Do Old Mobsters Ever Really Retire? Not in the Hammer!

I often get asked if the comedy in my books is anything like the comedy I post here.

So here's one of my favourite scenes from THE GODDAUGHTER CAPER.  I often read this one at events.  It answers the question:  Do old mobsters ever really retire?

(Background: Gina has inherited a chest full of cash and bonds from her great-uncle Seb, who was in the mob.  But when the chest arrives at her store, it has a dead body in it!  This scene is two chapters later.)

Still had time to kill. I picked up the magazine that was on top of the pile. Had to smile at the name on the cover.

Association of Retired Seniors…ARS for short.

I paged through it.  One ad in particular caught my interest. This was because someone had taken a black felt pen and circled it. It read:

Fly By Night Funerals

Need Help? Short on cash?

From Rigor to Removal,

we do the whole thing.

Discreet Burials

Plenty of satisfied customers.

Call 555-PLANTUM

(555-752-6886)

I felt the blood leave my face. I recognized that phone number. It was the number

I had used that morning to reach Jimmy in the retirement home.  Crap!

I quickly speed-dialed Sammy, my uncle Vince’s underboss. It immediately went to voice mail.  I said a very bad word.

“Sammy, call me back as soon as you can,” I hissed into the phone.

I sat for a moment listening to my heart pound. But I’m really not good at sitting and doing nothing. So I phoned the number in the ad. Again, it went to voice mail. A shaky elderly voice addressed me.

“You have reached Fly By Night Funerals…

You plug ’em, we plant ’em. Please leave a number,

and we will return your call as soon as possible.”

The machine beeped at me. I clicked off without leaving a message.

I stared at the phone in my hand. Almost immediately it binged to signal a new call.

“What’s up?” said Sammy.

“Fly by Night Funerals. Spill it,” I said, keeping my voice low.

 “Oh, that,” said Sammy. “Yeah, I figured there was a mix-up. The box with the body in it that got delivered to your place was supposed to go to the Holy Cannoli Retirement Home.”

“The retirement home? Like they need more dead bodies? They don’t create

enough of their own?” This was just loony.

“Easy, sugar. It’s simply a small business we’re supporting. Old Jimmy is the manager.”

I got this cold feeling. “The manager of what small business?”

“A funeral business. Nothing to get excited about. They just run it from the

retirement home so there aren’t that many questions.”

Questions? I had a few questions. But before I could ask them, Sammy said,

“Nobody notices a few extra bodies leaving a retirement home. Get it?”

I was starting to get it. I remembered the answering machine message. You plug ’em—we plant ’em.

“They’re running a business burying people who get murdered?” I said.

“We don’t off them ourselves, sweetheart,” said Sammy. “That’s the joy of it.

We just do the cleanup. We’re actually providing a much-needed service. Or, at

least, they are. I’m only a consultant.”

“Old Jimmy? And Magda? And my great aunt Rita?” I couldn’t believe it. Those

sweet, elderly folk? Okay, maybe they had checkered pasts, but…

Sammy went on. “The key to good business management is to provide a service

that’s got a demand for it. Jimmy nailed it. People are distressed when they have a body hanging around. They pay well. So the Last Chance Club…they got more business than they can handle.”

“But why? I said.  “Why would they do this?”

Sammy’s voice perked up.  “Oh.  Well, that’s easy.  Those old folks at the retirement home - they want to go on a bus trip to Vegas.  You know.  Hit the tables, see the shows.  It costs big bucks to rent a bus to go that distance.  Not to mention hotel rooms and all those buffets. And they need supervision.”

No argument there from me.  “Isn’t this sort of illegal?” I said.

“Embalming and burying isn’t illegal. And Freddie was a licensed funeral worker

guy, although I don’t know that he’s kept up his license. Tends to forget things, what with the dementia.”

“Dementia?” I squeaked.

 “Yeah,” Sammy said. “Once he forgot to dress a guy after the embalming. You wouldn’t believe what a little extra fluid can do to some parts. We don’t do open casket anymore.”

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WHY WRITERS DRINK - book launch Sept. 5. Keeping the Glenlivit handy...

Below are the 8 stages of birthing a novel, and why fiction writers drink.

THE STAGE OF:

JOY – You are finished your manuscript.  Damn, it’s good!  The best thing you’ve written, and it’s ALL DONE!  Time to open the Glenlivet.

ANGST -  You submit manuscript to your publisher.  Yes, even though they’ve already published 5 of your novels, you still don’t know if they will publish this one.  Will they like it?  Is it as funny as you think it is?  Is it garbage?  Glenlivet is required to get through the next few days/weeks.

RELIEF - They send you a contract – YAY!  You are not a has-been!  Your baby, which was a year in the making (not merely 9 months) will have a life!

Glenlivet is required to celebrate.

ASTONISHMENT – The first round of edits come back.  What do you mean you have substantive changes to make?  That story was PERFECT, dammit!  This is the 15^th draft, not the 1^st.  Commiserate with other writers over Glenlivet in the bar at the Drake. 

CRIPPLING SELF-DOUBT – The changes they require are impossible.  You’ll never be able to keep it funny/full of high tension, by taking out or changing that scene.  What about the integrity?  Motivation? And what’s so darn bad about being ‘too slapstick,’ anyway?  This is comedy! 

Can’t sleep.  Look for Glenlivet.

ACCEPTANCE – Okay, you’re rewriting, and somehow it’s working.  Figured out how to work around their concerns.  New scene is not bad.  Not as good as the original, of course (why couldn’t they see that) but still a good scene.  Phew.  You’re still a professional. 

Professionals drink Glenlivet, right?

 JOY – They accept all your changes!  YAY!  All systems go. This baby will have a life. 

Celebrate the pending birth with a wee dram of Glenlivet.

 ANGST -  Are they kidding?  THAT’S the cover? 

CANADA DAY - Pass the Hootch (a seriously non-serious post)

By Melodie Campbell (Bad Girl)

July 1st is Canada Day.  This is the holiday in which we celebrate the birth of Canada by getting stuck in traffic for hours and hours and throwing firecrackers at each other.  Canadians are a hardy lot.

I want to be serious for a moment and give some thought as to how this country was born (definitely a breech birth with lots of screaming.)

Canada became a country in 1867.  I wasn’t at the original Fathers of Confederation gig in PEI.  But I suspect it went something like this.

Father 1 of Confederation: “So.  Do we all want to band together as one country and get ourselves universal healthcare?  Pass the hootch.”

Father 2 of Confederation:  “Yeah, okay, eh.  Sounds good.  Pass the hootch.”

Father 3 of Confederation:  “Snore….”

Meanwhile, the Mothers of Confederation were busy doing useful things like making bannock and throwing venison on the barbie.  And when they found out…well, let me just say there was hell to pay.

“You bozos didn’t include a Caribbean Island??  Come on Mildred…Abigail.  We’re buying a trailer in Florida.”

Because you see: Canada is cold.  It is particularly cold during the months of winter, which can fiendishly usurp months from autumn and spring, and hold them ransom until summer.

And then, just to be contrary, the guys with the hootch made Ottawa the capital of Canada.

Why did they choose Ottawa?  Apparently they were afraid the Yanks might capture the capital if they put it in some desirable place like Toronto.  (Too close to the border, with great shopping and restaurants.)

I’m told that Ottawa and Moscow are considered the worst places to be posted if you are an Ambassador.  This is because they are the two most northern capitals in the world…well, capitals of any country to which humans might actually want to go. 

Personally, I think this is a great exaggeration.  No one wants to go to Ottawa and Moscow.

Okay, Okay.  Ottawa can be a pretty place in summer.  Thing is, it is held ransom by Jack Frost most of the rest of the year.  Look at a map.  Ottawa is dangerously close to the Arctic Circle.  (In actual fact, so are Aurora and Newmarket.  If you’re wondering why your commute into Toronto takes so long…)

In hindsight, I figure the Fathers of Confederation did a pretty good job after all.  Since 1867, Canada has never been invaded by Americans.  We have universal health care.  And best of all, we get rid of our politicians by sending them to Ottawa every winter. 

Talk about punishment.

Comedy ain't so Light (in which Bad Girl explores the other, more serious purpose of humour)

Everyone likes comedy, right?

Wrong.

I’ve written comedy professionally since 1992.  I got my start writing stand-up. In the 1990s, I had a regular humour column in the Toronto region, and I now write humour for The Sage (a Canadian satire magazine.) 

Any seasoned humour writer will tell you that consistently writing comedy is difficult.  What looks easy doesn’t write easy.  The old actor saying, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard,” stands for writers too.  In books, not only do you have to pay attention to plot, characterization, dialogue, viewpoint, motivation, etc. like every other author, but you also have to add an additional element, comedy.  It’s like there is an addition test for you that others don’t have to pass.  And you don’t get paid any more for doing it.

And it gets worse: Comedy writers take risks that other writers don’t.

For here’s the thing:  comedy is by nature dangerous.  It (often) makes fun of things that other people take seriously.  In fact, it’s almost impossible to write comedy and not offend someone, somewhere.

Even the most seemingly inoffensive broad comedy (the sort of thing I write) will attract criticism.  The Goddaughter is the first in a series of five comic capers from Orca books.  These are meant to be humorous entertainment. Nothing blatantly didactic.  No preaching.  I am hoping for smirks and laughter to lift your mood.

It’s satire.  A loony mob family is chronically inept.  A reluctant mob goddaughter wants to escape the business, but is always pulled back in to bail them out.  What results is a series of whacky capers and heists-gone-bad.

What could be offensive about that?

But ah.  The heroine of the story is a mob goddaughter, even if she doesn’t want to be one.  “You don’t get to choose your relatives,” she says.  I’m writing stories about the mob, in which we are actually compelled to want certain members to succeed in their crazy plans. 

I’ve found that even writing about the mob can invite outrage.  Operating outside the law is bad, even evil, a reader wrote recently. How dare I make light of serious crime? 

Which brings me to the point of this post (get to the point, Mel).  Comedy, done well, has a secondary purpose to making us laugh.  (Some would say primary purpose.)  It has the ability to threaten power.  Throughout history, writers have used comedy to satire and gently (or not so gently) ridicule the people who have power over us.

If we were to limit the ability of authors to write about certain subjects or groups of people in light and humorous ways, we would lose the ability to ‘bring them down to size.’  To show their weaknesses. 

My satire is gentle.  But it is there, all the same.  In my humour columns and books, I poke fun at people and organizations that seek to have power over us.  To maintain that power, they must be taken seriously.

And boy, do they hate comedy writers like me.

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