by Lynne | Aug 4, 2014 | Uncategorized
Vincent van Gogh died at age 37 on July 29, 1890. I thought I’d revisit this blog to commemorate that fateful day and review the evidence of his death: suicide, homicide or misadventure?
The research for my book, Deadly Provenance, took me places I never expected to go. To the dark recesses of the brain, its power over the body, and all that could possibly go wrong with that relationship. How did I get there?
For my premise, I needed a painting that was plundered by the Nazis during World War II and never recovered. There were myriad. I chose Vincent Van Gogh’s “Still Life: Vase With Oleanders” because he’s one of my favorite artists and one whose life touched my heart as much as his art.
I’ve had one of those giant coffee-table books of his artwork for years. I read Stone’s “Lust for Life” and saw the movie with Kirk Douglas as Vincent. I wanted to know more and the most comprehensive, well-written and beautifully poignant account I highly recommend is a book by two Pulitzer prize-winning authors: Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, called Van Gogh The Life:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375758976/ref=asc_df_03757589762502415?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=dealt529148-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=0375758976
The book is astonishing in its breadth of research from Vincent’s history, family ties, relationships, such as they were. But their conclusions about how Vincent died simply blew me away. Only this is certain. On July 27, 1890, Vincent sustained a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He stumbled back from his painting foray to the Ravoux Inn, his residence, in a town twenty miles north of Paris – Auvers, France. Thirty hours later he was dead.
No forensics was available, no gun was ever found. The bullet was never removed from his body. His painting supplies were never recovered. The location of the shooting was never verified. There were, supposedly, no eye-witnesses. When Vincent was asked by the police if he wanted to commit suicide, his answer was a vague. “Yes, I believe so.” When they reminded him suicide was a crime, he said, “Do not accuse anyone. It is I who wanted to kill myself.”
Why do the authors make a case against suicide? They believe Vincent wanted to die and actually welcomed death. Here are the points they make:
The bullet trajectory was oblique and from further away than Vincent’s arm could reach.
If he were indeed painting in the wheat field, as suggested, it would have been too far and difficult to return to the Inn with a bullet to his gut.
The gun and art equipment were never located.
He left no suicide note and he was a prolific writer.
Rather than go into details here, and there are many convincing ones, I urge you to read the book, at the very least the Appendix, where the authors make their case against suicide.
So who might have shot Vincent, either accidentally or on purpose? There were, apparently, in this little town two or more teenagers who enjoyed tormenting the artist, who, unlike, the fiery and handsome Kirk Douglas, was a rail-thin, emaciated and dirty wretch with a bad temper.
A bit more is known now about Vincent’s personality “disorder” and it is suspected that, with family history and symptoms that prompted bizarre, dramatic behavior, the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy is a viable possibility.
However Vincent met his death, the world is all the sorrier for it.
by Lynne | Jul 28, 2014 | Uncategorized
In an early blog I wrote about the benefits of attending a critique group regularly. I stand firmly by that, since we cannot write in a vacuum and constructive criticism is vital to improving a manuscript. Here are some writing tips I’ve learned over the years that I still struggle to follow. They aren’t about the broad picture: plot, tension, POV, characters, etc. I’ll get to those in future blogs. They are small fixable ways to tune up your writing. You’ve no doubt heard many of these already, but the number of books I’ve sampled recently counters that notion. So here are my suggestions:
1. Get rid of those adverbs. Instead, use active verbs. “She sprinted” is better than “she ran quickly.”
2. Try to find other words for the boring and tired words we all slip into using: wonderful, amazing, nice. Bleh. The English language is rich. Use that wealth.
3. Lose “very” unless absolutely necessary, and “just” because both are really fillers that don’t add anything to your work.
4. Don’t pen long paragraphs describing a character’s looks. Draw it out and drop hints every now and then throughout the book. Of course, you can give a brief visual: “The redhead tottered on high heels that made her six feet tall.” Now I can see her. Add other descriptors later.
5. Try to avoid conjugations of “to be.” There’s nothing more maddening than reading “was,” “is,” and “are” 20 times on a page.
6. Get rid of clichés. They make me tired as well as your readers.
7. Use analogies, similes and metaphors so they fit the context of the story. Don’t talk about “cold as ice” (a cliché, by the way) if you’re writing about the tropics. That is, unless your character winds up in a meat locker.
8. In the humorous book, “Eat, Shoots & Leaves,” the author, Lynne Truss, reminds us that punctuation is, indeed, important. I always remember a junior high teacher asking us what was wrong with this sentence. “I saw a pen walking down the street.” Who was walking?
9. Add attributions only when needed to dialogue. If two people are talking to each other, it’s usually easy to know who’s saying what, although an occasional reminder is good. However, once the third person enters the scene, you’ll need to distinguish one character from another. If the voice of a character is so distinct, you may not have to add an attribution. It is frustrating, though, to read pages of dialogue and have to figure out who’s speaking.
10. Avoid repetition — don’t use the same word five times in a page.
11. And, speaking of dialogue, don’t use “mundane-speak.” In a conversation, keep the story moving forward. Talking about what the character is cooking for dinner is only relevant if she has unknowingly invited a serial killer, one who kills lousy cooks, to dinner.
Am I guilty of these writing errors? You bet. Who isn’t? All we can do is keep our eyes and ears open when we read our prose . . . . out loud. Yes, out loud.
I welcome feedback. Please share your own writing tips.
by Lynne | Jul 20, 2014 | Uncategorized
Let Someone Else Blog!
I thought I’d try something different. . . and a bit pretentious . . . for my blog this week and share another writer’s interview with me. I enjoy reading about other writer’s lives, so I thought this might be of interest to some. Thanks to E. Lynn Hooghiemstra for this blog.
“This month I welcome author Lynne Kennedy who deftly combines fiction, history and science to create gripping mysteries. Her latest is “Deadly Provenance” about a Van Gogh painting that’s been missing since it was taken by the Nazis in WWII. I have eagerly started reading the book, curious to find out where this author will take me during the dreary and dark December days.
Lynne, welcome.
1. You write fiction yet use real life mysteries, or unsolved crimes, as the jumping off point and then you apply a healthy dose of science to solving the mystery. It’s a neat concept, how did you come to it?
For almost thirty years I was a science museum director, so science is my life. I particularly loved our programs and exhibitions on forensics and loved working with the police department to solve mysteries with modern forensic technology.
History is my second love so naturally I looked for a way to blend the two in my writing. The first book I wrote was “Time Exposure,” a mystery which revolves around Civil War photography. The idea happened by chance. The Smithsonian was in San Diego presenting programs at the various museums. We sponsored two talks at our science center. One on space science and the other, ironically, on Civil War photography. I sat in on the second one and was hooked. I knew I wanted to write about Civil War photography.
But how would I blend this with modern forensics? Through digital photography. It really worked. My modern character, a digital photographer, stumbles upon a mystery through a Civil War photograph. Through her analysis, she comes up with the killer. Well, something like that.
2. Your latest book “Deadly Provenance” deals with a beautiful Van Gogh painting, missing since WWII. How did you even find out about its original existence? And where has your search led you so far?
Besides the Civil War, World War II has always fascinated me. Years ago, I saw a movie called “The Train” with Burt Lancaster. It made me start thinking about the Nazi confiscation of art. I started reading up on the subject and found a book (and later a move) called “The Rape of Europa.” I was astounded to learn the extent of the looting that was done at the time. I knew this was going to be a book.
As I kept researching, I found a number of paintings that were still missing, one of which is Vincent Van Gogh’s Vase With Oleanders. Since he’s one of my favorite painters, I decided to check further and found this amazing story of what had happened to it.
I wrote “Deadly Provenance” and came up with a fictional ending to the painting. But now I wanted to find the real painting. You can read about my “hunt” on my web page: https://lynnekennedymysteries.com/the-hunt-for-the-missing-van-gogh/
By the way, I’m still looking! Got quite a bit of publicity on it too. This is a KPBS radio interview several months ago:http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/sep/04/san-diego-writer-mission-find-missing-van-gogh/
I was even featured on the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/sep/05/where-missing-van-gogh/
What’s amazing is that Nazi stolen art works keep appearing in the news today. History never ends.
3. How do you start one of your books? Do you have an idea of where it will go before you even start your research?
One of my weekly blogs is on this subject exactly. It’s about jump-starting your book. Rather than repeat, here it is. https://lynnekennedymysteries.com/2013/11/25/jump-start-your-book-2/
4. What has your journey to publication been like and why did you choose self-publishing, as so many are doing these days?
I landed an agent for my first book but she was not able to get a publisher interested. The general response was: great writing, characters, etc, but too complicated a story to market. Right. So I tried with my second and third books, but, frankly the response was the same. Marketing was always the issue. Is this a mystery? An historical mystery? What? The two storylines threw them into a tizzy. You’d think they’d be excited to have something different. So I decided to self-publish. I’m not sorry, but learning how to do it correctly was a real struggle. So I wrote a blog about this in two parts. The first part is “Self-Publishing: Dream or Nightmare.” Kind of says it all. Here’s the link:https://lynnekennedymysteries.com/2012/09/04/self-publishing-dream-or-nightmare/
The second part is “The Good, The Bad and The Real Ugly:”
https://lynnekennedymysteries.com/2012/09/11/self-publishing-part-2-the-good-the-bad-and-the-real-ugly/
5. eBook vs Traditional?
This was a no-brainer. I wanted to hold my precious books in my hands so I had to do a traditional, albeit, paperback version. E-Books were the wave of the future (still are) so of course, I produced that version too. Now I’m a real e-book fan. I rarely buy hard or paperbacks anymore. Sad in a way.
6. Pen & Paper or a computer?
Always the computer, although, occasionally, when I’m out having a Starbuck’s or something will jot down notes with a pen and scrap of paper. I make too many changes to not be able to delete!
7. What do you think is the most important thing a writer can do, aside from write well, to increase their odds of a successful career?
Read, read, read. Re-write, re-write, re-write. Find a fabulous critique group and do it all over again. Basically, the first step is to write the best book you can. Then, whether you self-publish or publish traditionally, you will have to learn the marketing business. Social Media is key, but other marketing avenues are necessary too. Wrote another blog on that, ha! The point is not to let marketing take over your writing life:https://lynnekennedymysteries.com/2013/10/15/writing-vs-marketing/
8. What secret talent do you have, which everyone reading this blog will keep secret? Or, what’s the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of research?
Oh, if I had a secret talent, it’s hidden from me too. Or have something crazy I did in the name of research. Nah, I’m just persistent. I try to find answers to fill in the details of my stories. What kind of dress would my character have worn in 1911, if she only had $2 to spend? What sort of camera would a Nazi photographer use in 1942? What kind of foods would be on the table of a rich patron during the Civil War? Those are the details I love to ferret out, and hopefully, my readers enjoy!
Thank you, and I look forward to your next mystery!”
by Lynne | Jul 7, 2014 | Uncategorized
A Rose By Any Other Name
One of the most important, but often most difficult part of writing a novel is selecting names for your characters. When you begin you might already have some in mind. But as the characters morph during the writing process, that name might no longer fit. If you’re writing a series and the same characters reappear, you still need to name new characters.
Villains’ names are particularly important to get right. Common sense tells you that “Melvin Fuddrucker” is probably not the best handle for a serial killer. Or is it? Do you want to throw the reader off and let him like or sympathize with your bad guy? Do you want the reader to think: Melvin, hmm, an accountant or a store clerk, when in reality, Melvin is a triathlete, computer genius, and serial killer? Obfuscation may be a good thing.
The good guys shouldn’t be shortchanged either. You want your characters to be memorable and to have your readers calling them by name six months after they’ve read your book. I have a hard time remembering names six hours after reading some books. But characters from other books stay with me for a lifetime. “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry comes to mind. How can you forget Augustus, Call, Newt, or for heaven’s sake, Pea Eye?
So how do you choose names? One thing to remember. Try not to have too many characters with the same first initial. So, Bob, Bill, Binky, Belinda, and Bruce would probably be confusing. A couple are okay, of course. My two main characters are Maggie and Mead. Duh. One’s a first name, one’s a last. But I’ve avoided other “M” names unless they are historically necessary.
Also, unusual names are okay but too many are dicey. Throw a few Jenovas in with the Jennifers. Don’t make them too hard to pronounce, either out loud or in the reader’s head. It’s frustrating. Of course, if many of your characters are from countries other than the States, throw that idea out the window. But, perhaps, giving them a nickname will make them easier to recall.
One problem with historical novels is that using the real names of people involved can present problems. For instance, in some books by Sharon Kay Penman, one of my all-time favorite writers of historical England, she explained that the spelling of some characters had to be changed to distinguish one Maud from another Maude. (Lots of Henrys, Johns and James as well. Yoiks!)
Timing is very important. Names fall in and out of favor over the years, so take care not to use a very modern YA name like Aisha or Brandon in a book about merry old England. When you’re creating a character name from scratch, consider these: personality, looks, age, ethnicity, stature in the community, occupation, attitudes toward politics, etc., values, whether the character is single, married, gay. Does the character remind you of a good friend, a bad friend, a worker, colleague, television or movie character (Dexter? Miss Marple? Morse? Lynley? Zen?) Does the character have a sense of humor? Is the character always depressed, upbeat, brutally honest, or unbearably shy? What are their quirks, flaws, hobbies, passions, hates? Does he carry around a blue plastic bag instead of a briefcase like Tony Hill?
Do you want the character’s name to conjure up something in the reader’s mind? Like Charlie Parker in John Connolly’s books makes me automatically think of the jazz musician.
I had a difficult time giving my villain in “Time Exposure” a meaningful name. He was, by profession, a Shakespearean actor in disguise on the battlefield as a sutler (a guy who went around selling goods to the foot soldiers.) What name would this actor choose for himself? He selected the name Jack Cade for his cover. Why?
Jack Cade was actually a real person who led the peasants in the Kent rebellion of 1450. He was also a character in Shakespeare’s play Henry VI, Part 2. In the play he talks to his friend, Dick the Butcher, whose most famous line is “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” I thought my villain would get a kick out of that, and since he probably didn’t want to be called Dick the Butcher, Jack Cade he became.
Don’t underestimate the importance of your character’s names. If you want your readers to love a character, naming him Hitler or Attila would be a tough sell. Find names you like as you read books or newspapers, watch movies, or meet new folks at a party, and jot them down for the future. You might even try the phone book, but then you don’t have the advantage of seeing the name in action on a real person. Make something up, but explain in the novel what the name means to the characters involved.
While Shakespeare said “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” it would be hard to conjure up a picture of a beautiful flower if you called the rose, Skunk.
by Lynne | Jul 1, 2014 | Uncategorized
In the Words of Women
On our trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, I ran across a book: “Staking Her Claim – Women Homesteading the West.”
I picked it up, thumbed through it and bought it. I found it interesting because first, I didn’t know that women staked their own claim to land in the early 20th century, alone, without husbands or families. Second, because a good deal of their experiences were documented by their writings and I found their prose simple and elegant, often considerably better written than much I read today.
One homesteader, Elinore Pruitt Stewart, described a sunset she witnessed: “It seemed as if we were driving through a golden haze. The violet shadows were creeping up between the hills, while away back of us the snow-capped peaks were catching the sun’s last rays. On every side of us stretched the poor, hopeless desert, the sage, grim and determined to live in spite of starvation, the great, bare, desolate buttes.”
The protagonist of the stories are usually the women homesteaders themselves. Other characters are represented by family members or friends, other homesteaders she has encountered and even the locals: rattlesnakes, dust, wind, sagebrush.The settings were often similar in the western regions with the women settling into valleys and basins and plains at the foot of mountain ranges. They were given unproductive land that the government offered to encourage the development of farms and ranches. Thus homesteaders battled flat, arid desert-like plots dotted with sagebrush rather than pine trees. Water had to be trucked in and sand and dirt were an ever-present companion.
But these women kept journals and wrote letters describing the lifestyle they had chosen. In 1916 Metta Loomis penned: “As for myself, I know of no other way by which, in five years’ time, I could have acquired such riotous health, secured much valuable property, experienced so much joy in living, and infused so much of hope and buoyancy into life, and no other way to provide such cheering prospects for my old age.”
These women homesteaders were independent spirits who escaped from their former lives. May Holiday wrote in 1917 of her new-found freedom: “In fact I began to feel it in the air while crossing the Rockies and straight away my former ideas of the importance of class distinction and the observance of social conventions seemed to fall from me like a heavy cloak, which had been a burden – and I was free.”
Their prose was lyrical and their words inspirational. I wonder . . . do we still have the same spirit of freedom and independence? If you can read this, maybe we do: 2G2B4G. BFN. LOL!
by Lynne | Jun 25, 2014 | Uncategorized
MEMORABLE VILLAINS
Protagonists are characters you mostly like or you wouldn’t keep reading (or watching.) What about antagonists? A killer who tortures their victim, cuts them up into little pieces while they’re still alive and buries them in their family’s backyard, is pretty rotten. But for those of us who read crime fiction and watch “Criminal Minds,” it seems these killers’ MO’s are becoming predictable and rather ho hum. They’re almost “too” bad.
So what constitutes a memorable bad guy? Stephen King might say he (or she) is one who plays on your fears, particularly your childhood fears. The dark. The bogeyman. Someone hiding under your bed. Ratchet that up a notch. Your peers bullying you. Your mother abandoning you. Your father abusing you.
“Memorable” bad guys, however, are not all one hundred percent evil. They often and should have, a few redeeming, even seductive, qualities, or a sympathetic side that readers can identify with. If they were simply hateful, ugly, sinful, vicious, you would tire of them quickly. Look at a few villains that are a syncopation of vile and virtuous. One that immediately comes to mind is Hannibal Lecter. In both books and movies, Lecter is a blend of savagery and sophistication. He’s charming, brilliant, and has a certain panache that draws you to him. Yet, he is clearly despicable. And, although he scares the Bejeezus out of Starling, he never hurts her.
Dexter, the Showtime series about a serial killer, has given villains a bad name. We all like Dexter and root for him to get the “other” bad guy. Dexter gives voice . . . and action . . . to our own feelings of impotence, of wanting revenge. How does he compare, however, with John Lithgow as Arthur Mitchell, “The Trinity Killer” in a past season? Mitchell, too, was likeable, personable, sociable. And mean with a capital M. Vile and virtuous. Well, vile and less vile.
If you’ve been hooked on Downton Abbey as I have, two characters stand out as villains. Thomas, the footman/valet, and Mrs. O’Brian, the ladies’ maid. I despised Thomas through the first two seasons, despite his good looks and service as a nurse for the wounded returned from The Great War. Yet, for a brief moment, I felt sympathy for him when he burst into tears after learning one of the ladies of the house, Sybil, died. I actually liked him. Now, Mrs. O’Brian, on the other hand, is going to have to work harder for me to like her. She, so far, is rather one-dimensional and has few or no redeeming qualities. If you detect any, please let me know.
A perfect example of a pleasant, good-natured scoundrel is Tom Ripley in the Patricia Highsmith mystery series. Tom’s a handsome, affable, yet frosty killer with zero conscience. He disarms the protagonists with his charm until. . . bam. . . it’s too late. I still kind of like him. Similarly, the character, Roger “Verbal” Kint (Kevin Spacey’s role) in The Usual Suspects. Kint is a man physically disabled and emotionally fragile . . . or so we think. The author has created a fabulous artifice.
Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow gives us a stereotypical bad guy, Disney-style (aren’t all pirates bad?) How can you help but love the guy? Then again, he’s Johnny Depp. Need I say more?
Think about the antagonists in the next book you read or movie you watch. Do you love them? So you hate them? Or do you love to hate them?
The research for my book, Deadly Provenance, took me places I never expected to go. To the dark recesses of the brain, its power over the body, and all that could possibly go wrong with that relationship. How did I get there?
A bit more is known now about Vincent’s personality “disorder” and it is suspected that, with family history and symptoms that prompted bizarre, dramatic behavior, the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy is a viable possibility.
