Don’t Lecture - Entertain Me!

The other day, an American interviewer challenged me about the purpose of fiction; should it always contain a moral message?  Specifically, should crime fiction?

My instant answer:  No No No!  The purpose of crime fiction should be to Entertain, and nothing should come before that.

Why?  We have countless other venues that preach morality. Religions seek to teach us how to behave.  Every day we are bombarded by newspapers, radio and other nonfiction outlets, that expose us to the ‘evil’ of greedy politicians, nasty world despots and out of control celebrities. 

If fiction – and crime fiction in particular – was required to follow a moral code, we would miss so much.  If the good guy always won – if the bad guy always got caught – wouldn’t that make crime fiction lamentably predictable?

Does that mean crime fiction can’t teach us something?  Of course it can!  Put me in the mind of a serial killer for a few hours.  Let me know what it feels like to experience the overwhelming greed of a con artist.  Dress me up as a torch singer, with a black heart and a gun in her stocking.

Let me discover something about how other people think, if only for a little while.  But above all else, entertain me.  Don’t preach at me, even from a distance.  I don’t want it from my fiction.

Just tell me a damn good story, thank you.  Take me out of the real world for a few hours.

That’s the purpose of crime fiction.

ARE YOU A DAD? Take this quiz to find out

Just in time for Father's Day, here's a 10 point quiz to help you remember if you are a DAD:

1.  Do you own at least one painted rock paperweight?

2.  Do you know all the cheapest restaurants in town?

3.  Does your night life involve Children's Tylenol?

4.  Would you sell your soul for a sitter on Saturday night?  How about your first born?

5.  Do you habitually run over unidentified plastic action figures when mowing the grass?

6.  Have you ever gone miles out of your way on vacation to find a clean washroom?

7.  Do you jump when any little voice yells "Dad!"

8.  Have you ever encountered "The Phantom Piddler?"  In the car?  On your pants?

9.  Have you ever prompted your boss to "say the magic word?"

10.  Does your concept of an ideal vehicle include sound-proof glass between the front and back seats?

How to Score:  (Not THAT kind of score...)

0 to 2:  Nope, not a Dad.  Although it's possible to know where the cheap restos are and locate clean washrooms, failure to answer No. 4 with a resounding "YES!!YES!!" is a dead giveaway.

3-10.  Yup.  Dad material.  Get ready for another painted rock paperweight this weekend.

But there is a bright side to this career.  The Dad in this house once stunned an entire room of professionals playing Trivial Pursuit, with the correct answer to 'Portuguese for 'open''.  He learned it from Sesame Street.

It's a Guy Thing continued....MEN WITHOUT FOOD

I have come to the conclusion that men need women for the simple reason that without us, men would starve to death.  It's amazing.  I've seen grown men - guys who play the stock market for fun and laugh at the traffic on the 401 - do their entire grocery shopping at the corner Mac's Milk.

Don't ask me how it got this way, but it's been like this since the first caveman brought home the first dinosaur steak and threw it at his wife instead of on the fire.  Don't believe me?  Here's a snapshot of our pre-camping organization meeting last year:

Karl:  "So we have the tents, sleeping bags, Coleman stove, shotguns, ammo...that's everything, right?"

Bob (thoughtfully):  "Fuel for the stove?"

Karl (trumphant):  "got it."

Me:  "ummmm.....what about food?"

Bob:  "Food?"  Everyone looks blank.

Wil (inspired):  "Hot dogs.  I've got hot dogs!  And buns."  The guys all nod wisely.

Me:  "ummm...we're going away for three days, and we're going to live on hot dogs - FOR THREE DAYS?"

Karl (puzzled):  "Oh.  Well, I'm bringing coffee."

Me:  "Look.  I hate to tell you this, but coffee, hot dogs, beer and tobacco do not constitute the five major food groups. "

Bob (decisively):  "She's right, Karl.  We should buy some chocolate."

Men may be able to bring home the bacon, but don't ever ask them to cook it.

My next book: FIFTY SHADES OF GREY HAIR

Starring a 63 year old ingenue and any guy with viagra and no glasses...

IT'S A GUY THING - reprinted with permission

I should know better. After all, I was on the boy’s baseball team in grade six.  I know there are things about men that we females can never hope to understand.  But when the guys – three of them – said, "we’re going camping on crown land this weekend – wanna come?” – I lost my mind.  I went.

IN THE BEGINNING

“Why are you guys wearing hats, even when the sun is down and It’s not cold out and none of you are bald?”  They all look at me, puzzled.

“It’s a guy thing,” Wil explains.  The others nod.  It’s perfectly obvious.  What ISN’T obvious, is the bathroom.

“Where is it?” I ask.  Everyone looks around.

“That way,” says Bob, pointing to a landmark thirty miles off. “Usually I can’t wait tho.”  He puffs thoughtfully on a cigarillo.

I go look for a bush.

QUEST FOR FIRE

“We need a fire,” says Karl.

“A BIG fire.” Wil looks to me, quite serious. “It’s a guy thing.”

The guys nod in unison. This is not surprising. We do need a fire. I’ve been saying so for hours.  It’s so dark we can’t find the tents.

“Who’s got a match?” I say helpfully.  Everyone gasps.

“A match?”

“Good Lord woman - a match?  In the wilderness?”

I might as well suggest sending out for Pizza Pizza from the cell phone.  Which is not a bad idea, because if we don’t get a fire going soon, we’re all going to starve.

Karl comes back from the truck.  “Flint and steel.” He holds it up for my benefit.

“You have to make do with primitive things in the wilderness,” he explains patiently.

I don’t bother to ask where you get steel in the wilderness.  This is something only guys know.

Karl gets to work. After several minutes of vigorous activity, he is puffing into a gorgeous little fire – really sweet – which immediately burns out.

They stand around wearing frowns.

“Looks a little weak there.” Everyone nods.

“Not a problem. Got just the thing.” Karl goes back to the truck for a small can.

“Stand back,” he orders.  A small wave of fluid hits the ex-fire, which immediately leaps into twelve foot vermillion flames accompanied by a loud WHOOOOSSSSHHHH.

“What IS that?” I yell from twenty feet away.

Karl grins diabolically.  “Naptha.”

************continued next week***********

CHARIOTS OF THE GUYS - more humour about men and cars (reprinted with permission)

This is the humour column that started off my comedy writing career in the 90s, and has been reprinted many times.  Especially by women editors :)

One of the things I hate even more than high school reunions is buying a new car.  It’s not that I don’t like cars.  I am really quite fond of them. Especially in winter.  What I don’t like is the buying process.  There is something inherently different about men and women when they go looking at cars in a dealership.  You even have to wonder if they are members of the same species.

Husband (reverently caressing cold metal with both hands):  “Look at this beauty!  4.0 litre, five speed, Recarro seats, mag wheels, racing suspension, electric moon roof, power mulcher, moog synthesizer, ballistic missile launcher…”

Wife:  “It’s red.  I hate red.”

This basic lack of communication goes right back to the way men and women look at ‘things’.  Amazingly, they can be looking at the same thing and see something entirely different.  Men, for instance, will look at a car as if it something beyond a box with four wheels that moves forward and backward.  To them, it is not merely a car.  Nope.  It is the culmination of adolescent dreams, the elusive mistress of middle age, the Ben Hur of all chariots.  Me, I’m more concerned with whether it will get me to the shopping mall and back without falling into a million pieces.  Which is why we had this misunderstanding at the dealership last weekend:

Me:  “This car has two seats.”

He (enthusiastically checking the interior):  “Yes!  Aren’t they great?”

Me:  “I’m not denying they are very nice seats.  Beautiful, in fact.  But there are four of us.”

He (looking irritably at the kids):  “They’re young.  They’ve got legs.”

Kid One:  “But Dad…where are we all going to sit when we have to drive someplace?”

He (aghast):  Good Gad, you’re not actually expect me to drive this car on the road?  The paint might get chipped.”

Then he did what all men have been programmed to do from the beginning of time.  He kicked the tire.  I’ve often wondered about this practice.  And I expect Ben Hur’s wife pondered the very same thing two thousand year ago, when good ole Ben whacked the wheel of that Roman chariot with his leather sandal.  Exactly what purpose does this serve?

I’ll never understand it.  But as far as I can see, all of this started about forty thousand years ago when Urgh the slightly-brighter-than-normal Neanderthal invented the wheel.  Irma, his loyal wife, stood on the sidelines shaking her head, while Urgh enthusiastically painted on racing stripes.  “Argh urf org grunt bfff bfff,” she said (loosely translated to, “Oh dinosaur droppings, not another blasted toy.  When will this ever end.”)  And of course, it hasn’t yet.

A Jury of Her Peers - the sweetest kind of honour

I never thought anything could compare to the high you get when your first child is born.  So it rather shocked me when – Alex and Natalie stop reading now – I experienced something akin to that high again last Thursday night at the Arthur Ellis Awards short list event in Toronto.  I had actually made the short list!  And dang, wasn’t that a kick.

But also alarming.  I raced home to dig out my ‘bucket list’ written 23 years ago, written in 1989 when I won my first writing award (Canadian Living Magazine).  Damn straight, I’ve been kicking around a long time, decades longer than most of my colleagues realize. 

This list of What-I-must-accomplish-before-I-die also included such items as “Learn to dance Flamenco,” and “Fly a plane.”  Flamenco got a tick in 1996 (damn hard on your feet) and so did plane (except I ran out of money during the whole pilot training thingy and had to metaphorically bail). That list also included a few other items, one of which was rather hot (I invite people to comment by guessing what THAT was.  If you’ve read Rowena Through the Wall, you may come close.) 

One by one, I had crossed all these items off my list.  Except one. 

Back in my home office with the lovely arched window and the rickety desk, I opened the old claret journal (paper journal, of course – no smart-phones back then.)  There it was, page marked with a post-it tab:  “Bucket list.”  And the only remaining uncrossed item: “Be a finalist for a major writing award.”

Not the winner, you note.  Nope – my goal back then was to be in good company.  And dammit, Thursday night put me in the best.

I’ve won six awards for fiction before.  This year I was a finalist for the Derringer.  But in no way did that begin to reach the thrill of being shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for short stories, at our Crime Writers of Canada event, with so many of my author friends in attendance and cheering me on.

Bless them.  Writers are the best people in the world.  They are the smartest people I know, always using their minds.  And they have big hearts.  They know the true joy that comes from being assessed by a jury of your peers, and found worthy.

For on Thursday night last week, I discovered that “A Jury of Her Peers” is the highest court.  The title of that celebrated short story by Susan Glaspell rings in my head and heart.  And I am supremely grateful.