THANK YOU, MISS VALLEY
Some writers are born. Others are made. I’m from the latter camp. Nowhere in my ambitions while growing up was there the notion that one day I might earn my keep via the printed word. I planned on becoming a physician, a heart surgeon, to be more specific—at least that’s what I told adults whenever they asked what I wanted to be when I became one of them. They seemed impressed. That I ended up paying the bills not by cracking chests but by stringing sentences together is only partially explained by the fact that I lacked any real desire to be a doctor in the first place. I wasn’t sure back then how I wanted to spend my life. That I ultimately became a working writer happened only because to land in the classroom of English teacher Aurelia Valley. Miss Valley was what some might describe today as a Big Beautiful Woman minus the “beautiful” part. She wore her dark hair short and stringy and unwashed in an outdated bob, parted to one side. She favored featureless, flat-soled shoes, rimless glasses, and cheap, shiftless pattern dresses that hung on her like potato sacks. She had a small, upturned nose that drew comparisons to that of a pig, and I seem to recall her breathing mostly through her mouth. To my recollection, she never smiled. The less sensitive among my classmates frequently made fun of the way she looked. Truth be told, I probably did, too, if only to fit in. To say that the high school in which Miss Valley labored was blue collar would be like saying the Pope is religious. We had no honors classes (though we always fielded a powerful football team). Relatively few students went on to four-year universities. It was the kind of school where landing a job at the post office after graduation was considered high achievement. Reading and writing reports about Shakespeare, Beowulf, Last of the Mohicans and the other classic works of literature that Miss Valley strived mightily to make us adore as much as she did was antithetical to my bored, distracted classmates, and to me. But that never seemed to deter her. Miss Valley taught passionately. One afternoon midway through my senior year, after the bell rang and everyone else emptied out of her classroom per usual like Russian nukes were inbound, she asked me to stay behind for a few minutes. I was embarrassed. What would my buddies think? That Miss Valley was sweet on me? I wanted to run. Only I couldn’t. She had blocked the doorway with her ample frame. “You should think about being a writer,” Miss Valley said. “You have an aptitude.” I don’t recall what transpired between the two of us after that, only that I was struck by the realization that it was the first time anyone had ever told me that I had an aptitude for anything other than griping about having to shovel snow from the front sidewalk or mow the lawn. Flash forward a year or so later. I was in college, a pre-med major nursing a 2.2 GPA–hardly the kind of grades that’ll get you into Harvard Medical School. I’d discovered beer and girls by then, and I knew, given my paltry academic performance, that I performing heart transplants was definitely out of the picture. And so, one night in my dorm room, while thumbing through the university’s course catalog, struggling to figure out what the hell to do with the rest of my life, I happened upon the requirements for a degree in journalism. In that moment, I swear I heard Miss Valley’s voice as if she were standing right beside me: “You should think about being a writer. You have an aptitude.” And so I became one. Upon graduation, I landed a newspaper job in a town where I soon met an intelligent, beautiful young woman who eventually would become my wife. We remain happily married more than three decades later. We have two wonderful children and live in a fine home overlooking the Pacific. It is hardly hyperbole to say that my life would’ve been far less fulfilled had Miss Valley not kept me after class that day. Indeed, had it not been for here, I never would’ve written Flat Spin and the many other Cordell Logan mysteries that have followed. Aurelia Valley passed away in 1996. I foolishly never took the time to express my appreciation to her before she passed on. This will have to do. Thank you, Miss Valley. For everything.
ON BEING A PLOTTER
“Where do you get your ideas?” It’s a standard question writers are asked at conferences where readers and authors get together to celebrate the genre of mystery-thrillers. It’s also a question I never know how to answer. Inspiration is an elusive thing. For me, it defies explanation. Don’t ask me how, but I could be taking a shower, watching TV, eating a burrito, or sleeping, when—bam!— the notion of a plot for a new book will hit me like a bolt out of the blue. Most of those notions go nowhere because they’re either half-baked, been done before, or just plain goofy. But every so often, one will passes muster. And that’s when the hard work starts. There are essentially two types of writers of mysteries: the “panster” and the “plotter.” A pantser fliesby the seats of their pants, not knowing from one day to the next which way the plot is going or how in the name of all that is holy their hero will ever solve the crime. Writers who follow this approach are convinced that if they don’t know ahead of time which direction their story is unfolding, neither will their audience, making for a less predictable, more compelling read. I’ve tried it that way. Repeatedly. It’s not gone well. I’ve spent days in teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling confusion trying to keep track of all my character, and wasted weeks writing myself down dead-ends that ended up with me pressing “delete.” All of which explains why I’m a card-carrying plotter. I map out my books before I ever sit down to write a word. It’s akin to putting together a flight plan. I prefer navigating from point-to-point rather than drifting on the wind, hoping I have enough fuel to reach my final destination. The first thing I do is come up with the beginning, middle, and end of the story. What is the crime that gets the action going? How does Cordell Logan logically get involved in solving that crime? What hurdles will he encounter along the way that might prevent him from achieving his goal? Who is the bad guy that will be revealed in the end? After that, I start putting meat on that skeleton. I write a brief synopsis of each scene as I envision it. I aim for at least 30 scenes. The finished outline typically is no less than 15 single-spaced pages–enough that I’m confident I have enough material to tell a complete story. My outline, however, is hardly gospel. The story will invariably evolve along the way. Some if not many of the scenes I conceived initially will prove themselves illogical or unworkable. Better plot twists will come to me as my characters come to life. It’s when the characters begin talking to each other that I know I’m in the groove. Your characters talk to each other? Have you seen a psychologist lately? Actually, I live with a psychologist. And, yes, I know it sounds a little crazy, but that’s how it works. If you have any ideas for Logan’s next adventure, please let me know.
MEMORIES OF LANDSCAPE
Early in my journalism career, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, a Marine Corps fighter ace and Medal of Honor recipient whose exploits fighting the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II inspired his best-selling memoir, “Baa, Baa Black Sheep,” and, later, a popular television series based loosely on his book. I asked Boyington in our conversation if he thought he was born he was born to be a fighter pilot. “Hell, no,” he shot back. “I wanted to be a 17th Century buccaneer. I was just born too late.” I know the feeling. In the pantheon of “people I wish I had been,” World War II fighter pilot ranks right up there. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, like Pappy Boyington, I too was born much too late. Which may explain why, when it comes to reading for vicarious pleasure, I particularly enjoy nonfiction memoirs like his. I’ve read a ton of them over the years, marveling at the heroism of their authors. Their bravery remains unquestionable and unmatched. The caliber of their prose remains another matter. Most such books were penned by men who never aspired to be wordsmiths. They were combat pilots. Sky-borne war daddies. Even when their books were ghost-written by professional scribes, the finished product, however engaging, rarely approached anything resembling literature. Which is why I remain so impressed after recently finishing Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator by Samuel Hynes. Hynes, who died in 2019, was a Midwestern boy barely 18 when he left home and learned to fly torpedo bombers. He logged 78 combat missions in the Pacific before the fighting stopped, gaining in the process a Distinguished Flying Cross and a depth of insight into war—the boredom, the madness, the absurdity, the exhilaration—I’ve rarely derived reading other, similar books. No less significantly, Hynes captures elegantly the sheer joy of being aloft without anyone shooting at you–that wondrous, ethereal bond between all pilots, be they civilian or military, and their flying machines. Consider this bit of eloquence: “Memories of flying are almost always memories of landscape. It isn’t that you think I’m flying over this state or that one, but that you are moving above a landscape pierced by a mountain, or patched with woodlands, or edged by the sea. The earth is always there below, apart and beautiful (no land is ugly from the air), revealing its private features in a way that it never does to the traveler on the surface. A pilot can see where a road goes; what is over the hill, the shape of lakes and towns; and I suppose this knowledge of the earth’s face is a part of the feeling of domination that a pilot feels when his plane reaches a commanding altitude and he looks down on the world that stretches out beneath him.” I was not surprised to learn that after the war, Hynes became a distinguished scholar, literary critic, and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton University. I only wish I had discovered Flights of Passage before he flew West, to tell him how much I relished it.
HIGHWAY TO THE RIDICULOUS ZONE
I love airplanes. I will happily watch any movie with airplanes in it, even computer-animated cartoons featuring airplanes. Not long ago, I had the pleasure of watching Disney’s charming Planes for the first time. It’s the story of Dusty Crophopper, a lumbering, loveable crop duster from Propwash Junction who aspires to compete in a big air race. My little grandkiddos had seen the film easily a dozen times but were happy to watch it yet again with me, in much the same way I’ve watched Top Gun over the years, over and over. Did I care the first time I saw Top Gun (or the last time, for that matter) about the movie’s abundant cheese factor? About the less-than-zero chemistry between Kelly McGillis and Tom Cruise? About the gaping plot holes? Nope. I’m an unabashed Cruise fan and Top Gun offered in my opinion among the best openings of any movie ever made, with its stylish and exciting montage of aircraft carrier flight deck operations. I was hooked from the opening frames and willingly went along for the ride. And thus it was, with an open mind, that I recently sat down and rewatched the sequel to Top Gun—Top Gun Maverick. The first time I saw the sequel was last year in a movie theater. Flying scenes aside, which were great, I was alone among my family members in thinking that the film was pretty lame. Maybe it was because I spent a decade working as screenwriter in Hollywood, penning more than my share of marginal movie scripts, and grew too adept at seeing the flaws in the work of other writers as well as my own. Or maybe it was my admitted envy as a pilot that Cruise owns a beautifully restored P-51 Mustang fighter and got to do catapult shots off carriers in Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets while filming Top Gun Maverick Whatever the reasons, I found myself after about twenty minutes into the sequel looking impatiently at my watch and rolling my eyes at its abundant contrivances, the preposterousness of its all-too-predictable plot, and the flagrant theft of story devices from other blockbuster movies. My mind began to drift. Could the same criticisms apply to my own work? Were my Cordell Logan novels like Voodoo Ridge and Hot Start derivative of mysteries written by others? I sure hoped not. I purposely go out of my way not to read any fiction when I’m writing for fear of inadvertently borrowing plot twists and writing styles. Anyway, much as I had hoped otherwise, I’m sad to report that my opinion of Top Gun Maverick changed little from having watched the flick the first time. I won’t catalogue my many specific grievances except for the following. At the end of the first Top Gun, Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell saves the day by splashing three enemy MiGs, thus becoming—as the sequel points out— the first American fighter pilot to have done so in the past 40 years. In the sequel, thirty-six years later, he’s hanging out at a dive watering hole in San Diego where an old girlfriend tends bar. In strolls a group of the Navy’s hottest fighter jocks who somehow don’t recognize Maverick and have no idea he’s been brought in to train them for a top-secret mission. Maverick’s wearing his official Navy flight jacket festooned with squadron patches and looking every inch like the cool guy, albeit aging Navy aviator. I’ve had the honor of hanging out in a few of those dives with a few of those cool guys. Believe me, if a Top Gun legend like Maverick was sitting at the bar nursing a brewski, word would spread quickly among other fighter jocks that they were in the presence of greatness, and the beers would be on them the rest of the night. In the movie, however, the cocky newbies treat Maverick like he’s an over-the-hill wanna-be before literally tossing him out of the bar on his ass. Call me picky, but by that point, I was having none of it. So, sorry, Tom Cruise. I guess you could say I’ve lost that lovin’ feeling. As the old expressing goes, “Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.” Top Gun Maverick was not one of them. That said, Tom, buddy, if you ever happen to read this, and you’re looking for somebody to go for a hop with you in that gorgeous P-51 of yours, I’ll be there with my hair on fire.