. (I’ve always been a fan.) The interviewer asked him how he stayed married in Hollywood. He replied, with a shrug and his gravelly drawl, “Well … we don’t get divorced.”

The simplicity of it struck me and stuck with me. And if I have learned anything over the past 12 years – for it has been 12 years since I found my agent, 10 since my first book because it took a while to find a publisher – it is simply, I don’t quit writing. I cultivate a mulish stubbornness. I take failures and setbacks as a natural, normal part of the journey. Because it’s the rare author who rockets to the top on the first try. (There are some, yes.) Talk to enough authors, and I’ll bet many will tell you stories about how they nearly quit but didn’t.

Authors: True or false?

It is Memorial Day, a holiday the USA sets aside to remember those who have died in the service of their country. My Uncle John, one of my mother’s younger brothers, my godfather died in action on January 25, 1945.

I never got to know him. In this picture below, I am the little kid in the front. Just behind me is my father. That's uncle John on the right with his arm around his fiancé, just before he left to fight for the country who welcomed his immigrant parents, and where he was born.

He was his mother's favorite. I knew that from the way she talked about about him, and especially from the number of pictures of him that she left behind - in a big box of her memorabilia that has been in my possession for almost all of my adult life.

That's John in the middle row, first on the right, above.

And in the middle of the top row when he graduated from high school.

Because the fascist government of Italy had aligned themselves with the Germans, many Italian-American young men enlisted to fight to prove their allegiance to the United States. This included, in addition my Uncle John, my daddy and my Uncle Joe (behind my dad in the picture above). Six more of my uncles on both sides of my family, all first-generation Americans, served the US in that war.

After training, John Pisacane…

…was assigned to a tank division in Patton’s army. He fought in Sicily (where it came in handy that he spoke the local language) and also in the Battle of the Bulge, which ended just hours before he was killed. After that major and critical victory, Patton decided that they must push to be the first of the Allies to reach Berlin.

It was on that push, when John was walking next to his tank, that he was killed by a sniper.

The 1970 film Patton shows a sequence where the troops are being pressed toward the German Capital. In one brief image, there is the corpse of an American soldier lying alone in the road. I've seen the movie a couple of times, and I can’t help but think of that dead American is my uncle John, my godfather that I never got to know.

Jeff—Saturday

Some time ago, a friend of mine from Switzerland, who’s a big fan of mysteries and Greece, sent me an email describing a miraculous experience he had in late summer on the island of Corfu. Miraculous life saving experiences aren’t unique to William Griffiths, for aside from having created hand-rub formulas celebrated by World Health Organization in its “Clean Hands Save Lives” program, he’s been present at more miraculous, life-saving moments than I care to say.

Though some wags might be tempted to say to one involved in so many situations requiring miraculous intervention, “Please send me your itinerary so I know where not to be,” William sees it as another of his continuing contributions toward bettering lives.

Among the many ways he betters those lives is by taking their photographs, for he’s also an excellent photographer.

At times, William’s avocation overlaps with one of his miraculous moments, as was the case with his experience at the concert of his good friend, Greek classical composer Stamatis Spanoudakis.

Here is my adaptation of William’s brief run down of the miracle he witnessed on Corfu. It’s of the sort he labels, “Hazards and Coincidences”:

It all happened on the Greek Ionian island of Corfu on a Sunday summer evening. The concert was scheduled to start at nine, but as musicians waited offstage to take their places, the Bishop of Corfu used the opportunity of welcoming Maestro Spanoudakis to give the crowd of 3,500 fans a half-hour speech.

[I can just see the audience fidgeting in its seats.]

As soon as the Bishop finished, the musicians hustled on stage, unexpectedly accompanied by an unwelcome crew of gate-crashers: trees of lightning, roars of thunder, near gale force winds, and heavy rain…the tail end of a fierce storm that brought flooding and 20 deaths to FYROM.

Next to the stage stood a fifty-foot high metal pole holding heavy concert lights in place. The winds sent the pole crashing to the ground at the spot just vacated by the musicians—and opposite to where they now stood—while rains drove the 3,500 fans to the exits, and winds sent their now empty chairs flying in all directions.

Miraculously, only one person was injured, and he just slightly.

As William puts it, the Bishop’s speech averted disaster, for by speaking as long as he did he’d not left enough time between the musicians coming on stage and the storm hitting for fans to move into the prime spot vacated by the musicians. Had he spoken any less—or more—the falling light pole most certainly would have cost lives.

Way to go, William!

By the way, the concert was held on the following night—before an even larger crowd—and here’s an example of Spanoudakis’ music.

––Jeff

Andre Louw is a man of many talents. He’s a guitarist, but he missed out on rock star fame so he turned to law. He qualified as an attorney in 2000, received a PhD in Law in 2010, and now teaches at Stellenbosch University in the Cape. His fascination with corruption and his love of reading mysteries led him to try his hand at fiction, and that led to not one debut novel, but two! The first, titled Phantom Pass, was published in February by Catalyst Press.

I was very intrigued to discover this story set on the Garden Route on the Cape coast, the area where I live. Phantom Pass itself is about half an hour’s drive from my house. And, indeed, the book has a strong sense of place and an authentic feel. I was keen to learn how Andre came to write the book. And his story has important messages for anyone setting out to write fiction.

So it’s a great pleasure to welcome him to Murder Is Everywhere for today’s guest post.

Michael

From a young age I’ve had a great love of books – my mom engraved that on my psyche and injected it into my DNA from early on - and I always wanted to write a book, my own book. Just one.

For my day job I have, over the years, written two published books and a number of academic articles. I knew that I could write. But I didn’t know if I could write this:

Fiction.

I would, on one or two occasions over the years, set out to try. Just a very few pages, one scene at a time. But that never worked. It never stuck. I guess I wasn’t yet ready for so big a task as creating a world filled with fictional persons with imperfections and problems, triumphs and emotions. For the mammoth task of spinning a yarn that someone would like to read to the end.

I did, though, get the impression that I might be able to do it, once I set my mind to actually just knuckling down and trying. Keeping at it for more than 30 minutes at a time, and then not immediately chucking the text because it lacked stuff (whatever stuff that was).

Then it eventually happened in 2019. I remember the actual day:

19 November 2019, a Friday evening.

I was 47 years old.

Wow, later in life than I thought it would ever happen, but better late than never, right?

I decided to write one scene for a crime thriller, the first one: The discovery of a body.

Ooh, sexy! Right?

Right!

I did it. And I loved it. And I kept writing.

But not for long, just till I came to around page 30, when I realized that, as much as I loved the experience so far, I had no bloody idea where to go from there, nothing.

Nothing.

I had not plotted anything out, and, frankly, I had never planned for this to turn into an actual book. But I was there now, at last. And I decided: I was not gonna let that keep me down this time.

I am really proud of myself for that very small thing: To, just at that moment, decide that I would keep going; I would MAKE it work.

So, I set out to do it.

I spent 2-3 weeks just plotting; thinking about the story and where I wanted it to go, and what I wanted to say. And then I started writing.

My writing hours, for most days over the six months I spent on it, were from 22h00 to 02h00, most if not all nights. Quiet time, dark and no interruptions. And hey, I’d usually have a whiskey or two in the process. My muse. I loved it.

It feels very strange to say this, like some form of blasphemy, but for my book the coming of COVID-19 was a bit of a blessing. Just over 3 months after I started, South Africa was under a hard lockdown. Working remotely from home helped me manage my time to write.

It worked (I think).

I finished the first book in six months. And then, realizing that I had to split the work into two books and move some stuff around for that purpose – I was told that nobody would buy a debut novel by an unknown writer that ran to 250 000 words - the last 10 chapters of book two took me another couple of months. All in all, the book(s) were done in around 9 months.

I felt great. I felt proud.

And then I tried to get it published …

And everything came crashing down, hard.

I had from early on in the process wanted to self-publish. I spent nearly a year researching the publishing industry and self-publishing. During this time I lost my nerve to do things myself, as I realized I did not have the financial resources or the time to manage the whole process of getting the book into readers’ hands.

So then I started submitting the book to publishers, both in South Africa and elsewhere. There was no interest. Just the rate of (negative but mostly well-wishing) replies was probably less than 1%.

This was so demoralizing that I eventually put the book away.

Having done some soul-searching I realized that I had built up the expectation in my mind to a dangerous level. I now started to become depressed. The third book and the fourth, both of which I had started writing while I was seeking a publisher for the first, were shelved. I simply couldn’t write anymore.

What was the point?

Somewhere in 2022 an independent American publisher, Catalyst Press, read the book. They declined to sign it up, citing reasons relating to another title they had upcoming. One of their editors, SarahBelle Selig – by far my favourite person in the publishing industry – managed to break my heart in the nicest way. She raved about the book and the writing.

So, around late 2023 I thought, what the heck, let’s try again, and I once again asked them to consider it. On 6 May 2024, the day after my birthday, I signed the publishing contract with Catalyst for Phantom Pass and Chasing Ghosts (out mid-2026).

Yes, I googled it:

That was 1 630 days from that evening when I had put the first words to paper, describing the discovery of the mutilated body of Mark Whitcombe in a little rust-red-coloured boat floating on a cold estuary under grey, darkening skies. That image was the seed of everything.

From it, grew the two-book murder investigation set in Knysna on the Garden Route of South Africa. Capt. Josh Holland, a trainee detective with a background in law, is thrown into the chase under the wing of the experienced Colonel Gavin Whitall from the South African Police Service’s Serious Crimes Unit in George, after the mutilated body of a prominent retired advocate is found in a small boat on the Knysna estuary.

The investigating team encounters a number of suspects, including a former apartheid security police operative and a notorious local drug dealer. As the investigation expands the detectives realize that the fate of their victim appears to be linked to a murder committed in Mozambique in 1986, in the shadowy world of the African National Congress’s armed struggle against the apartheid regime. The team wades through a highly politicized police bureaucracy and grapples with high stakes political corruption, as they stalk a killer across the southern Cape and beyond South Africa’s borders. All the while the body count stacks up, as prey becomes hunter and death comes uncomfortably close.

1 630 days from a body in a boat to a signed contract.

Thinking back on it now, it is hard to fathom just how long this story has been a part of my life. Impossible to try and calculate the importance and role of its presence in the back of my mind; how it may have changed me, my relationships, my professional life, and my overall conception of myself as a person.

But, then again, I have also realized that it always will be a major part of my life. Regardless of whether it will sell and be a commercial or popular success. Maybe that stuff is just fluff?

It will always be there because it is something – like a child - that did not exist in the universe before I came along. Something I created, and of which I am personally, immensely proud. I know many people dream of doing this, and few manage to do it.

It is not Hemingway, Steinbeck, Irving or King. It is definitely not Larsson.

It is (just) me.

Till now I’ve shopped mainly in morning markets and supermarkets, but I love their goal of striking a balance between supplying organic/ pesticide free foods and supporting farmers who are attempting to support nature with responsible water and soil management.

To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive that I would receive a box full of half-wilted kangkong, watercress, local lettuce and bananas that would proceed to die after clogging up my fridge for three days.

So I was pretty thrilled to find beautifully fresh spinach, cauliflower, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes...

As well as (surprising to me) apples, avocadoes, tangerines, zucchini and cucumbers!

I honestly hadn’t realised peaches, apples, tangerines and avocadoes could grow in our climate!

Which made me think about how I’m probably still living with a whole other lot of assumptions about what’s ‘local’ here.


But at the moment, the practical challenge takes priority: how can I best use the $55 worth of vegetables that came in my Farmer’s Box?

The creed here for now is Nemo Resideo: No Vegetable left behind.

We’ve been having box veggies with all our meals:

and I think we’ve already got our money’s worth--though it’s barely dented the hoard in the crisper!

But the big step for me was using fresh carrots to make carrot cake cupcakes which turned out surprisingly well, given I’m not a baker and we didn’t have any baking powder.

I substituted yoghurt and baking soda (which we keep for coffee stains--yes, studying Chemistry came in useful after all) and three got eaten while they were cooling, before I could take a photograph!

They were Delicious!

But the issue is, when you say ‘I made carrot cake’, here, it’s automatically assumed that you’ve got chai tow kway on offer.

Singaporean Chai tow kway literally ‘fried carrot cake’ is made of rice flour paste and steamed radishes and contains no carrots. It’s a (delicious) savoury dish that comes in black and white versions.

The confusion arises because in Hokkien both radishes and carrots are chai tow (菜头).

There’s also Lo Pak Go, a Cantonese version of the dish, which is commonly and less confusingly translated as ‘Cantonese Radish Cake’.

Maybe the most famous Chai Tow Kway hawker in the old days was Madam Ng of Serangoon Gardens. Not only because she added ‘real’ red carrots (more expensive at the time) to the dish, or because her carrot cake pieces were crisp outside, soft inside and bound together omelette style... but most of all because during the terrible floods of 1954, Madam Ng continued cooking at her Potong Pasir stall and offered her carrot cake free to flood victims there.

Over 10,000 people were affected by the floods that hit some of our poorest kampong communities. Singapore was still a British Crown Colony then, and the British government declared an ongoing state of ‘emergency’ in response to calls for aid and Independence which were perceived as part of a communist threat. 1954 also witnessed the formation of the People’s Action Party. Thanks to the PAP, those slums are barely a memory now, but I really hope we’ll remember Madam Ng and her chai tow kway.

Singapore has always accepted and embraced disparities and dualities. It’s part of our mixed heritage what keeps our identity evolving.

So yes, there’s room for more than one kind of carrot cake.

And I suspect that’s true of writing too. After all, what’s ‘local material’ on a granite island where almost everything is imported?
As Aunty Lee would say, ‘I am Peranakan, so what I cook must be Peranakan food right?’

On this past Thursday, Hudson Valley Shakespeare cut the ribbon on its new home: The Samuel H. Scripps Theatre Center.

HVS has been a blessing on my life, since my involvement from its inception in 1986, first as a fan and for the past 20+ years, as a member of its board of trustees.

Over those decades, there have, of course, been times when things were not going well. After all, no adventure worthy of the name is always fun when you’re going though it. There were a few times when HVS got very close to the edge of a cliff.

In terms was its home, it began in a gorgeous place: on the banks of the Hudson River, fifty miles north of Times Square. A place where the hills are still green thanks to the determination and spectacular generosity of environmentalists. HVS literally pitched its tent on on the east side of the river, on the grounds of Boscobel House and Gardens, without which HVS would never have gotten off the ground (so to speak).

Over time, thanks to its artistic excellence, HVS outgrew that home.

But the company had no where else to go. And no spare funds to buy itself a new place to live.

What followed was an act of this play replete with a brilliant, but perhaps impossible solution, hard work, a great deal of nail biting, determination, spectacular generosity, more good luck, good will among groups of people, more nail biting, some seemingly miraculous luck, and even more unbelievable generosity by hundreds of people, absolutely brilliant architects, and ultra capable builders. The company now has this gorgeous theatre on 98 acres overlooking the majestic Hudson.

I highly recommend a visit, not just to see the beauty of its location, but to enjoy (with the accent on JOY) a wonderful performance of a play. This summer, here are the choices:

I’ll be seeing all of them. At least once.

You can tell. Right now I am doing the happy dance!

Jeff––Saturday

For those of you who ask me (or simply wonder) where I get my ideas for the wild fictional adventures of Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis in his capacity as head of the Special Crimes Unit of the Greek Police (GADA), below is my Exhibit A answer to your question. It comes in the form of an article appearing in yesterday’s Ekathimerini—Greece’s newspaper of record––written by Yiannis Souliotis and titled, “Police warn crime boss of plots against his life.”

Here’s the inspiration:

Police’s organized crime unit twice intervened to warn Giorgos Moschouris of active plots to take his life, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation, months before the senior Greek Mafia figure was fatally shot in April 2025 in the northern Athens suburb of Halandri.

The 55-year-old, known by the nickname “Thamnakias,” was killed in a hail of gunfire when assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles opened fire, hitting him with 54 bullets. The revelations emerged following recent arrests linked to his killing.

According to information received by officers from the so-called “Greek FBI,” an attack against Moschouris had been planned at an entertainment venue he was known to frequent regularly. In an effort to prevent the assassination, police urgently summoned him to their headquarters (GADA), where investigators warned him during two private meetings in September and October 2024 that contract killings had been ordered against him.

Moschouris reportedly responded by insisting he had withdrawn from criminal activity and declined to enter a witness protection program.

He was considered one of the most influential figures in Greece’s organized crime underworld and had previously been convicted as the leader of a protection racket targeting dozens of businesses, mainly in the southern suburbs of Athens. Authorities also linked him to the fuel trade.

In 2020, unidentified gunmen attempted to kill him in the parking lot of a bakery chain in Vari, east of Athens, firing 15 shots and wounding him in the abdomen.

Police sources say that in the final phase of his criminal activity, Moschouris allegedly sought to expand into cigarette smuggling, a move that brought him into conflict with a group of ethnic Greek criminals from the former Soviet Union. Authorities attribute at least four killings of Greek Mafia figures to members of that group.

Now to write the book. :) ––Jeff

Four or five mornings a week, I hike Gateway Trail, which is a 4.5 mile loop, with 900 feet of elevation, about 15 minutes from my house in Arizona. My favorite saguaro on the trail is this one, which I called “Whirlygig,” but my friend Yi Shun Lai rechristened “Whirl-agog” because this cactus is so majestic.

These are two photos of this cactus, taken from two different spots on the trail.

Can you guess where I’m going with this?

As I’ve gotten older, I have come to realize the beneficial effect of pausing to look at an object or situation, metaphorically speaking, from a second viewpoint—so much so that I try to find an opportunity to do it once a day, a habit like flossing my teeth. This isn’t easy to do because usually the best moment for me to view-switch is when I’m under some sort of stress—when I’m trying to make a point in a conversation, or get something done—especially over the phone—that isn’t happening easily. But happily, when I do back out of my own head, and try to get into someone else’s, my stress level goes down. I can make allowances more easily; I can see other people’s logic; and I can more readily believe that the person on the other end of the phone is trying to help me. It makes things more pleasant all the way around.

This view-switching works in writing, too. For example, when I’m drafting a scene, sometimes it feels really flat. There’s no energy, there’s no pulse to it; it’s just getting from point A to B, conveying information. Dull as dirt. I write all my novels in first-person, so my solution to this flatness is often to back out of my protagonist’s head (“I”), and on a separate computer screen or piece of paper write the whole scene from another character’s perspective, as if s/he were the protagonist (“I”). Getting into that second character’s head shows me what s/he assumes and what s/he wants, which are different from my protagonist, creating conflict (every writer’s best friend!). Afterward, when I return to my manuscript, I often have the odd experience of feeling as if I’m watching two people on a movie screen. They’re talking and moving; I just watch and scribble it down.

The first time I tried this, I was writing A Lady in the Smoke (2016). In this book, my heroine Lady Elizabeth Fraser, traveling with her laudanum-addicted mother, is in a railway crash in 1874. As was common practice, survivors made their way out of the train to a nearby field, where wagons and carriages from the closest town came to retrieve them, taking them to whatever accommodations could be had. Elizabeth assists Paul Wilcox, a railway surgeon, helping survivors, turning the kitchen of the boarding house into a temporary operating room.

Around chapter 8, I needed to have my heroine Elizabeth exposed as a titled Lady, not Miss Fraser. I knew my shrewd newspaperman Tom Flynn could discover her identity; so I put him in the boardinghouse parlor, waiting for her. But their exchange was dismally flat, an exchange of information, nothing more. So I backed out and got into Tom’s head.

How would he feel about Elizabeth, an aristocrat? How would he feel about her lying?

Now, Elizabeth hasn’t outright lied—she just hasn’t corrected anyone’s impression—but Tom believes she’s purposefully lied about who she is—not only to him but to his good friend Paul, who has become romantically interested in her. Righteously indignant, Tom demands to know what Elizabeth is playing at because he doesn’t want his friend hurt. Tom assumes this is just a dalliance for Elizabeth, or some sort of joke, or an attempt to escape her gilded cage for a short time—because he has assumptions about aristocratic women. At one point he says scornfully, “You are your title.”

As soon as Tom said that, I realized Elizabeth would be furious at being lumped into a group. And she has assumptions about newspapermen, too; it was a Victorian commonplace that some of them were respectable but others were salacious and only interested in selling papers. So I decided to give her a specific experience, vis-à-vis her dearest friend, Anne. A newspapermen had done a sensational exposé on Anne’s brother that resulted in him being humiliated and ostracized, which led to a serious downward spiral into alcoholism and depression. So Elizabeth spits back at Tom:

“You’re a newspaperman who probably thinks that every person with a title—all of us—is exactly the same. Men, women, young, old—it doesn’t matter. We’re all dissipated and selfish and sulking in our gilded cages. Isn’t that right?” He opened his mouth, but I pushed on, the words tumbling out of my mouth. “Or maybe you’re one of those newspapermen who thinks he’s so clever that he already knows the ending of every story—when in reality he’s so close-minded that he can’t see anything but the ugliest possible version that fits the few facts he knows! And then he throws it onto the printed page, and it sells papers because people are always eager for the most sordid gossip they can find. Never mind what it does to the people they lie about!”

A flicker of surprise, and he took a step back, as if taking my measure anew. “What has a newspaperman ever done to you?”

Tom’s initial astonishment, and his genuine curiosity about what a newspaperman had done to injure her, eventually creates a measure of trust that becomes essential to the two of them working together, with Paul Wilcox, to uncover the truth about the railway crash: it was the result of sabotage, for financial gain.

But until I got inside Tom’s head, I couldn’t find the energy in the scene. Once I’d done that, the dialog tumbled out of both their mouths; I had very little to do with it.

***

I’d love to hear some stories about people who looked at something from two sides and what happened as a result. Please share, if you have one.