Curiosity, Creativity, and Connections

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by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Mark Leichliter and Debbie Burke

A few days ago, my friend and writing colleague Mark Leichliter (who also writes as “Mark Hummel“) spoke to a group at a local active senior community.

Mark is a delightful, articulate guy who writes mystery and literary fiction. He also ghostwrites and teaches creative writing, although he finds the term “creative writing” redundant because he says, “All writing is creative.”

He’s the teacher you wish you’d had or would choose to teach your kids. He treats students as individuals, listening to their needs, encouraging them to pursue their dreams. Years after they graduate, students stay in touch with him.

I learned about Mark’s appearance at the senior community a short time before and on the spur of the moment decided to attend.

I didn’t expect his talk to lead to a post for TKZ. But here it is.

First thing Mark did was to rearrange the chairs from auditorium-style seating into a circle. “I want this to be a conversation, not a lecture,” he said. “I want to learn from you in the audience.”

His premise began that curiosity and creativity are linked. Curious people are also often creative. Curiosity makes them eager to learn and they create art, music, poetry, books, buildings, automobiles, recipes, etc. from what they learn.

I mentioned creativity was also the ability to take apparently unrelated ideas and find a connection between them.

Mark laughed and said I must be his shill because the concept of connection led into his next point.

He cited a friend who’s now writing a memoir. “Al” was a former mining engineer tasked with building a gold mine in Columbia. His employer was willing to pay top wages to attract workers to an area that was otherwise desolate. Al could have simply built the mine then moved on, one and done.

Instead, he was curious about the people and surroundings. He spent weeks exploring and talking with them, and learned there was no infrastructure, no water or power. Those conditions meant that workers couldn’t bring their families with them to the new mining jobs. A lucrative paycheck was a draw, but it wasn’t enough.

Al’s creativity took over. He connected the needs of the mine with the needs of the workers and projected into the future.

A mine would do well but was a finite operation—it lasted several years then shut down. He convinced mine owners to pay workers a little less and instead to budget that money to bring in electricity and water, leading to building a town with a grocery store to provide food, a school to educate their children, and other services. Mining would “do well” but building a lasting community would “do good.”

Al is now using curiosity and creativity to connect events in his life and solve problems as he writes his memoir.

Mark then asked the group about their individual creative endeavors.

A woman related that she and her husband had traveled extensively, getting to know and live with residents of other countries. Their endless curiosity about other cultures led to broadening their knowledge and understanding, resulting in rich rewards they never could have anticipated.

Another woman said she quilted, using fabric from her grandchildren’s outgrown clothes and sports uniforms. She created quilts that reflected each child’s particular interest and favorite activities, a physical, visual canvas of the stories of their lives.

Another said she was creating an “ethical will.” Instead of leaving material possessions to her children and grandchildren, she wants to leave family memories, lessons learned, advice, etc. in written form. Her title is More Than Stuff.

Another said she’d published a family history without telling her siblings. When she eventually let them know, a sister revealed she too had published a family history without telling anyone. Not surprisingly, the stories were completely different, giving rise to disagreements: “That’s not how it happened!”

That led to group discussion of differing perceptions. The same event happens to each family member, but all have their own memory and interpretation of the incident that is often radically different from the others.

A genealogist commented that “a lot of family history is fiction,” which prompted knowing laughter in the group.

“Leaving a legacy” was the common theme among the audience.

Mark connected the legacy angle back to storytelling. Humans are curious about past events and why they happened. Storytelling is a creative way to preserve, understand, and pass down those events to educate future generations. Stories explore the reasons and causes behind life’s mysteries and strive to make sense of them. Stories also serve as vehicles to teach ways to solve problems and survive.

Mark made another point I hadn’t considered before. He said a book doesn’t fully exist without a reader. Other communication and entertainment forms like TV, films, streaming, etc. continue whether or not anyone is watching. They are one-way activities that don’t require participation.

In contrast, a book is a two-way interactive exchange. The author creates it but, until someone picks it up and starts reading, it simply sits there. It’s a repository of knowledge, waiting to interact with a person. When the connection between the author and reader is made, it opens the door to an entirely new world.

Curiosity, creativity, and connections.

Because I was curious about Mark’s talk, I picked up creative ideas from it, and connected them into today’s post. Thanks, Mark!

~~~

TKZers: Does curiosity enhance your creativity? Do such connections find their way into your writing? Please share some examples.

~~~

 

Curiosity leads investigator Tawny Lindholm into a creative deep fake trap. Can she connect clues in time to save herself and an unjustly accused woman? Find out in Deep Fake Double Down. 

Universal book link

The Deuteragonist

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Deuteragonist – noun — the actor next in importance to the protagonist.

* * *

We all know what a protagonist and an antagonist are, but I had never heard the word “deuteragonist” until a few months ago. It comes from the Greek word “deuteros,” meaning “second.” But a deuteragonist is not just a secondary character, he/she is the secondary character.

Wikipedia tells us that ancient Greek drama originally had only one actor, the protagonist, and a group of dancers, the chorus. But then the playwright Aeschylus introduced a second character, the deuteragonist, in his plays.

Aristotle explained it in his work Poetics.

“Thus, it was Aeschylus who first raised the number of the actors from one to two. He also curtailed the chorus and made the dialogue be the leading part.”

So we can thank Aeschylus, who lived 2500 years ago, for the addition of the second character in drama, an innovation which enabled dialogue and conflict.

* * *

“The more complex you make your secondary characters, the more lifelike and involving your story will be.” –Donald Maass

So how is the deuteragonist different from the other secondary characters in today’s fiction?

According to studiobinder.com

“A deuteragonist is the second most important character in a story. This person is also known as the ‘secondary main character.’ While the protagonist gives us our primary point of view of the story, the deuteragonist often provides a different, but often similar, outlook.”

* * *

The deuteragonist can serve different purposes, depending on the author’s goals. But whatever role the deuteragonist plays, he/she should complement the protagonist  in a way that affects the main character’s arc in the story.

 

One possibility is as a supporter, friend, or assistant to the protagonist. Dr. Watson is a famous example of this type of deuteragonist in the Sherlock Holmes books. Watson not only narrates the stories, his gentlemanly compassion contrasts nicely with the purely logical Holmes.

 

 

The deuteragonist can also be a love interest. An example of this could be from the movie “Titanic” where Jack Dawson (Leonardo DeCaprio) plays the main secondary to Rose (Kate Winslet). In the movie, Jack shows Rose there is more to life than the suffocating high society she’s being forced into.

 

 

Villains are always useful in helping protagonists overcome their shortcomings and face down danger. An example of this was the film “Die Hard” where the protagonist John McClane (Bruce Willis) matches wits with the villainous deuteragonist Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman.)

So there you have it. A deuteragonist can add spice and complexity to a story while enhancing the protagonist’s character arc.

* * *

“The three things that matter most in a story are characters, characters and characters.” –Bob Gale

* * *

So TKZers: Are there deuteragonists that you like from books or films? Have you used a deuteragonist in any of your stories? Do you plan to? Tell us about them.

* * *

 

Protagonist Kathryn Frasier trains for a marathon, deuteragonist Cece Goldman rehearses for a play, and antagonist murderers hide in plain sight in The Watch Mysteries, an ebook boxset of three complete novels available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, or Apple Books. (Today is the last day of the 99¢ sale.)

What Fuels Your Writing?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” – Thomas Berger

So how can you get gas these days for under $4?

Eat at Taco Bell.

Ba-dump-bump.

And where do you get fuel for your writing? That’s today’s question.

Some of the ways are as follows.

Caffeine

Not everyone begins the day with a cup of joe, but it has been a mainstay of many a writer, starting with Balzac. He overdid it, of course. Drinking up to 50 cups of heavy-duty mud during his writing time, which was generally from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m., he produced nearly 200 novels and novellas before succumbing to caffeine-induced heart failure at the age of 51.

But the benefits of moderate coffee intake are now well known. It wasn’t always so. I was looking at a 1985 edition of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which had a headline about how a couple of cups of coffee posed a danger of developing heart disease.

Which reminds me of that scene in Woody Allen’s Sleeper, where a health-food store owner is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and wakes up 200 years later.

There he sees doctors smoking and talking about the benefits of tobacco, steak, and hot fudge.

“Those were once thought to be unhealthy,” a doctor explains. “Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.”

That’s coffee for you. In moderation, caffeine boosts alertness, powers up short-term memory, accelerates information processing, and increases learning capabilities.

I have a multi-published friend who favors diet, decaffeinated Coke. To which I say, “What’s the point?”

And to you I ask:

Do you have a favorite beverage to sip when you write?

There is also inner fuel that motivates writers.

Something to Say

There’s an old axiom in Hollywood: “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Meaning story comes first. A “message picture” can devolve into preachiness or propaganda if one is not careful.

Same for fiction. If you’ve got an issue you want to write about, go for it. But don’t let your characters become one-dimensional pawns in a hobbyhorse chess game.

My advice is to give your hero a flaw, and your villain a justification. Remember, a villain doesn’t think he’s pure evil, except for this guy:

Write a “closing argument” for your villain, as if he’s arguing to a jury to justify everything he’s done. This is great psychological backstory, and you can drip some of it in. Believe me, this will make your villain more chilling and the reading experience more emotional, which is your goal.

Fun

Brother Gilstrap has said on more than one occasion that he is tickled he gets paid to “make stuff up.” That’s not a small matter. When you have joy in writing, it shows up on the page.

“In the great story-tellers, there is a sort of self-enjoyment in the exercise of the sense of narrative; and this, by sheer contagion, communicates enjoyment to the reader. Perhaps it may be called (by analogy with the familiar phrase, “the joy of living”) the joy of telling tales. The joy of telling tales which shines through Treasure Island is perhaps the main reason for the continued popularity of the story. The author is having such a good time in telling his tale that he gives us necessarily a good time in reading it.” – Clayton Meeker Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction (1919)

A Healthy Brain

Another reason to write is to fight cognitive decline. This has been mentioned here several times, by Sue and myself.

When you exercise your head through the rigors of writing a coherent and complex story, you keep it in fighting trim.

Last Friday was the 98th birthday of Mel Brooks. He and his partner, the late Carl Reiner (who died in 2020 at age 98) were trained in the Catskills style of improv comedy. Always on, always with the word play. At parties they started doing an improv skit about a 2000-year-old man, with Reiner as the interviewer. It got so popular they made a comedy album that became a huge hit, and they did their skit well into their 80s. Here’s a bit:

That’s why I’m skeptical of letting AI do your creative thinking. Every time it makes a decision for you is a time when your brain is lounging in a hammock, getting fat.

Money

Yes, some people write because they want to make money. It’s a hard gig for that, but if you treat it as a job and approach it like a business, you have a shot.

The old pulp writers knew this. They had to approach writing for the market like going to work each day, because they needed to put food on the table during the Depression.

But to do it, they had to know how to write stories that pleased readers. It’s a simple, capitalistic exchange: the product (a good story) sold to a customer (the reader) who is looking for a respite from the angst of the current moment.

“In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape, moments of delight and forgetfulness.” — Dean Koontz

Legacy

Mr. Steve Hooley has talked about writing for his grandchildren. My grandfather on my mother’s side was like that. He loved history, and wrote historical fiction that didn’t sell to publishers, so he published it himself for his family and friends.

He was especially interested in the Civil War. One of his stories was titled, “The Civil War Did Not Necessarily End at Appomattox.” Yeah, he need to work on his titles. But I’m glad to have the stories!

Without fuel, our writing is flaccid, uninspiring, boring. So I ask:

What fuels your writing?

Subconscious Words of Wisdom

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While writing Book Drop Dead it became obvious I wasn’t letting my subconscious have a much of say in the process. When I realized this and opened back up to my inner collaborator, the narrative became richer and more surprising and the writing flowed more easily. It’s a lesson I’ve taken to heart as I work on the next book in my mystery series.

Today’s Words of Wisdom takes a deep dive into the power of the subconscious in writing and how to set the scene for it to work its magic, with excerpts from posts by Laura Benedict, James Scott Bell and Debbie Burke.

There are so many theories on what dreams are. Just a few:

Subconscious problem solving.

Wishfulfillment

Random neuron firing

Emotional cleanup using dream symbols

Messages from the future or past

I don’t know about you, but my dreams tend to be a mix of the above, with the exception of messages from the future or past. As an adult, I’ve had some very comforting dreams about my grandparents, but I put those in the emotional cleanup category.

Dreams are as entertaining to me as a good book, and sometimes even more so because I’m participating. I go to sleep hoping the dreams are good. The only time I fear them is when I’m home alone overnight and have paralyzing night terrors about strangers in my bedroom. But most of my dreams contain vibrant colors, vivid situations and storylines, and people I don’t often see. I couldn’t enjoy them more if I made them up myself. Which, in a way, I suppose I do. It’s my subconscious at work—that part of the brain from which I suspect my best writing material comes.

But how to access that material in the waking world? As writers, we are essentially creating dreams for our readers. Stories that are like reality, but just that much better. Just that much less predictable, like any good dream.

Some ways to access the dreaming part of your brain:

Lucid dreaming: Lucid dreaming is dreaming when you know you’re dreaming. You won’t necessarily control your dreams, but you’re likely to remember them. Here’s a comprehensive list of ways to make it happen.

Dream journals: This is one of my favorites. As soon as I wake, I jot down the details of all the dreams I can remember. The exercise of writing it out makes me feel like I have a jump on my creative day.

Music: Do you listen to music as you write? It can quickly put you in the writing zone, but music with lyrics can be distracting. When I wrote Charlotte’s Story, I had this adagio on a loop for weeks. Repeated music is a great self-hypnosis tool.

Rituals: Same Bat Place. Same Bat Time. If you’re in the habit of doing deep work in the same place every time, your brain will begin to relax once it’s in sight.

Silence: I used to brag a lot about how I could write just as easily in a noisy cafe as I could in a silent room. While it’s still true, silence settles me much more quickly. You can almost hear the doors in my head opening.

Do you have trouble recalling your dreams? It’s common.The reason it’s sometimes difficult is because the brain may shut down its memory-recording functions while we’re in REM sleep.

Here’s what I find so fascinating about recalling dreams—or even having them. What if they really are simply random discharges of neurons firing up images in our brains while we sleep? That doesn’t make them any less interesting or less vital. It’s what we do with the connections between those images that makes a dream a dream. Even while we are sleeping, we are constructing narratives. How cool is that? Storytelling is so elemental to our being that we may be compelled to do it unintentionally, while we’re asleep.

That means that we are all storytellers. But to be writers, we have to externalize those narratives.

Laura Benedict—February 22, 2017

 

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, “Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus”, Dr. Srini Pillay writes about our over-emphasis on focus. We have our to-do lists, timetables, goals. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it turns out we also should be practicing “unfocus.”

In keeping with recent research, both focus and unfocus are vital. The brain operates optimally when it toggles between focus and unfocus, allowing you to develop resilience, enhance creativity, and make better decisions too.

When you unfocus, you engage a brain circuit called the “default mode network.” Abbreviated as the DMN, we used to think of this circuit as the Do Mostly Nothing circuit because it only came on when you stopped focusing effortfully. Yet, when “at rest”, this circuit uses 20% of the body’s energy (compared to the comparatively small 5% that any effort will require).

The DMN needs this energy because it is doing anything but resting. Under the brain’s conscious radar, it activates old memories, goes back and forth between the past, present, and future, and recombines different ideas. Using this new and previously inaccessible data, you develop enhanced self-awareness and a sense of personal relevance. And you can imagine creative solutions or predict the future, thereby leading to better decision-making too. The DMN also helps you tune into other people’s thinking, thereby improving team understanding and cohesion.

Dr. Pillay recommends building “positive constructive daydreaming” (PCD) into your day. I do this very well at my local coffee house. I stare. Out the window. Sometimes at people. I’m really working, though. That’s PCD time!

Another tip from the good doctor: power naps. “When your brain is in a slump, your clarity and creativity are compromised. After a 10-minute nap, studies show that you become much clearer and more alert.”

But the technique that really jumped out at me was this:

Pretending to be someone else: When you’re stuck in a creative process, unfocus may also come to the rescue when you embody and live out an entirely different personality. In 2016, educational psychologists, Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar found that people who try to solve creative problems are more successful if they behave like an eccentric poet than a rigid librarian. Given a test in which they have to come up with as many uses as possible for any object (e.g. a brick) those who behave like eccentric poets have superior creative performance. This finding holds even if the same person takes on a different identity.

When in a creative deadlock, try this exercise of embodying a different identity. It will likely get you out of your own head, and allow you to think from another person’s perspective. I call this psychological halloweenism.

This is close to something I’ve done on occasion. I may have finished a draft and am doing the first read through. Something’s not working. I don’t know what.

I set it aside for awhile and do something unfocused: like pleasure reading, eating a Tommy Burger, or riding my bike. Then when I go back to it I think of a favorite author and pretend he’s looking over my shoulder at the draft. I have him say, “I think you need to ….” and just imagine what he would advise. It’s amazing how often this can break the logjam.

In light of all the science, then, I’ve determined to take a little more unfocus time on weekends.

I’ve also gotten more specific about how I spend my focus time. I’m a morning person. I like getting up while it’s still dark and pouring that first cup of java and getting some words down. I can write for two or three hours straight. But I’ve stopped doing that. I am forcing myself to take a break after 45 minutes of writing, to let the noggin rest a bit. Ten minutes maybe. Then back to work.

James Scott Bell—May 28, 2017

 

What is the subconscious? Novelist/writing instructor Dennis Foley reduces the definition to a simple, beautiful simile:

The subconscious is like a little seven-year-old girl who brings you gifts.

Unfortunately, our conscious mind is usually too busy to figure out the value of these odd thoughts and dismisses them as inconsequential, even nonsensical.

The risk is, if you ignore the little girl’s gifts, pretty soon she stops bringing them and you lose touch with a vital link to your writer’s imagination. But if you encourage her to bring more gifts, she’s happy to oblige.

Sometimes the little girl delivers the elusive perfect phrase you’ve been searching for or that exhilarating plot twist that turns your story on its head.

At those times, she’s often dubbed “the muse.”

The trick is how to consistently turn random thoughts into gifts from a muse. Here are eight tips:

#1 – Be patient and keep trying.

Training the subconscious to produce inspiration on demand is like housetraining a puppy.

At first, it pees at unpredictable times and places. You grab it and rush outside. When it does its business on the grass instead of expensive carpet, you offer lots of praise. Soon it learns there is a better time and place to let loose.

Keep reinforcing that lesson and your subconscious will scratch at the back door when it wants to get out.

#2 – Pay attention to daydreams, wild hare ideas, and jolts of intuition. Chances are your subconscious shot them out for a reason, even if that reason isn’t immediately obvious.

Say you’re struggling over how to write a surprise revelation in a scene. Two days ago, you remembered crazy Aunt Gretchen, whom you hadn’t thought about in years. Then you realize if a character like her walks into the scene, she’s the perfect vehicle to deliver the surprise.

#3 – Expect the subconscious to have lousy timing.

That brilliant flash of inspiration often hits at the most inconvenient moment. In the middle of a job interview. In the shower. Or while your toddler is having a meltdown at Winn-Dixie.

Finish the task at hand but ask your subconscious to send you a reminder later. As soon as possible, write down that brilliant flash before you forget it.

#4 – Keep requests small.

Some authors claim to have dreamed multi-book sagas covering five generations of characters. Lucky them. My subconscious doesn’t work that hard.

Start by asking it to solve little problems.

As you’re going to bed, think about a character you’re having trouble bringing to life. Miriam seems flat and hollow but, for some reason you can’t explain, she hates the mustache on her new lover, Jack. Ask your subconscious: “Why?”

When you wake up, you realize Jack’s mustache looks just like her uncle’s did…when he molested Miriam at age five.

Until that moment, you didn’t even know Miriam had survived abuse…but your subconscious knew. That’s why it dropped the hint about her dislike for the mustache. She becomes a deeper character with secrets and hidden motives you can use to complicate her relationship with Jack.

#5 – Recognize obscure clues.

This tip takes practice because suggestions from the subconscious are often oblique and challenging to interpret.

You want to write a scene where a detective questions a suspect to pin down his whereabouts at the time of a crime. You ponder that as you drift off to sleep. The next morning, “lemon chicken” comes to mind.

What the…?

But you start typing and pretty soon the scene flows out like this:

“Hey, Fred, you like Chinese food?”

“Sure, Detective.”

“Ever try Wang’s all-you-can-eat buffet?”

“That’s my favorite place. Their lemon chicken is to die for.”

“Yeah, it’s the best.”

[Fred relaxes] “But not when it gets soggy. I only like it when the coating is still crispy.”

“Right you are. I don’t like soggy either.”

“Detective, would you believe last night I waited forty-five minutes for the kitchen to bring out a fresh batch?”

“Wow, Fred, you’re a patient man. About what time was that?”

“Quarter to eight.”

“So you must have been there when that dude got killed out in the alley.”

[Fred fidgets and licks his lips] “Um, yeah, but I didn’t see anything. I had nothing to do with him getting stabbed.”

“Oh really? Funny thing is, nobody knows he got stabbed…except the killer.”

Lemon chicken directed you to an effective line of questioning to solve the crime.

Debbie Burke—February 5, 2019

***

  1. Have you tapped your dreams for you writing? If so, in what way?
  2. Do you give yourself a break and let your subconscious work it’s magic while you’re mentally elsewhere? Is there a particular activity, like talking a walk or a shower that helps in this?
  3. Do you listen to your inner “seven-year-old” and accept the gifts it has to offer your writing? Any tips on doing so?

***

There’s a sign above the library book drop: NO TRASH OR VIDEOTAPES. Meg never thought she’d have to add: NO DEAD BODIES.

It’s May 1985 and Meg Booker already has her hands full, what with running the busy Fir Grove branch library, helping her flaky actor brother with his latest onstage project, and caring for an orphaned kitten that shows up outside the branch.

Then a rare bank note goes missing at a library event, igniting a feud between two local collectors, and Meg thinks her life couldn’t get any more complicated… until a dead body turns up in the book drop room.

Racing against time, Meg must use all of her librarian skills to discover the real killer’s identity, before the police arrest her for the crime.

Book Drop Dead is the second title in the 1980s Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries series.  It’s available at the major ebook retailers via this universal book link.

Reader Friday-Speaking of Words…

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Since we all love to play with words . . . let’s dazzle each other, okay?

Remember writing on your hands in school? Oh, you still do . . . (Image courtesy of Pixabay)

Think of words and phrases from the past which have a totally new/different meaning in the present.

For instance, the word stream. Something we used to fish from–now we watch or listen to.

Or, text. Or, post. Get it?

Now it’s your turn . . . and, Go!

 

True Crime Thursday – Baby Grand Piano Scam

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Searobin, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

A college music major receives an email that’s a dream come true. A professor from the same college retired and must find a good home for a gently used baby grand piano. Money isn’t important. In fact, the professor will give the piano away as long as the recipient cherishes it as much as the professor did. To receive the piano, the student only needs to pay a moving company to deliver it.

For a little over $500, delivery is in 10 days, or for expedited two-day service, the fee is $1000. Simply pay the charge in advance by Zelle or cryptocurrency.

A university alum receives a similar email from a professor at that university who’s assisting the widow of a faculty member. She must downsize and wants to donate her husband’s precious baby grand piano to someone who will truly appreciate it. Similar terms: pay a moving company only for delivery charges by Zelle or crypto payment in advance.

Seeing a pattern?

In reality, there is no retired professor or widow, no moving company, and, most of all, no piano. There is only a scammer who preys on unsuspecting victims, pocketing untraceable payments that can’t be recovered.

Scammers understand psychology and know how to appeal to emotions. They offer a music lover’s dream come true for free. But free is almost never free. 

Attorney Steve Weisman posts daily fraud warnings on his excellent website Scamicide. His report from June 21, 2024 says:

“Cybersecurity company Proofpoint recently discovered a scam in which people are receiving emails offering a free piano which is available often purportedly due to a death in the family.  The scam has largely targeted students and professors at colleges and universities. Often in the email, the scammer poses a someone from the same college or university as that of the targeted victim.  According to Proofpoint they have identified about 125,000 of these emails sent since the beginning of the year.”

Steve adds:

“People may trust emails such as this due to affinity fraud where we tend to trust people with whom we share some kind of connection and getting an email such as this that appears to come from someone at your college or university may cause the person receiving the email to trust it to be legitimate.”

The free baby grand piano scam has been around for several years but affinity angle may be a newer, more sophisticated refinement. Reddit has numerous reports about the fraud, including this one from 2021 where the intended victim fortunately caught on before sending money.

The scammer runs ads in online marketplaces like Craig’s List, offering a premium piano for free. The ad is embellished with sentiments that appeal to the buyer’s emotions, like: “want[ing] the piano to be used to share with friends and family the joys of music.”

The person who answers the ad is then referred to a professional-looking website of a moving company that will deliver the piano. Contact may be by email or live chat. The mover even sends a photo of the piano to add legitimacy. However, the photo is probably a generic one from a stock photo site…like the one I used to illustrate this post.

Pro tip: To check photo sources, run a reverse image search through TinEye or Google. This tip also works to verify photos featured on dating sites where the subjects are often models, not real people.

The terms for the delivery payment should set off deafening alarm bells: No credit cards, no PayPal, no secured money transfers. Payment must be made in advance via Zelle, money order, or gift cards.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) payments are popular because they are a fast, convenient way to send money.

The downside: if the merchandise isn’t delivered or is defective, the buyer has no recourse.  Once fraudsters receive the money, they disappear. The victim is out of luck because law enforcement can’t help.

Here’s Steve’s recommendation about using P2P services: 

“There are many other scams involving Venmo, Zelle and other P2P services and the legal protection that you get with these services in the event you are scammed is nowhere near as great as the protection you get with your credit card.  A good rule to follow is to never use Venmo, Zelle or any other P2P service for any business transaction, but limit their use to small transfers between friends and family.”

Brown University posts piano scam warnings on their “Phish Bowl” site. They included the below email which was particularly entertaining. Notice Josiah’s position.

From: Josiah [deleted]
Subject: Baby yamaha piano for free
Date: October 13, 2023 at 5:37:10 PM EDT
To:

Dear Student /Staff/Faculty,
One of our staff, Mr. Phil H. is downsizing and looking to give
away his late dad’s piano to a loving home. The Piano is a 2014 Yamaha
Baby Grand size used like new. You can write to him to indicate your
interest on his private email [deleted] to arrange an
inspection and delivery with a moving company. Kindly write Mr. Phil H. via your private email for a swift response.

Josiah [deleted]
Professor of Psychoceramics

Per Wiktionary: “Noun. psychoceramics. The study of crackpots.”

Gotta appreciate a scammer with a sense of humor.

Many thanks to Steve Weisman for permission to quote.

~~~

TKZers: Do you know about frauds where valuable items (like a piano) are offered as bait? Have you or someone you know ever been targeted by an affinity scammer?

~~~

 

Investigator Tawny Lindholm encounters a clever affinity scam in Stalking Midas. But a glamorous con artist has killed before to cover her tracks. Now Tawny is in her crosshairs.

Sales link.

 

 

 

Hesitation Kills

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By John Gilstrap

After reading Reavis Wortham’s post on Saturday, I figured it was okay to tell this story.

I’ve posted before about our beloved dog Kimber, a mix of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Boston Terrier called a Caviston. (And yes, it bothers me that it’s not spelled Cavaston, but no one consulted me.) When we first moved to the woodland house in West Virginia, she weighed less than five pounds and I was keenly aware that the entire world posed one big hazard for her. Not only was she prey to most other creatures, her girth was smaller than that of the floor vents which hadn’t yet been covered.

We fenced in about a half acre of the backyard/woods so Kimber could have a place to wander, but for the first, say, nine months of her life, she never wandered without an escort. I was her primary security detail. After a year or so, she’d filled out to about 18 pounds and had outgrown reasonable threats from owls and hawks. Only the largest dogs ever outgrow threats from eagles, but our eagles stay distracted by the Potomac River smorgasbord a few hundred yards away from our place.

Once permitted to wander her fenced domain alone during the day, she turned into quite the squirrel hunter, chasing them great distances until the critters cheated and shot up a tree. I don’t think Kimber ever figured out why she couldn’t follow. She’s an avid deer chaser, too, though I’m not sure of her plan for when she caught one.

As neighbors joined our community, her canine best friends became a German shepherd and a Rottweiler. They let her hang out with them and played without crushing her. Like many small breeds, Kimber always thought she had way more wolf in her than she ever did.

As a human in her life, I of course knew better. Although Kimber aged out of danger from smaller predators, very real danger remained from larger carnivores–coyotes in particular. Even at her top adult weight of 20 pounds, she never went out at night without an armed escort. My rifle of choice: a Rossi Circuit Judge chambered in .45 Long Colt. The coyote gun lives its life staged at the back door all the time, easily accessible when needed. Often carried, only used once. On a snake. That’s a lot of gun for a snake.

Then came last week.

Last week was reasonably cool for a June afternoon, so we left the downstairs door open to allow Kimber to come and go as she pleased to and from the back yard. My office sits on the second floor, overlooking the backyard and the woods beyond. I was doing as I always do while staring down the maw of an approaching deadline, pounding away on the keyboard, playing with my imaginary friends when a cacophony erupted from out beyond my windows.

Growling and barking. My wife screaming at Kimber to come. To stop. I heard other animal sounds.

I knew this was bad.

I bolted from my desk and raced down the stairs, down the hall, and through the family room to the back door, grabbing the rifle on my way out. I still had no idea what was happening, but the noise of it all had not decreased in intensity. If anything, it had gotten louder.

Outside now, I turned the corner and the crisis became clear. Kimber had tangled with a woodchuck (or groundhog, depending on where you live). Normally docile, woodchucks are herbivores and hover near the bottom of Mother Nature’s food chain. When confronted with a carnivore, they survive by running away. But Kimber was faster and she cornered it against a tree.

Best I could tell, Kimber thought it was a game. Her tail was wagging hard enough to dislocate itself at the root as she bounced around, taunting the woodchuck that thought it was fighting for its life. Those critters have wicked incisors and long claws that would tear a little dog apart. Given a clear shot, I was going to kill the woodchuck.

Let’s not forget that my wife was in the mix, too, trying to separate the sparring parties. One thing for sure: I had no safe shot to take.

And then I did.

Woody Woodchuck broke into an open field run and for a good three or four seconds, he was all alone. As I shouldered the rifle, though, my wife yelled, “No, please, don’t!” In that instant of hesitation–my fault, not my wife’s; mine was the only finger on the trigger–Kimber woke up to the chase and re-entered the sight picture, chasing the woodchuck down until it somehow managed to climb under the fence and make its escape.

So, Woody lives on to make another appearance. Maybe he was traumatized enough to stay away from our backyard. I look for him every day. So does Kimber, who is fine, by the way. Not a scratch on her.

But a known danger lives on because of a momentary hesitation. Though Kimber sleeps in our bed at night, she is a country dog and she’s happiest when she’s outside. It’s too late to turn her into an indoor dog, and I wouldn’t want to anyway. So, if you’re a woodchuck or a coyote or a copperhead and you’re reading this, do yourself a favor and hang out at a property down the road. At the very least, stay outside the fence.

If there’s a writing related takeaway to this story, it’s that opportunity is often fleeting, and that hesitation–indecision–keeps doors shut that could otherwise be open. Whether it’s a job opportunity or a creative decision in a story, sometimes making a decision–any decision–is better than stewing about it overnight.

We have outgrown our old server

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Word Porn: Gobsmacked When She Mantled Him

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Have you ever been watching a movie or a net-streaming series, and a character uses such a visceral word it stops you cold?

This happened to me last weekend, and I immediately reached for my phone to jot it down. The word painted the perfect mental image. Isn’t that what we all strive for?

The word is mantled or mantling, used as a verb. Have you heard or read this word in a novel? I had not. And I love new-to-me words, especially verbs.

Dictionary defines mantle as:

  1. Literary

Clothe in or as if in a mantle; cloak or envelop.

  • Archaic

(of blood) suffuse (the face).

“A warm pink mounted to the girl’s cheeks and mantled her brow.”

  • Archaic

(of the face) glow with a blush.

“Her rich face mantling with emotion.”

  • Archaic

(of a liquid) become covered with a head or froth

“The poison mantled in the bowl.”

  1. (of a bird of prey on the ground or on a perch) spread the wings and tail to cover captured prey.

“The female Goshawk is feeding while mantling with spread wings over her prey.”

Origin

Latin       Old English   Old French    Modern

mantellum –> mentel –>  mantel –> mantle

As an unwritten “rule” it’s often best to steer clear of archaic usages unless we’re writing in that time period, but all the above definitions really work for me.

The context in which I heard mantled was in a comedy.

How can I say this without offending anyone? An obese (curvy? full-figured?) woman fell on top of this peanut of a man. When they landed on the ground, only his hands and feet protruded from beneath her.

One of the onlookers said, “Look how she mantled that poor guy.”

I died, laughing! Which made the verb even more memorable.

While I was in Dictionary.com, I looked up one of my favorite words: gobsmacked. Again, it paints the perfect mental image. Doesn’t it?

Definition

  1. Utterly astounded; astonished

“I was truly gobsmacked by their decision.”

Gobsmacked is an adjective that means completely shocked. The word gobsmacked comes from England and Scotland, where it is used as slang to express extreme shock. Gobsmacked is often used by people from these areas.

Example: She was absolutely gobsmacked when she discovered a large pile of money under the floorboards.

Where does gobsmacked come from?

Based on the parts of the word, feeling gobsmacked is equivalent to feeling like you’ve been (figuratively) hit in the mouth: gob is slang for “mouth” and smack is a verb that means “to hit.”

The suffix -ed, which indicates past tense, turns the word into an adjective. The first records of its use come from around the mid-1930s. It’s now a common slang term in the UK and is also used somewhat commonly in the US and other English-speaking areas.

Though gobsmacked means “astounded” or “astonished” to the point of being speechless, you don’t say it any time you want to mean “shocked.” It’s use calls attention to the fact that you were not expecting what happened — a lot like flabbergasted.

For example, someone might say they were gobsmacked when they won the lottery, or when they found out something costs much more than they thought, or when a long-lost friend surprised them with an unexpected visit.

When was the last time you were gobsmacked?

Have you used the word mantled in your writing? Please give us the context.

Have I Heard of You?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“The Deed is everything, the Glory nought.” – Goethe

I dread these conversations.

I’ve just met a person at a social gathering. (“I’m Jim.” “I’m Bill.”) We exchange pleasantries (“Here’s one of my pleasantries.” “Thank you, have one of mine.”) and before too long he asks, “So what do you do, Jim?”
I know what’s coming. It always ends the same way. But there’s no way out, unless I lie (“I own a plumbing company. Got a leak? We take a peek.”) So I give it to him straight. “I’m a writer.”

“Oh really?” (It’s coming…) “What do you write?”

“Thrillers.”

“Ah.” (Here it comes!) “Have I heard of you?”

I clear my throat. “James Scott Bell.”

Blank look. Embarrassed pause. “Um, no…”

The answer is always no.

In an effort to save a shred of dignity, I test him. “Have you heard of James Patterson?” In the off chance he says yes, I’m prepared to say I write for the same audience. That only a small fraction of his audience may have picked up one of my books is something I don’t feel compelled to share. But even with Mr. Patterson, the answer is usually along the lines of—

“Wait…um, wasn’t he heavyweight champion of the world?”

“You’re thinking of Floyd Patterson.”

“Oh, right. Do you mean the guy who killed his wife? Wait a second…Scott Patterson?”

“I think you mean Scott Peterson.”

“Yes! I have heard of him!”

I slink away, wondering if it’s too late to take up plumbing.

Even back in the “old days” of trad-only publishing, the answer was always no. Today, with all the indies and ’bots producing millions of books, the odds against some random person knowing your name are astronomical.

But this is not a new thing. Have you read any Thorne Smith lately?

Who?

Thorne Smith was a wildly popular author of the 1920s and 30s. He wrote numerous bestsellers, the most famous of which were about Cosmo Topper, a quiet, respectable banker pestered by the ghosts of a fun-loving couple, George and Marion Kerby. (In the 1937 movie, Roland Young played Topper, Cary Grant was George and Constance Bennett was Marion. It was also a popular TV show in the 50s.)

But today Thorne Smith is little more than a Jeopardy answer, and probably would stump everyone except three-time Jeopardy champion Meg Gardiner, who is wildly popular in her own right as a #1 bestselling thriller writer.

Have you heard of Carroll John Daly? No, he’s not the great grandfather of a certain rotund golfer. He is, in fact, the father of the hardboiled detective character.

Usually that honorific is given to Dashiell Hammett, going back to when he published the first of his Continental Op stories in Black Mask. But Daly’s hardboiled detective, Race Williams, appeared in Black Mask on June 1, 1923, pre-dating Hammett’s Op by several months, and Sam Spade by several years.

Daly’s contribution to the hardboiled genre was indeed monumental; far more than simply being the first at bat. And his impact was felt far beyond the private eye field alone. The Shadow, The Spider, The Phantom Detective—all the famous masked avengers of the pulps were merely gussied up versions of Race Williams. Daly took the two-gun American Hero from the wooly plains of the West and transplanted him in New York. He allowed his hero to retain all those traditional fantasy concepts of what the American Hero is and has been since the days of Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, and he gave him the desire and ability to back up his code of individualism, his distrust of authority and his interest in Justice over Legality, with a pair of smoking .44s. (BlackMaskmagazine.com)

And yet Mr. Daly’s star has faded, while people still read the writers he influenced—Chandler, Spillane, Robert B. Parker, to name just a few.

What’s the point of all this?

Write for your audience, write to please yourself, write to say something, write because you must…and let time and tide take care of themselves.

And if someone at a party does know your name, enjoy the moment! It may be the last time. Just don’t let it go to your head.

“How swiftly passes the glory of the world!” – Thomas á Kempis.

Do you have a favorite obscure writer?

What would you like a one- or two-line obit to say about your own writing?