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.

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?

I spoke at a book club event this past week and a nice lady who organized the meeting at a local public library took me to task on not releasing a new book in the Red River Series in the last year or two. She caught me the moment I walked into the building.

“I’m tired of waiting.”

The event began at two o’clock, and I walked in ten minutes early. She sounded like my late father-in-law who insisted being at least thirty minutes early to everything.

I squinted at her, trying to see if there was some family relationship. “I would have been here earlier if you’d asked.”

“That’s not what I meant. I want another Red River book. I like those the best, then your other series, even though one of them was about Tom Bell in the 1930s. You need to hurry up and bring everyone back in the next one. I want my adopted family.”

“Ah.” I turned the tables on her. “So what do you like best about that series?”

Her face brightened. “They take me back to when I was a kid.”

“These books are a time machine, then.”

“I suppose.” She led me into the meeting room. “The way you write is so…familiar. I feel comfortable with all of your characters and the music in there is what I listened to back you’re your history is accurate, and I love everything about those books, except that you kill animals in almost every one of them.”

That second zinger caught me by surprise. “Well, you realize no animals are harmed in these novels. They’re fiction. I made them all up.”

“But I love dogs, and now that you mention it, you killed a cat in one of those Sonny Hawke novels.”

I couldn’t let that go. “Again, we’re talking fiction here.”

“But I don’t like to read about animals being hurt or injured.”

I neglected to bring up the subject that some of my most heart-wrenching newspaper columns involved the loss of dogs, and I always hear from readers who say I touched something deep inside them, and thanked me for it.

In fact, just this past weekend I helped my little brother bury one of his dogs, because he was
both physically and mentally unable to do it by himself. You see, he lives out in the country and rural life is hard on animals.

The dog he cared for wasn’t his. Rocky (and that’s his given name) granted an elderly man’s dying wish that he look after Tig after Charlie passed. The old dog insisted on staying at the empty house down the road, because that was his home and he refused to move in with Rocky who fed and watered him for three years.

When a car sped by this past weekend, going way too fast on an asphalt county road, Tig hadn’t completely crossed the road. His back was broken, and the poor dog was so mangled that Rocky had to do what country folk have done all their lives to end suffering.

So we buried Tig, another in a long line of faithful companions I’ve had to lower into the ground.

As he and I were finishing up, I thought back about that book club lady and pondered a strange thought. Thrillers and mysteries are filled with murder and mayhem. I can kill a hundred people in one of my books (all made up, of course), and readers seldom say anything about the body count.

But if an animal dies, folks gather up torches and pitchforks to chant in front of my house, hoping to toast some marshmallows as my computer goes up in flames. Even the spouse of one of my oldest friends refuses to read any of my books, because she’s afraid I’ll waylay her with a deceased animal.

When fictitious animals “die” in my novels, it’s to advance the plot, or to allow the reader, in the case of my aforementioned Texas Ranger to show this character was under a great deal of stress and dealt with running over a feral cat that darted out in front of his truck with tears and a near emotional breakdown.

But at the same time, the Book Club lady loves to think about those days when she grew up in the country. But doesn’t want to dwell on the reality of life itself.

In my view, animal deaths are not off limits as long as they aren’t gory and serve the story.

Come on, Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows wouldn’t be classics without these events.

So authors, have you killed off an animal in one of your novels?

And readers, what are your thoughts on this very real part of life in a fictionalized world?