I’ve got a love/hate thing going on with technology. And I’m definitely a late adopter or sometimes a total non-adopter. Warning!! Some of the information you are about to read is distressing to techies. :)
I don’t have a microwave.
There I said it. (The last time I told someone this, they sputtered, literally for at least five minutes. :) ) I’ll give you a minute or two to get over the shock. When you can read again. Come on back.....
My writing laptop is ten years old and it has NEVER been on the internet. I know I could probably get it to hook up if I wanted to....
But I. Don’t. Want. To.
And of course I can get on the internet (I’m here, aren’t I?) Just not with my writing laptop. We have a big ol’ clunky desktop that surfs the web and I’ve got my Blackberry for reading email and tweeting.
The promise of new technology is great. It really is. But half the time (or more) it doesn’t work. Not the way it is touted.
My oven is supposed to bake 8 trays of cookies evenly. Uh, nope sorry, doesn’t even work on a measly two trays.
My Blackberry can surf the web (very SLOWLY) but I don’t need to surf the web on my phone.
My iPod can play movies but on a freaking one inch screen, why would I want to? Movies were meant to be seen large not infinitesimally small. In the famous words of Riley Poole. “It shouldn’t be done. Not it can’t be done, it shouldn’t be.”
Before you cast me out of our brave new world, I definitely think that we need creative geniuses out there coming up with space aged, funky Jetson-type gadgets.
But, stop releasing new technology before it is ready. Or maybe before I’m ready. :)
Lisa
And just for reference, I HAD a microwave but a few years ago we decided to get rid of it and with the exception of one or two times (usually when entertaining and someone brings something that needs to be heated up in the microwave) I don’t miss it.
Oh, and how do I live without one? I use my stove top and my oven. Shocking, I know.
Blogger ate my post last night, which seems apropos our topic this week, or I screwed something up. So here we go again...
Is there such a thing as ethno-technology? Sort of like ethnobotany where it isn't the plants themselves that are so much the thing as the ways people use them? If there is, that's what I find most interesting about technology: what we do with it.
I don't believe homo sapiens sapiens have changed all that much over the years. If we could see back fifty thousand years into the past, I'm pretty sure we'd find people dealing with technology in the same ways we do now. Imagine an old guy (all of thirty-five) and a young whippersnapper sitting on the beach in what would someday be pirate-ridden Somalia, discussing the relative merits of flint blades over whatever was used before that. "I can split a hair with this flint knife," the young buck would have claimed, to which the geezer would have snapped, "Why do you need to split a hair? Make yourself useful. Go cut up an antelope or something." The young guy would have done it in half the time the old fellow's old-fashioned blade could manage, and the old guy would have resisted using flint for the rest of his life on principle.
That principle is still around today in the sentiment that technology doesn't always make things better. Indeed, one day last year, one of my sisters was riding downtown to work on a crowded bus where everyone but her had iPod earbuds stuffed in their ears. Someone ripped a tremendous fart to absolutely no reaction. No grins. No giggles. Nothing. No one else heard it. I don't know if that's gross or just plain sad.
Lack of manners and resistance to change aside, one of the most enduring human traits seems to be attempting to forge God (or something like him/her/it) in our own image. Technology can be a handy tool in service of these efforts. For years I've joked that Google is God. You know, it's invisible, always around us in the air, capable of answering most any question you put to it if you ask the right way, blah, blah, blah. Well, come to find out, there are at least a few souls who actually think Google is God. For real. Google it and see.
Similarly, many technologies lend themselves well to divination. Our ancestors relied on goat guts, tea leaves, runes, and the I-Ching (among others). A lot of respectable religions frown on these sorts of things, but that doesn't necessarily stop practitioners from finagling the technology of the day into some sort of divination tool. A sturdy Bible -- in the form of a book, a technological wonder that's lasted a good long time as tech toys go -- can be used for things your pastor might not approve.
In my youth, I recall hearing people talk about praying to the Lord about something important to them like whether or not to buy a new turntable, for instance. To avoid waiting for what might well be an ambiguous answer, or risking non at all on what the Almighty might consider a low-priority concern, they'd flop open the Bible to a random page to see what the Big Guy (or Gal, or whatever) had to say to them.
Suppose they landed on one of the Old Testament genealogies. Hathpashet begat Leviticus, who begat Mahooticus and on and on and on with the weird names...hey, just like a record turns around and around and around! Buy the turntable! Now it would be really clear if you landed in that part of Ecclesiastes sampled in the Byrd's song. You know, "To everything there is a season, Turn, Turn, Turn." Of course, an observant devotee using this method of divination might have a pretty good idea where exactly Ecclesiastes is in the Bible and subtly influence the flop. This may not be the most technologically sophisticated form of divination.
Which brings me to Radio Divination, the jewel in the crown of technology turned to superstitious practice in the last half of the 20th Century. This is where you have an important question on which you wish to consult the Higher Power of your choice, and you use songs on the radio as your medium. A car radio is best. Not very many things are better done in the car, but Radio Divination most definitely is.
You frame your question. If you are young and affluent enough to be on the loose in a car, it often takes a form similar to: Should I drive past Eric Vondermeyer's haunts to see if he's home or out with that skank Tiffany Babbo? You know you shouldn't, stalking is bad, etc, which is why you seek the sanction of a Higher Power willing to speak through your radio. (I leave open the question of what sort of Higher Power has any interest in speaking through radios.) You must then designate which song will have your answer. The next one to start on a particular station, or just press presets until you hit a song. There's variation here. Just be clear.
Let's say you land on your mother's oldies station and "Jesse's Girl" in playing. You know your answer is that Eric secretly longs for you the way Rick Springfield longs for Jesse's girl, so yes, do it. Drive by his house, the sportmart where he works, and Tiffany's house. If Eric's car is there, seek solace in more Radio Div. You may find that Eric will soon leave Tiffany and find love with you. Should any other outcome be hinted at, feel free to ignore it. For God's sake, it's just the radio.
Sometimes the Higher Powers may begin communicating with you via the radio of their own volition. If this happens, get back on your meds. If it continues happening, I'm not sure what to tell you. When I used to drive back and forth between my house in Mission, SD and my parents' house in Rapid City, every time I drove by Eagle Nest Butte Annie Lennox's "Walking on Broken Glass" came on the radio. It happened 22 times in 16 months. Planned trips, spur of the moment jaunts, any route, any and all radio stations (although there were only three than reliably came in the whole way). By the time I moved back to Berkeley, I was half afraid of both Eagle Nest Butte and Annie Lennox.
I never did figure out exactly what the point of that was. My brother says there is no point, other than something explicable by playlist dynamics, but he's a techie and a scientist, so he's invested in proving things. I'm more into interesting stories. The ways I dumb down technology to accommodate my own wistful purposes seems to baffle folks like my brother.
Technology is only as advanced as we are, and we don't appear to be in danger of radical changes anytime soon. Pundits may spew about the evil potential in technologies, or the great good that might be done, but most people are using it to look at porn, play poker, do tarot spreads, project their net worth fifty years into the future, or discuss what they barbecued in their Big Green Eggs. We are endlessly trivial, most of us.
I find this banality as reassuring as I sometimes find new technologies disconcerting. I also still find Radio Divination amusing. I urge you all to unplug your iPods and give it a try the next time you're stuck in traffic.
Maddee James is the owner of xuni.com, which designed and built this blog and a bunch of other cool author sites too! This is her first guest blog ever. Be gentle. ***
You would think that guest blogging amongst the wonderfully talented writers here would be too intimidating, and um.... it is... but I figure if I keep my words to a minimum, what bad could happen? (which reminds me of a recent convo with my son... me: "Did you have a good day at school?" him, enthusiastically: "It was GREAT!" me, thinking he like met a new girl or got an A or something: "What made it so good?" him: "Nothing bad happened.")
Okay so anyway, technology.... Here's my take on it -- from TV to the internet to all important hair implements -- things I don't like, things I wish it did (!) and things I LOVE...
THINGS I DON'T LIKE ABOUT TECHNOLOGY:
1. TV: just say no.
Okay so one night there weren't any new forensic shows on so I turned to Fatal Attractions on Animal Planet. And there was this story about a woman who had raised a chimp from babyhood and he suddenly went beserk and attacked her best friend. No, I am not kidding. The YouTube story is here. Just hours after her friend is MAULED (and I mean permanently disfigured!), the woman says: "I would do it [raise the chimp] all over again if I could." Um, hello? That chimp just ATE HER FRIEND'S FACE OFF. I swear I'm never watching late night TV again.
2. PayPal.
See that guy relaxing in his chair 'cause he loves the ease of PayPal? That would not be me. I know I shouldn't admit this but I can't figure out how to get the money OUT of there. People have paid me that way for like two years and I have never once taken money out. I have no idea how much I have in there. It's like the black hole of money.
3. The ability to watch movies in the car.
We drove to Santa Fe this last weekend. My son was glued to his mac laptop watching Pirates of the Caribbean which admittedly has some good scenery but look what he missed outside:
4. Researching how to murder someone is now easy as pie!
I admit it -- I watch too many forensic shows. But come on now people, don't you realize that if you google how to kill someone with rat poison, stockings around the neck, or an ice sculpture THEY ARE GOING TO CATCH YOU? Erasing your browser history does not matter. THEY WILL CATCH YOU. And by the way, the ways to avoid getting killed are very clear if you watch enough of these shows like I do: DON'T GET MARRIED (it's always the spouse) and DON'T DRINK ALCOHOL (oh the idiotic things people blame on being drunk).
5. match.com
Need I say more?
THINGS I WISH TECHNOLOGY COULD DO!:
1. Turn the heat on in my cottage when I forget.
We have gone out of town more than once and come home to DEAD PETS. Not the dog, thank god.
(Zeke says thanks mom. is he not the cutest pup EVER?)
But we've frozen fish and even birds (sorry Mario and Margarita).
Which brings me to the next thing I would LOVE it if technology could do...
2. Make it stop $%&#* snowing!
Yes, this is our cottage. Now honestly, they seed clouds to make rain, right? Good technology for drought! So why can't they MAKE IT STOP (this from someone who woke up to 8 inches when she was in a tank top just yesterday!).
3. Stop me from eating BBQ potato chips.
(no that is not me; I would never wear pink)
4. Keep me from running out of gas in the middle of freaking nowhere.
Oh yeah there's a technological gas gauge thingie! Guess that was my fault.
5. Cell service no matter where you are.
I know you ALL want this one! Plus the cute blonde girls abducted by creepy wingnuts on the crime shows would always be able to call the cops from the locked windowless room in the dank cellar of the remote cabin in the dark woods at the end of a single-lane road along a forgotten highway.
THINGS I LOVE ABOUT TECHNOLOGY!:
1. My hair straightener.
This has to be number one. Amazing technology. Changed my life. Enough said. (except that that is not me either. Swear to god.)
2. My daughter texting me during Chemistry.
I know, a lot of mothers wouldn't like this but I totally do. If I need to ask her something in the middle of the day, I can! (sorry Ms. McFadden)
3. Email.
I will never forget the moment (1996?) my husband (at the time) got an email for me on HIS email address and him saying: "Don't you want to get your own email address?" and I said (yes I SAID THIS!!): "I don't see why I would." I. Don't. See. Why. I. Would. OMG!! Email is my life.
4. My job.
This should have been number one, of course. I have the BEST JOB in the world. And it's all 'cause of the internet. I have clients all over the world (New Zealand, China, Ireland, Germany, New Jersey (hi Brad -- I know you're reading this!) -- SO COOL!) -- and this couldn't have been possible without the internet, high speed connections, email... the list goes on. Thank you gods of the universe, and all my fabulous clients.
5. and last but not least.... GLEE on demand!!!!!!
If you are one of the few who haven't seen this show, you are MISSING OUT!! (the above is a scene where the Glee kids join in song with the deaf (!) glee club they're up against. Normally I love this show for the laughs (OMG Jane Lynch is HILARIOUS!) but this scene brought me to tears)
Now what things do YOU wish technology were capable of?
Seriously, I should. I was promised a robot. And a flying car. And a transporter. Though now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I would need a flying car AND a transporter. Never mind. Let’s not get off topic. The point is I was promised a robot.
Movies and tv, they promised what the future would be like. I mean the iPad looks cool and all, but I was hoping the future would look more like this.
I want a spaceship. A real one. And a warp drive. I wanted a future with the possibility of getting all makey outy with people from other planets. Let’s admit it, that’s half the allure of Star Trek.
I want a TARDIS. Yeah, sure, I’m biased by my geek sensibilities, and you know how I feel about the Doctor, but has there ever been a cooler ride than that blue police box?
You know, the Doctor had a robot--a dog robot, but still, better than I got.
When I was a young teenager, I dialed my best friend’s number one day (dialed, get that? On a rotary phone, no less)… and a machine answered.
A machine.
I hung up.
I tried again. Stammered, blushed, and hung up.
Then I got peeved. I declared to any and all that would listen: “Machines shouldn’t answer phones! What’s this world coming to?”
My father (fiddling with his newfangled eight-track tape deck) called me a Luddite. Since I had no idea what he meant – though I knew it was some sort of insult-- I looked the word up in the dictionary (which used to consist of reams of paper bound together, like an old fashioned book.) And then I checked out the encyclopedia (NOT Wiki-anything-- an actual set of books that sat on the small bookshelf in our front hall).
The Luddites were British textile artisans in the nineteenth century who fought against the kinds of mechanized changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Some of them went so far as to smash weaving machines, an anti-progress crime considered so threatening it was made a capital crime by the Frame Breaking Act. In recent years, the terms Luddism and Luddite have become synonymous with anyone who opposes the advance of technology due to the cultural and socioeconomic changes that are associated with it. This isn’t the same thing as being phobic: A technophobe is afraid of technology per se, whereas a Luddite fears the changes it wreaks.
Yes, it’s true: I am a Luddite. I’m very thankful for some technological advances –antibiotics spring to mind—but in general, machines make me nervous. Computers annoy me. (For example: I don’t understand why things on the computer need to be upgraded just when a person figures out the last round of updates.) I don’t watch television, can’t figure out the neighbor’s TiVo to save my life, and I still don’t have an Ipod. (I liked LPs and turntables – you could pick up the needle and change things up. And as a bonus, your Barbies could go for a funhouse ride.)
More importantly, it worries me that so much of what we do these days, so much technological innovation, takes us away from one another. Rather than converse, we fixate on machines and computers. Rather than create and invent, we passively watch other people’s ideas of what is entertaining. Rather than question, we accept.
I have a teenage son at home who will argue until he is blue in the face that technology is a good thing, that “progress” is inevitable and positive. And I do hope he’s right. But it doesn’t escape my notice that much of climate change and species extinction and social alienation can be laid at the feet of advancing, blind technology.
On the other hand…I sit here composing at my home computer, blithely enjoying the benefits of technology. And though a part of me thinks that renaissance Europe was just about advanced enough for the likes of me, I LOVE indoor plumbing. And living longer, healthier lives. And email – though there again, I am nostalgic for yellowing stacks of handwritten letters, tied together with old silk ribbons, stained with tears and kisses.
But I did finally learn how to talk to answering machines. So I suppose even this old Luddite can learn new tricks.
Boy, do I love it when my first-generation Kindle goes to sleep and the screen saver says "Thank you for being an early adopter." I adore being one of those.
And with all the iPad madness swirling around us, I'm completely dying to be an early adopter of one of those, too. I know, I know. It's early. There will be other versions. It'll be better, faster. Cooler.
But that doesn't stop me from wanting it now. Even though I can't justify the expense and won't be getting one, that doesn't stop me from dreaming. And I have to tell you what I heard while I was driving, listening to NPR. The reporter obviously felt like I did about the iPad -- you could hear the lust in his voice as he spoke. He was talking about the new Pages program. I don't use the program myself -- I'm still stuck in Word -- but I've heard it's wonderful, and that it exports to and from Word seamlessly, so I plan on using it with my next computer upgrade, rather than buying Microsoft's expensive package again. The reporter was tumbling all over himself like an eager puppy: "Apple rewrote the entire program, from the ground up, entirely for this device, so this is a word processing program, a great one, run by touch!"
And my toes curled on my accelerator as I drove, I swear they did. A word processing program, a powerful one, driven by a touch screen, and it's GOOD?
WANT. Pant, pant, pant.
But it's true that I want a lot of technological wonders, not least of all the Litter Robot. Given a choice between the two, I'm pretty sure I'd take the Litter Robot over the iPad, although. . . .
. . .Okay, you know what just happened in between those ellipses? I wandered over to Amazon to link to the really expensive Litter Robot to show it to you. And I found a $34 litter box that everyone loves -- you roll the box, and the clumped litter goes into a tray, and it has GREAT reviews, and it's hundreds of dollars less than anything automatic and you don't have to plug it in (no outlet on the porch where I need it) and THAT, my friends, is technology at its best. People, writing reviews, on a website, so that I can buy it, with the last few days of my Amazon Prime trial, so that I can then review it and tell YOU about it, thus letting me never have to make that decision between a Litter Robot and an iPad, because, friends . . . I want to someday pick the iPad.
And really, being an early (and often) adopter is how I got in this litter mess, anyway.
I've publicly bemoaned the fact that I got a degree in computer science, circa 1980-something, a field for which I was neither suited nor destined.
I know why I chose it, however. I was very concerned about supporting myself. Finances were tight in the house I grew up in, and end-of-month money worries were common, and I was very certain I wanted to grow up and never have to battle that sort of worry again.
I got a great job after graduation. I worked for Arthur Andersen - remember them? I wore navy and gray suits with those eighties bow blouses (younger sisters, cover your eyes) and the fussy pins we used to wear at our collars. Nude pantyhose, and Reeboks that we'd change for pumps outside the building - because we weren't allowed to have sneakers on "in the workplace."
(Side note: Junior dug up one of those pins, from 1982 (I know this because she found the date stamped on the back) - a Monet goldtone job shaped like a chevron. Gave me shivers, remembering how I used to choke on those starched blouses. Junior wears it a little different - at the waist of a cardigan knotted over a camisole. (Her style is a mix of Anthropologie and audrey hepburn so we're never quite sure what will coming waltzing out of her bedroom in the morning.)
Anyway, my first assignment was writing COBOL code for an IRS job. It was deadly dull. You'd run your job, and it would fail, and you'd take that two-pound green-and-white printout back to your desk, go through its accordion-folded entirety, drink four Tabs in a row, try something else, repeat.
After that was a stint at the New York Port Authority. More COBOL, more exciting location. Then I got really crazy and became a Novell LAN administrator, a gig that saw me through the remainder of my Anderson days and into my next job, in Philadephia where I'd moved with my future husband. Academics suited me okay, and I ran Novell networks at Penn and then at Northwestern in Chicago, and kept doing so until I quit to stay home with my kids.
The early Novell LANS were an exercise in frustration. There was a lot of coax cable - stuff that makes today's T1 look like gossamer spider webs by comparison. The hubs looked like they came from the set of the original Star Trek, ungainly things with a pebbled beige powder-coated metal surface identical to the unpleasantly hollow sounding boxes that housed the early IBM PCs. You'd plug everything in, say an incantation over the server (a $15,000 computer with less smarts than your kid's phone) - squeeze your eyes shut in heart-fluttering hope and trepidation - flip the switch aaaaaaaand -
Nothing.
A whole lot of nothing. It never worked, not until you'd stayed until 3am many nights in a row, often enough to catch your boss banging one of the recent hires in the conference room, often enough to get completely behind on Moonlighting, often enough that your diet was 70% vending machine food.
I usually waited until most of the other staff were gone before I cried, and I bruised my knuckles beating on the damn LAN parts. Also, crawling around the floor in a suit and heels meant that I went through a lot of pantyhose.
Yeah, I was pretty bad at the whole thing, it's true. But I was making good money. Good enough for a high-rise apartment, a charge account at Marshall Fields, a drawer full of Lancome, six-week highlight touch-ups.
A certain kind of happiness, I won't lie.
These days I'm living far more austerely than I did when I was half this age, but my work brings me so much more satisfaction. I have, ahem, a mac, so it does everything for me, and my relationship with technology is what I would call "cordially distant." I am happy to pay the Comcast guy, my web designer, a backup service, even my kids so that I don't have to get involved in any of the technology.
I don't have regrets, really, about my first career. But I'm more than happy that it's in the past now, and I'm doing what I was truly meant to do.
We’re taking a little break from our regularly scheduled programming her on Pens Fatales to talk about something that is near and dear to us -- Autism Awareness. Two of us Pens have families affected by autism. We are not alone. Millions of families are dealing with autism. Countless more are touched by the struggles that their friends and families are going through everyday.
April is Autism Awareness Month. Here are three reasons why Autism Awareness matters.
Reason #1 Because Autism Is More Common Than You Think
1 in 110 children have autism. Boys are 4 times more likely to have an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) than girls.
These rates are rising. There has been lots of speculation and debate as to why, but in the end, what we need is hard scientific research into the causes of autism if we ever hope to stem the tide. Large scale research like this requires funding. And funding requires advocacy. And advocacy requires awareness.
Reason #2 Because Autism Isn’t What You Think It Is
Like most of us, the only image I had of autism growing up came from the movie Rain Man. When my son was in the process of being diagnosed with classic autism, I resisted the feedback that the doctors and therapists were giving me, in part because of this idea of what autism was. But, he is affectionate, I thought. He is fun. Hell, he is funny. These characteristics were at odds with the picture I held in my mind of a person with autism.
Autism is characterized by a difficulty in communicating (both verbal and nonverbal communication), difficulty in social situations, and unusual behaviors. There are usually sensory issues. The severity of difficulty in each of these areas varies with individuals.
Autism is a spectrum disorder and people living with it fall all over the spectrum. The biggest lesson I have learned getting to know people with autism is that there is no one “autism”. Every one of us is an individual, with a distinct personality, an arsenal of talents and a set of challenges. This includes people with autism.
My son, Jack, doesn’t see the world the way I do. He is obsessed with the mechanics of spinning things--fans, car tires, planets. He is fascinated with cars and trains. This is Jack’s image of a car.
And these are the twenty one other identical pictures that he drew that same night.
Seeing the world differently isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Go here for a far more compelling argument about this than I could ever articulate. It’s being able to translate your thoughts and ideas into practical ideas that the rest of the world can understand that is the difficult part, which leads me into right into...
Reason #3 Because Autism Treatments Help
There is no cure for autism, but treatments do help. They can help people become more expressive, more involved. The right treatment--and what that is seems to vary from person to person--can allow someone with autism to reach their potential.
ABA (applied behavioral analysis)Therapy helped Jack to learn how to talk. While he doesn’t understand the point of conversation, he now has much less difficulty expressing his thoughts and feelings. Through awareness and advocacy we can help bring more of these much needed therapy programs into our communities and into the lives of those who need them. Because in the end, what is good for the autism community is good for all of us.
We met Eric Beetner at Left Coast Crime recently and like most of our noir-writing guy friends, he is delightful, a gentleman of the old school. We haven't met JB Kohl yet but we like her already - how can you not like a chick who's into both boxing and belly-dancing?
One of the things that makes this pair really intriguing is that they have written a well-received novel together while living on opposite coasts - and they have never met in person or even spoken on the phone!
In fact, they have grown quite superstitious about it - they are now in the middle of a second novel and have no plans to meet.
Eric: So nice to invited to the Pens Fatales to talk about a subject we know well.
Publishing a book opens the door to a whole new world of mortification. For One Too Many Blows To The Head, which was my first published work, my most mortifying moment came during my launch party.
The Mystery Bookstore in LA was kind enough to host a signing for me and I felt awfully darn cool to be sitting where so many crime and mystery luminaries had read before me. Adding my name to their famed jail registry sign-in book was a real honor.
As the date approached it became clear that due to a shipping error I would be having a signing event with no books to sign. I held my chin up, read out of my proof copy and took pre-orders. We made it work but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t crushingly embarrassing. Serves me right for thinking I was cool for even a second.
Although we’ve never met in person I will say I was slightly mortified to hear that my co-author, JB Kohl, is an amateur belly dancer. No more mortified than her kids I’m sure...
JB: MORTIFIED?? I'm shocked. Actually, the type of dance I do is tribal, which is very gypsy-like and done in a group. Also, belly dancers wear more clothing than the average cheerleader. I could go on and on about the health benefits, the core strengthening, etc. but I won't. Ahem. What I will say is that I do things like dancing lessons – either ballroom or belly – or guitar lessons, or anything else I can think of to get me out of my comfort zone. Things that make me do things I wouldn't normally be comfortable doing prepare me for "mortifying" situations--such as getting caught in the midst of a dispute between a publisher and a bookstore owner, which happened to me a couple of years ago. Talk about mortifying . . .
So VIVA la BELLY DANCE baby. Oh, and as for my kids? They think it's pretty cool. They're used to having an eccentric mother.
Eric: I also recently saw some first hand mortification when Pens Fatale’s own Sophie Littlefield spoke at Left Coast Crime on a panel about mystery writers who write with a dose of humor. I entered the room to see the entire panel donning rainbow clown wigs. One glance and it was obvious this was not Sophie’s idea.
It is a feeling we all know. It is something visceral and deep down and very relatable. To be clear there is a difference between mortifying and embarrassing. To me it is that gut feeling. Embarrassment will flush your face but mortification will turn your stomach. It’s deeper.
Writing a character in a mortifying situation makes them human and sympathetic. Even in the extraordinary circumstances of a crime novel everyone can relate to that feeling of fear and nausea.
JB: I think you and I handle mortifying situations for our characters in different ways. I noticed that Ray Ward is a very proactive character. When in a mortifying situation, his actions move the scene and the reader can feel his dismay and disgust and bewilderment. That's tough stuff to write and you do it very well. Fokoli is different. The proactive movements of his past as well as the current case he's on lead him to be a reactive character throughout One Too Many Blows To The Head. In a mortifying situation – whether it's the shambles of his home life caused by his past behavior, or the crime scene caused by Ray Ward, his actions are reactive rather than proactive like Ray's.
And I think that's one thing that makes their stories so engaging for readers.
Eric: One glance through this week’s posts and it is clear that everyone experiences it. What I’m really looking forward to? Seeing the first signs of mortification in my daughter’s eyes when I do something she sees as hideous. I know it’s coming. It’s my job as a Dad.
JB Kohl and Eric Beetner are the co-authors of the novel One Too Many Blows To The Head which Megan Abbott called, "like a long lost pulp you find in a favorite bookstore. A delicious mix of classic hardboiled grit and the heart-heavy world of film noir, it's a one-sitting read that sends you back to a lost time of fight halls, Chicago boys and last chances."
Read more about JB - including her debut novel, The Deputy's Widow - here. Find out more about Eric's short fiction here.
When people ask me about my education, I don't say I have a Master's degree (along with a certificate in Trans-Atlantic Studies, in case you were wondering).
It's true, but it's not what I say. I say I dropped out of grad school.
That's true, too. And it's what is more true in terms of what it taught me about life, and about not feeling shame for something that other people disapprove of.
Being from an academic family, I was getting my PhD like I was supposed to. The friends I made there were great. The social science research, not so much. Not for me.
Without letting anyone talk me out of it, I left at the end of my second year. No apologies and no regrets. It wasn't for me, so I wasn't going to stay just because it was the safe path or to please anybody else.
Fast forward to a couple years later: I'd moved to one of my favorite cities, was working at a great organization while finishing an art program that led to a job I love, had met the love of my life, was spending time developing photographs at a community darkroom, and was starting to write on a novel that went on to be awarded a writers grant and led to me getting to know the other Pens.
And if I'd stayed in grad school because I was embarrassed to have failed or to have let anyone down? I wouldn't have gotten any of it. I don't apologize for dropping out.
