THIS BEAUTIFUL PLANET
The flight was scheduled for five hours and 26 minutes, nonstop from Los Angeles to Newark. I wanted a window seat because, as they say in aviation, we pilots have enjoyed looking down on everybody else since 1903. But, alas, no such luck. My reservation was last-minute and the flight was full; the only available seat was in the middle, near the back of the plane. Hunkered on the aisle, engrossed in a copy of People magazine and munching peanut M&Ms from an economy-size bag, was a formidable-looking older woman with short, spiky hair the color of some rare metal. “Hi, looks like I’m in the middle.” She heaved a sigh that did little to hide her annoyance at my arrival as she derricked herself out of her seat to let me in. “Thanks,” I said. No, “You’re welcome” or, “No problem.” No smile. Nothing. The dude wedged into the window seat beside me was equally humorless. He was wearing a pinstriped, New York Yankees team jersey that hung on him like a tent. Baggy cargo shorts. Flip-flops. His wispy beard did little to camouflage his triple chin. He smelled of weed and barely glanced over as I settled in. “Is it me,” I said, stuffing my backpack under the seat in front of me because the overhead bins were already full, “or do these seats seem to get closer together every year?” A shrug was the extent of his response. We hadn’t even taxied from the terminal before he pulled down his window shade and began watching a succession of Adam Sandler movies on his iPad. I can handle being trapped in an aluminum tube for five hours and change, contorted with scant legroom between two unfriendly, oversized people. Commercial air carriers—American carriers, anyway—have long regarded as cattle any passenger not paying first-class or business-class fare, and I long ago came to terms with that reality. In fact, I do some of my best writing on airliners, inspired by the views passing below. My second Cordell Logan novel, Fangs Out, was conceived in such fashion while on a flight to Denver. But what I have trouble understanding are travelers like my bearded seatmate. There we were, rocketing nine miles-a-minute across a continent that took settlers months to traverse in their covered wagons, and not once did he raise his shade to take in the panorama below. It might’ve been one thing if he spent the flight chuckling or even occasionally smiling at Sandler’s antics, but he did neither. Between napping with his neck craned back and mouth open, and his frequent trips to the restroom (which irked the woman on the aisle no end because she had to get up every time, as I did), he stared at that iPad without expression virtually all the way to New Jersey. I don’t get it. When I fly my own airplane, I don’t do a whole lot of sightseeing, either. I’m too focused looking out for other aircraft, checking my instruments to make sure I’m on course and at the proper altitude, and that my engine is running smoothly. Only occasionally will I allow myself the luxury of taking in the view. It’s a different story when I fly commercially, when I can sit with that window shade open and be reminded how lucky I am—how lucky we all are—to inhabit this beautiful planet. From on high, there’s always some new vista to relish and some new horizon toward which to strive. How did we come to be? What is our place in the universe, our purpose here? These are the enigmatic questions I ponder as I look down. I have no answers beyond the obvious and the cliche: that life is to be lived in the moment, to be savored, before we’re compelled to move on to whatever waits for us beyond that final, hopefully far-distant horizon. Don’t get me wrong. I dig mindless Adam Sandler flicks about as much as the next immature male (Truth be told, I actually prefer Will Ferrell comedies). But given the choice, I’d rather spend my time in that aluminum tube watching the sun set on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, or rise over the Great Plains at dawn. There are always rivers and highways to trace and towering, granite peaks at which to marvel. There are verdant forests and checkerboard farms and big cities and small towns. I always look for the airports. It can be easy sometimes to forget that it’s been little more than a century, in 1903, when two brothers, bicycle mechanics from Ohio, first achieved powered flight above the earth. How fortunate we are they did. Happy flying.
VFR DAYS
When you’re a pilot, little is more satisfying than properly executing a precision instrument approach. It’s all about focus, situational awareness, and trusting your guidance systems instead of your middle ear when you can’t see where you’re going. You’re descending blindly through the clouds, making small course and altitude corrections to ensure you’re properly tracking the localizer and glideslope signals. Suddenly, the clouds begin to thin, abruptly give way, and there you are, right where you’re supposed to be: at the proper height a few hundred feet above the ground with the runway directly in front of you. Good stuff. To me, though, what’s even more rewarding is flying in clear skies with unlimited visibility. Gazing down from on high, I am ever reminded how staggeringly beautiful our planet is regardless of the many challenges it faces today, and how privileged I am to enjoy the view. On such days I think of Wilbur and Orville and the countless other aviation pioneers. I am grateful to them. Their pluck and ingenuity allows pilots like me today to “slip the surly bonds” and go dancing the skies “on laughter-silvered wings,” as Canadian pilot John Gillespie Magee, Jr. put it so eloquently in his famous poem, “High Flight.” On such glorious days, I cannot understand why anyone would not want to learn to fly. Don’t get me wrong. The learning is not easy. There are abundant skills to master, medical examinations to take, operational manuals to study, much memorization, and tests to pass, both written and practical. It takes patience, money, and time. At first the goal and the hazards inherent in it seem overwhelming. Indeed, the first bit of advice my first instructor ever imparted on me, once we dispensed with all the niceties and climbed into N45290, a Cessna 150, for my first flight lesson, are burned into my brain like a cattle brand. “A plane will kill you faster than anything,” he said, “unless you know what you’re doing.” I remember thinking, This is nuts. No way I’ll ever be confident enough to ever safely fly this thing yourself. And then, on a warm August morning, with less than 12 hours of flight time recorded in my official pilot’s logbook—less time than it took to learn how to drive a car–my instructor told me to taxi in, climbed out, and said, “Three touch-and-goes, then come on back. Do not break the airplane or you’ll have to pay for it.” My first solo flight! The thing about it was, I don’t remember being nervous. What I do remember, vividly, is taxiing back out (it was a small airport in northern Colorado with no control tower) and having to wait while a coyote sat placidly about a hundred feet down the runway, blocking my takeoff. Eventually the coyote sauntered off and I advanced the throttle. As the airspeed needle came alive and the plane lifted off, climbing into the blue, I immediately heard a loud, disquieting noise—much like what I imagined a hurricane might sound like—and I realized I’d forgotten to latch the right-side door after my instructor got out. I leaned over while keeping the wings level, yanked the door shut, proceeded to perform my requisite touch-and-go’s, and landed, full-stop, to my instructor’s relief, without breaking the airplane. To this day, it remains among the proudest moments of my life. It’s especially difficult to write on VFR days, when toiling inside at a computer, trying to be creative, is not nearly as fun as taking off and burning holes in clear skies. As I write this, I’m working on my eighth Cordell Logan novel working title, The Impossible Turn), but I’d much rather be flying.
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.