Monthly Archives: October 2016

234. Revisiting Columbus

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A year ago today, I was anticipating a January 2016 release for my novel Cyan. Since Columbus had a brief appearance there, I published an excerpt on Columbus Day as a teaser. The novel’s release has been delayed, and very few people were reading that early in the blog’s history, so here is a reprise

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Poor Columbus; he has taken a beating over the years. We don’t see him for what he was, with all his strengths and weaknesses, but through the lens of our own times. Here is a picture of how we might view him a century from now, when we have had to change our calendar to meet the demands of the rest of the world.

Anno Domini
A Latin phrase meaning the Year of our Lord.

Before sunrise on October 12, 1492, Anno Domini, a lookout for Columbus’ expedition sighted land. Columbus had found two new continents (although he did not know it), following his own powerful vision of how the Earth was constructed (a vision that was wrong), and began a five hundred year reign as king of explorers.

Half a millennium later, Columbus was dethroned. Even school children were now being taught that Columbus was not the only one who knew the world was round. Sailors and scholars had known that for hundreds of years before him.  Columbus’ great vision was that the Earth was small, and in that he was wrong. By the late twentieth century, it was certain that the Vikings got to America first, likely that St. Brendan beat Columbus there, and there were a dozen other putative explorers who had their champions.

Besides, American popular thought was in one of its Noble Savage stages, and it was politically correct to echo the Native Americans who complained that Columbus was a destroyer of races and cultures.

But even at the height of Columbus bashing, it was apparent that his voyage had differed in one significant detail from the other explorers who had preceded him. After Columbus, America was never lost again. After Columbus, and those other explorers who sailed close on his heels, the Earth became entirely known and entirely interconnected for the first time.

*****

In the year A. D. 2037 (as Christians measure time), at the Conclave of Mecca, the Islamic world announced that they would no longer recognize, speak with, acknowledge, or deal with any person, nation, or document which forced them to use a calendar based on Christianity.

At the International Bureau of Weights and Measures Convention in Buenos Aires two months later, a new calendar was established, based on a sidereal year. It would have neither weeks nor months since Islam and the rest of the world could not compromise on the issue of lunar months. It could not start at Jesus’ putative birth, nor at Mohammed’s, and it quickly became apparent that the new Standard Year should date from the midnight preceding the day the Earth became one planet for the first time.

This whole Standard Year business came about by accident. When I wrote Jandrax thirty plus years ago, I had no idea that I would write other stories in the same universe. After all, I stranded all those poor people so far out that no one would ever find them.

However, I began wondering what circumstances, beyond what I had already written, might cause Dumezil to invent his pan-Earth religion, and I wondered what Jan Andrax’s ancestors were like. That led me to make Stephan Andrax, Jan’s multi-great grandfather, spaceside commander of the Cyan expedition.

In Jandrax, I had pulled the date Standard Year 873 out of thin air. Now I had to backtrack and make it work for Cyan, which I did my making Standard Year Zero start with Columbus’ discovery of America.

Raven’s Run 24

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She said, “Sit,” and I sat.

She poured wine. At least she did not have to use jelly jars; Will had insisted that we have wine glasses aboard. She ladled up the mole for both of us and recovered a plate of biscuits from where she had been keeping them warm near the stove. She sat down opposite me and in my mind the sound of denim on the transom cushions was like the swish of silk. She had that kind of presence.

After weeks of my own cooking, anything would have tasted good. But Raven’s mole would have tasted fine under any conditions. The biscuits were flaky and golden. I said, “Delicious,” and she said, “Thank you.” Other than that, there was little conversation for several minutes. After a day at the wheel, I ate more like a farmhand than the Count of Châteaubriand.

Our eyes met. She was wise and sad and merry all at once. I could not read her face, but I knew that I would be willing to study a long time to learn how to. I reached across the table and she took my hand. Just a brief grasp and release. A message of reconciliation.

She said, “You haven’t touched your wine.”

“I don’t drink.”

“But the wine . . .”

“Will’s. Not mine. If you look up forward among the crates and suitcases you will find two cases of wine and one of brandy. Will likes to travel prepared.”

“And you don’t drink. At all?”

“Only if I get trapped at a social function where refusing would be a problem. Otherwise, no.”

“You don’t mind . . .” She gestured toward her half empty glass.

“Of course not.” After a moment, I added, “My father was an alcoholic.”

“And that is why you hate it?”

“I don’t hate it. I love it. But I don’t want to end up where he is.”

“Oh.”

We ate in silence. Then I said, “I don’t tell everybody that.”

“No. I don’t suppose you would.”

“Thank you for the wonderful meal.”

“My pleasure, sir.” She managed to curtsey sitting down. Her smile was full of warmth and mischief.

She cleared the table. I released the catches and slipped it back under the transom cushion. She came back with two mugs of coffee and sat beside me.

“Ian,” she said, “you’re an odd one. I don’t quite know what to make of you.”

“I don’t mean to be mysterious.”

“When I was in the water . . .” She had a hard time saying that. The memory was still much with her. “When I was in the water, I managed to get out of my dress. When you found me I was naked, or so close that it doesn’t matter.”

The warmth of her sitting beside me, coupled with her words, were bringing my body alive in ways that would be painful if this conversation stopped short of climax. I said, “Yes.”

“You never made a pass at me.”

“You were unconscious.”

“Don’t joke. I mean later.”

“You were scared to death of me.”

“At first, I was. I didn’t stay scared.” more tomorrow

233. Yearbooks Farewell

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In an early science fiction novel/novella (A Fond Farewell to Dying/To Go Not Gently), I gave my protagonist a twenty year gap in his memory. To fill himself in on the events he missed, a friend of his suggests reading encyclopedia yearbooks, one by one.

It was a bad idea on two fronts. Shortly after I wrote that suggestion, Wikipedia drove paper encyclopedias out of business, and yearbooks were no more. My story was set a couple of centuries in the future, and long before we could get there, the immediate future had bit me where it hurts.

Even if that had not happened, it was a bad idea to trust yearbooks, as I found out when I tried it myself. I was planning to plot out a novel set in the sixties, so I accumulated yearbooks as a starting point for research. They were useless, and I kicked myself for not having realized in advance that they would be.

Almost everything the editors of the 1966 yearbook thought was important, turned out to be forgettable by the eighties. The important trends of that era only became obvious in retrospect.

1989 was like that, too. It was a pivotal year, but I missed it while I was living it.

I was alive, awake, and alert in 1989. I had recently returned from spending two summers in Europe. I was writing a teacher novel, and planning the novel Raven’s Run (now being posted in Serial), but I missed 1989’s significance. I didn’t really come to appreciate it until decades later when I was preparing to bring Raven’s Run up to date.

Basically, the cold war ended and the modern era began in 1989. When I realized that, I nudged Raven’s Run into that year so I could add a few events that I had missed when they happened, and set myself up for sequels.

I wrote a bracketing event, a meeting between Ian Gunn and a friend in Luisanne, Switzerland in 2012, where they are revealed as spies, or something like. (Raven’s Run 1) This leads to reminiscence and Ian begins to tell his friend of events that took place in 1989 – which becomes the novel.

I dropped these words into chapter 2:

It was April.  Ayatollah Kohmeni had a few months left to live, and no one had yet heard of Osama ben Ladin.  There were still two Germanies, two Berlins, and a wall; I had had my dealings with that wall a few years earlier, in uniform, when the cold war was even colder.

When I wrote chapter 2 in the mid-nineties, there were “two Germanies, two Berlins, and a wall”. I didn’t have to tell anyone. Not then – but posting Raven’s Run today, it has become necessary to remind my readers.

1989 was a pivotal year. If you don’t remember, or you weren’t born yet, take a look at Thursday’s post.

Raven’s Run 23

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I hadn’t been fair and I hadn’t been entirely honest. As the hours passed and my anger cooled, I was able to admit that to myself. There was more to the story than I had said. I wanted her so badly that it made me weak in the knees. Her smile captivated me. I loved the sound of her voice, accent and all. Visions of the movements of her body were with me all the time and memories of how she had looked, naked and vulnerable when I first found her, tortured me. It was not schoolboy, romantic love and it was not just raw lust – but it was more lust than romance. I could not analyze and categorize my feelings, but they had me by the throat.

Maybe her “striptease” had really been a compliment, a way of saying that she felt safe with me. Or maybe she was just giving me a show for the fun of exhibiting her remarkable body.

Or maybe she had just wanted a sun tan.

Eventually, evening came. The winds were weak and fitful, but I followed my normal routine, furled the damaged mainsail, set full jib and mizzen and lashed the wheel. There was barely enough wind to keep steerageway and Wahini searched the horizon with her bowsprit as she wallowed from wave to wave. I went below.

When I pushed the hatch back, the smell of biscuits hit me in the face and my stomach did a happy handstand.

Traitor, don’t you know we’re mad at her?

Stomach replies, Eat first, fight later.

I slid the hatch closed, shutting out the night, the cold, and the darkness. Within the cabin, the oil lights cast their gentle golden glow against the varnished bulkheads. Wahini was a boat of the old style. She had no radar, no loran, and no electricity. But she had class.

I had built the cabin furnishings myself. I had put aside any clear planks that came through when we were finishing the hull and let them dry naturally in a shed near the building site. When it came time to do the interior, I spent three months crawling around inside Wahini with handsaw, jackplane and tape measure. It was like putting together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

By the time I started the Wahini’s interior, the dream of sailing around the world had become almost an obsession. I was not just building a boat; I was building a home. Wahini’s interior was my masterpiece. I would never again have the time, the materials, the right project, and the sheer love that it takes to reach that level of excellence.

It had had everything. Except a beautiful woman.

Raven had put her hair up. I liked it long and flowing around her shoulders. Now I found that I also liked it up, revealing the slender column of her neck. With her warm coloring, heavy black hair, and slightly arched nose, she looked like a painting of Nefertiti. She was stirring something on the stove that didn’t smell like anything I had put aboard.

I gestured toward the stove and said, “May I?” 

“Sure.”

I took the spoon, stirred, looked, smelled, and tasted. My eyes recognized canned stew; I had packed six cases aboard. My nose and mouth said, “No way.” Raven had been into Will’s spices and had transformed it completely. I knew that she had turned it into a sort of mole, but that was as far as my culinary imagination could take me.

Raven had found the table top that was tucked under the cushions of one of the transoms and had deciphered the locking system that allowed it to hang from one of the lockers. It was set for two. She had found the drawer of emergency candles and had set one in an empty ketchup bottle. The cabin was rich varnished wood, the candle was ’60’s chic, the dishes were cheap plastic, and Raven wore a wardrobe by Salvation Army. Somehow, she made it work. more tomorrow

232. Inadmissible Evidence

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It is Sunday morning, 8:30 here on the west coast, and I am hurrying to finish this in order to post it for tomorrow. Tonight is the second presidential debate; Hillary’s newly leaked emails and Donald’s newly leaked audiotapes will be aired fully. When you read this, you will know the outcome. Here and now, I can only speculate.

First let me say that I am not apologizing for Trump. Nor am I suggesting that the Access Hollywood tape is a fake. I have been giving Trump a hard time since he first began ranting about The Wall, and I haven’t been too kind to Hillary, either. None of that has changed. However . . .

There is a danger facing America which needs to be brought fully into the light. It is going to be a bit hard to talk about, because even suggesting it makes me look like someone who is into conspiracy theories. I’m not, except for the fun of poking holes in them.

Here is the problem. What if the Wikileaked documents on Hillary were doctored? What if the Access Hollywood tapes were faked?

Do I think they were? Absolutely not.

Do I think faked or doctored releases are on our near horizon? Absolutely, unquestionably, as sure as tomorrow’s sunrise.

Conspiracy theories run afoul of the fact that conspirators usually aren’t too bright. It easy to imagine a conspiracy, but hard to believe anyone who would want to pull one off would be able to succeed. It’s easy to imagine the government faking the moon landing on a Hollywood sound stage, but the notion that the millions who built the craft and watched the launch at Canaveral were all either fooled or in on it, makes the theory laughable.

Leaked electronic documents are different. Changing a key word, or cherry picking what part to release, or creating them out of the whole cloth is ridiculously easy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a conspiracy. One person could do it.

Let’s suppose that a new leak is reported by the New York Times in tomorrow’s issue, on the candidate you support or the candidate you hate. Would we know its source? We would not; news organizations guard their sources like the Swiss Guard guards the Pope. Would we know how the source got the information? No. Would we know if he passed it on pristine, unaltered and complete? No. Would we know if he simply faked it? No.

Do I trust the New York Times? More or less.

Do I trust the Democratic Party? More or less.

Do I trust the Republican Party? More or less.

Do I trust everyone who works for those three organizations? Ah, there’s the rub.

If a police officer picks up fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene, there is a trail of evidence which must be presented, showing that no outside influence was made on the results of tests performed on those clues. If that trail fails, the evidence cannot be presented in a court of law. With leaked electronic documents, there is no such chain of evidence. With a reputable agency – say the New York Times – there will certainly be an attempt at verification. But, by the clandestine nature of the events, that verification will be imperfect.

So back to tonight’s debate. Hillary and Donald will have to face the consequences of these leaked electronic documents, and we probably can accept that the documents are real, although certainly cherrypicked.

But a year from now . . .? This is the point at which every hacker, prankster, and political operative in America – and the world beyond – realizes how easy it is to create or modify electronic documents and “leak” them.

Next cycle, when Paul Ryan runs for President, and leaked documents prove that he is actually a Martian, I don’t think I’ll believe them.

Raven’s Run 22

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She was lying face downward on the deck, with her bra strap untied and loose beside her.

She heard my footsteps and I saw her body tense up. It irritated me. If she didn’t want a response from me, why didn’t she keep her clothes on? It wasn’t one of those cases where the patrons of a redneck bar decide a short skirt is a license for rape. We were co-prisoners on this boat, and she knew the response her near nakedness would bring.

I sat down on the deckhouse and said, “Hi.” The side of my foot brushed her calf. She jerked it aside. It was a clear message, but there was also something contrived about it. As if she had stripped down just to give me that message. I said something short and crude, and went back to the wheel.

Ten minutes later, she went below again. She had managed to get into Will’s shirt without standing up.

Ten minutes after that, she came up with a mug of coffee which she gave me like a peace offering. I took a sip. She made good coffee. Then I said, “What the hell was that all about?”

She shook her head. “I’m don’t know, myself.” And I don’t think she did know.

“Do you know anything about Buddhism?”

“Huh?”

“Buddhists set great store by unspoken communication. There is a story about a master and his young pupil. The pupil had just had some great insight and he couldn’t wait to tell his master about it. When he finished, the master just shook his head and said, ‘That is very true. But how sad to say so.'”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that we had an unspoken agreement on how to act toward each other. I thought we were doing pretty well, too. Now we have to talk about it, and I find that unfortunate. It takes the naturalness out of our relationship.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you? I don’t think so. It’s clear to me that you aren’t satisfied with the way things are going, but you aren’t ready for the natural next step. So, let me lay it out for you. You are a beautiful woman; very sexy; very desirable. I am young, healthy, and horny. Does any of this confuse you?”

“No.” There was anger in her eyes, but I didn’t care.

“If I haven’t crawled all over you, it is because you have been sending me signals to keep my distance. Right?”

She glared.

“Right?”

She nodded.

“So what was that striptease all about? Do you have a rape wish? Or are you trying to prove to yourself that any man who can control his impulses is some kind of a wimp? Are you showing me how long my leash is? Whatever your reasons, I don’t like it!”

The sun poured down like honey, and I felt about as romantic as a sack of garbage. Raven face was congested with anger. She didn’t say anything, but with her glare, she didn’t need to. Suddenly, I was just plain tired of her. I said, “Go below. Get out of my sight.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the voice of sweet reason,” I shouted. “Who do I sound like? I can’t leave the wheel, and if we look at each other one more minute we will be punching each other in the face. I can’t leave, so you have to. Just go!”

*****

I’m leaving in the bit about Buddhism, because I don’t plan to second guess myself here. However, in the likely event that Raven’s Run is published, I think I will drop it. It’s just too esoteric for the time and place it appears. more tomorrow

231. The Black Shrike

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The Black Shrike is the American title of a thriller released originally in Great Britain as The Dark Crusader. It was written by Alistair MacLean and published under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. MacLean claimed that he had released it that way to prove that the public would buy his work even if his name was not on the cover.

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There is a sad phenomenon of writers going Hollywood. Some authors’ early books are  everything a reader could want, but as time goes on and they start seeing their novels made into movies, their literary output loses quality. Their later novels start looking like treatments in search of a screenplay writer.

Michael Crichton’s late novel Timeline, for example, was filled with wonderful ideas and brilliant vignettes, but the plot blundered along from start to finish, with sub-plots strewn aimlessly here and there – pretty much like a movie.

Donald Hamilton’s early westerns were superb. When he switched to Matt Helm spy stories, the quality dropped considerably, but at least they were gritty and intense. The movies made from them were a bad joke – although Hamilton can hardly be blamed for what Dean Martin did to them.

Alistair McLean suffered a similar fate. A close look at his early novel The Black Shrike in comparison to his later Breakheart Pass will show you the process at work. The former is excellent; the latter is a plotless collection of scenes – good scenes, but unconnected so that they fail to have a cumulative effect.

I read and enjoyed a dozen of Alistair McLean’s books during the sixties and seventies. Two stood above the rest: H.M.S. Ulysses and The Black Shrike. H.M.S. Ulysses, was a powerful and moving story of war, based on MacLean’s experiences in the British navy. The Black Shrike was a spy novel that I stumbled onto about the same time I discovered James Bond – the early, gritty, realistic Bond of the first few novels before Hollywood turned him into a cartoon. I had no idea at the time thatThe Black Shrike was written by MacLean, who was already one of my favorites.

John Bentall is a spy, during the early cold war, for an unnamed British service. He started out as a rocket fuels scientist but has been co-opted to search out subversives in that industry. He is stubborn, smart, and dedicated, but not the top spy he appears to be at the beginning of the novel. He is of heroic mold, but closer to everyman than to superman. Not Bond, at all. Bond would have made this novel completely forgettable. It is Bentall’s humanity that makes him believable, even when the action sometimes isn’t.

The story opens – and later closes – with these words:

A small dusty man in a small dusty room. That’s how I always thought of him, just a small dusty man in a small dusty room.

For me, that ranks with Call me Ishmael as one of the all time memorable novel openings, but you’ll have to read the book before you understand why. Bentall is sent by his small, dusty boss to track down a stolen missile called the Black Shrike. He is paired with a top female spy who will play his wife. To find the missile, they will become bait to lure the unknown forces who have been kidnapping British rocket fuel scientists. Events ensue, as the reader knows they will, but the surprise is that the “top female spy” turns out to be beautiful, charming, and – dumb? This major irritation for the reader is resolved when . . .

And this is where my telling has to stop to avoid spoilers.

Bentall falls in love with his “wife”, and without this development, the novel would have been nothing special. It is Bentall as a complete human being that elevates The Black Shrike above other novels in the genre.

When I decided to write a contemporary novel for the men’s adventure genre (today it would be shoehorned into the thriller genre), John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee and The Black Shrike provided patterns to follow – McGee for competence and Bentall for heart.

Raven’s Run 21

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Chapter Seven

I was awake to possibilities, alert to nuance, and randy as hell; but Raven didn’t send up any smoke signals. It might easily be twenty days before we saw land. If I put any heavy moves on her, and she turned me down, we would both be looking forward to two-thirds of an absolutely miserable month together. So I went about my other business.

The main boom was beyond repair. I spent a day trying to convert the gaff to a boom and make the mainsail over into a reduced leg-o-mutton. I could have done it, but only by ruining the mainsail, and the emergency didn’t seem that great. I finally I gave up and hoisted the main as a boomless gaff sail. On a broad reach the Wahini was almost as good as ever, but off the wind she sailed like a turtle.

After that, things fell into a routine. I had to steer all through the daylight hours since the Wahini would no longer keep course with the wheel lashed. At night I could make her hold her course under jib and mizzen, but a heavy boat like Wahini doesn’t make much distance that way in less than a gale.

From six in the morning until eight at night I was chained to the wheel. Raven spent a lot of her time below, and a lot of time during good days up front straddling the bowsprit and watching the bow wave. It was the best spot on the boat for private contemplation. I used to spend a lot of time up there myself, back when Wahini would steer herself. Raven had a lot on her mind. We talked about her attack a dozen times, but we never came to any conclusions. Too little data. Raven had other things to think about as well. I didn’t know what – then – but I respected her privacy.

A week after the storm I found two wet rubber bands hanging from the rigging. Actually, it was the gag bikini. I had forgotten all about it until she decided to wash and dry it. Near noon, she came up with a bowl of canned stew and took the bikini back down with her. Fifteen minutes later she came up again in Will’s shirt with her long, bare legs sticking out, went forward and dropped the shirt. She had the bikini on, and it wasn’t much. She lay down on the forward deck in the sun.

It was a beautiful cloudless day with little wind. Once she was flat on the deck, I could not see her. But I could imagine, and I did. I stood it for about five minutes. Then I said, “Boat, I’ve been your slave long enough. You’re on you own for a while.” And lashed the wheel.

String bikinis were odd things. As a fad, they didn’t last long, and for good reason. Pure nakedness is much kinder to the female figure. If a woman were less than perfect, a string bikini showed nothing but her faults. If she were perfect, however, you could ignore it and concentrate on what was revealed. 

Raven was in the latter category. She was lying face downward on the deck, with her bra strap untied and loose beside her. more tomorrow

230. Blackie Ryan

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Blackie Ryan began as a priest and worked his way up the ladder to Arch-bishop while solving crime. Unlikely? What does that have to do with whether a series if fun to read?

Every time I sit back and think about Father Andrew Greeley books, I am amazed that I like them. They are so lame in so many ways, but every time I open one up and begin reading, I am immediately hooked. I wish I knew how he does that.

Father Blackie Ryan is aware of Father Brown. In Blackie Ryan’s “real” world, Father Brown is a fictional character. It’s charming to hear an imaginary person, living in an imaginary world, refer to another imaginary person, living in a different imaginary world, as if the former were real and the latter were fictional. 

I have to admit to a fascination with Catholicism. I grew up as a Southern Baptist, where I was taught that the Devil twisted the word of God in the early days after Christ’s resurrection, and spawned the Catholic Church. When I became an unbeliever, that became moot, but I think there is still a subconscious fascination with the forbidden driving my feelings.

Certainly, if I were to go shopping for a religion, I would look for something like Greeley’s All Dogs Go to Heaven version of Catholicism. I would steer clear of Chesterton’s harsher version. In Father Ryan’s world, everything will come out well in the cosmic long run, even if half the characters in any given novel end up dead. In Father Brown’s world, evil comes oozing under the door like black smoke.

It must be nice to know that everything will come out right in the end, no matter how many bad things happen along the way. For the reader, it makes the Blackie Ryan novels the literary equivalent of comfort food. I suspect that accounts for a good deal of their popularity.

Sex probably accounts for another share of their popularity. It seems odd that a series by a priest and about a priest has more sex in it than a secular thriller. I don’t intend to engage in long distance psychoanalysis, but the driving force of priestly frustration can’t be completely discounted. If all you can do about sex is think about it, you might as well write novels.

Probably the most irritating quirk in Greeley’s style is his overuse of foreshadowing. It seems sometimes that everything that is going to happen get’s a preemptive comment. If I had only known . . ., If she had only told me . . ., I should have realized . . .. These are key, repeated phrases in Greeley’s way of telling his stories. They match up with the way Ryan solves crimes through intuition. His subconscious sees the answer, and his conscious mind gets glimpses of it which fade frustratingly away. Eventually, all becomes clear, the elevator door stays open (that is Greeley’s conceit, not mine) and the crime is solved. Just in time. Or just too late, depending on how Greeley chooses to  spin it.

All this makes it sound as if I don’t like Greeley’s writing, but then why am I talking about him? Hmmm. I”ll have to think about that while I’m reading Rites of Spring for the tenth time.

Raven’s Run 20

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Raven’s hair was free and streaming back and she seemed to be having the time of her life. I know I was.

I showed her how to steer and after a while I gave her the chance to practice. She attacked the task ferociously, and after half an hour she was beginning to develop a fine and delicate touch.

I tried to lead her into talking more about her family, but she avoided the subject. She did not seem secretive so much as she seemed uncomfortable, as if she didn’t want to think about them. Until I mentioned siblings. 

“Brothers, no; but I have a sister. Daddy’s favorite. The kind of girl who can do no wrong. Never gets in trouble. Never gets less than an A in school. Always the best at everything she does. She’s really great!”

Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. I said, “Older or younger?”

“Younger. Eight years younger than me. She’s an ice skater. She’ll be in the Olympics someday, if she doesn’t break her leg or something.”

I smiled at the venom in Raven’s voice, and asked, “What’s her name?”

“Pilar. You know, after the Virgin Mary, the first pillar of the Church.”

I laughed and Raven looked daggers at me. I said, “Even her name is perfect.”

“Exactly!”

“I watch ice skating sometimes, but I have never heard of her.”

“Do you go to the meets or just watch on TV?”

“TV.”

“A big meet will have a bunch of skaters, but the networks only show four or five of them. They shoot a lot of footage, then after the meet is over they splice together what they need. When you see it on television, it looks as if they just happened to film the winners. If someone makes an unexpectedly good showing, they go back to stock footage from previous years so that it looks as if they knew all along that she was going to be a winner.”

“How long has Pilar been the family favorite?”

“Since forever!”

When I had first fished Raven out of the water, she had spoken standard English. Now that she was becoming relaxed with me, her schoolyard Chicano-English mannerisms were beginning to creep out. She asked, “How about you?”

“I have a sister, and an older brother that I thought was perfect. Donal, was his name; he was much older so we didn’t compete. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Why?”

“He left home when I was nine. Just disappeared. I never knew where he went or why. Maybe my parents did, but they never said. He used to fight with my dad all the time.”

“Boy, I can relate to that!”

*****

At least ten years before I wrote Raven’s Run, I wrote the first sixty or so pages of a novel called Eden Lake. The names were different, but the main character had a father who had run away to Canada after causing the drunk driving accident in which his wife was killed. The son in Eden Lake was saddled with raising his younger sister, an event that led to mutual alienation.

Ian is a different character, but I grafted the Eden Lake backstory onto him, complete with estranged sister, and added Donal. All this was to provide plots for future novels should Ian have become a series character. more tomorrow