The Hole In My Back Yard by Kenneth R. Lewis

Ken Lewis lives with his wife JaNell, and their dog Chewie, in a small town in southern Oregon where he is the chief of police. His first novel, Little Blue Wales, won the Public Safety Writers Association 2010 First Grand Prize for fiction. His second book, The Sparrow’s Blade, won an Eric Hoffer Award for commercial fiction in 2012. He is currently at work on his third novel, The Helical Vane. After their Black Lab Sally died on October 17, 2011, Chewie mysteriously appeared in the street in front of the police department twenty-three days later, and was turned in by a citizen as a lost dog. After several weeks passed and Chewie had still not been claimed, despite notifying County Animal Control, posting flyers around town with his picture on them, and putting him on Facebook, the Lewis’adopted him. To this day, they remain certain that Sally is responsible for bringing Chewie into their lives.

http://www.kennethrlewis.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crime-Fiction-Author-KENNETH-R-LEWIS

  

 

The Hole in My Back Yard
by
Kenneth R. Lewis

            There is a hole in my back yard at one corner of our house that I have watched for almost a year now as if it were some living thing. At one time, it was all fertilized, lush grass, until Sally, for some inexplicable reason, took a liking to it last summer—the last summer of her life—and made it her special place, wearing the grass away to an elongated oval of stunted green roots and slick mud.

 

            In the last autumn of Sally’s life, I would sometimes let her out the dining room slider in the morning before I went to work and she would refuse to come back inside, and when I would come home for lunch I would find her curled into a ball on the grass at that corner of the house in our back yard. Unwilling to try and stand any longer with dysplastic hips that had finally crumbled away to nothing despite nearly five thousand dollars worth of surgeries, or to drag herself with her two front paws across the patio bricks to the slider where I would try and lift her from behind, and she would sometimes cry out in pain. When my wife was at home, she was the lifter, and I was the procrastinator, the shirker, the stubborn doubter that Sally was ever going to die, and that there would ever come a day when she would no longer be with us in our house, and in our lives. So instead, I would sit down beside Sally in the grass and stroke her broad black head, ruffling the loose folds of fur around her neck until dust rose from the coarse hairs, and was carried away in the warmth of the waning autumn sun. When I came home from work at five she would still be there, in that exact same spot, and so would my guilt.

 

            Sally was four when we got her, and twelve when she died, so we only had her for eight years, even though we had unknowingly lived in the same small Oregon coastal town for two years that she did before my wife and I left that town (the same difficult community that inspired Little Blue Whales) and moved inland, across the mountains. Two years later, in February, we had returned to the coast so I could attend a writer’s conference at Gold Beach, OR where I had won an award for the work‑in‑progress manuscript of Little Blue Whales, and where Sally was also in residence—at the local county animal shelter, up for adoption. She had been there since December after her family had left here there, bound for new jobs in Texas. During a lull in the conference activities, we went to the animal shelter to “just look around,” and somehow walked back out to our car in the parking lot with an underweight female black Labrador Retriever named Sally who smelled horrible, and who had a bad case of kennel cough.

 

            We snuck Sally into our “no pets” motel room for the night, and after we ran a shower, and pushed and pulled her under the stream of warm water, lathering her up with bottle after tiny bottle of motel shampoo, torrents of rusty-red water ran from her coat like blood. When most of the kennel filth had been washed away, and she began to smell a whole lot better, my wife announced that she would now be named “Nikki.” I took a long look into the dog’s soulful brown eyes, and I could see that she had already had quite a life, that she was established, and possibly very set in her ways. “No,” I told my wife. “Her name is Sally. She’s no Nikki.” It was probably the only time I was ever singly right about Sally, because everything that happened after that point with her defied, and exceeded, both of our expectations and imagination. Sally turned out to be a very special dog.

 

            The first night we brought her home to our four-bedroom “no pets” duplex rental, Sally awoke in the middle of the night, went downstairs to the kitchen, and snatched a loaf of banana bread wrapped in aluminum foil that was on the kitchen counter. The next morning when we got up, the kitchen, and part of the living room, looked like it had been the scene of a rocket attack, with tiny bits of aluminum foil shrapnel everywhere. We took her to the vet, got her shots and her dog license, and treated her kennel cough. In a year, she went from being a 67-pound weakling to a strapping, 109 pound Lab that resembled a small black bear when my wife took her on their nightly walks, and which probably accounted for their lack of ever being accosted on the street during all those years. Sally just looked dangerous, and I have no doubt in my mind that if someone or something had ever attacked my wife, Sally would have put a quick end to it, or died trying. However, other than hating (and chronically chasing) cats, and not being particularly fond of other dogs, either, Sally was a sweetheart who loved all people, and everyone who met Sally loved her right back.

 

            I know it is a cliché to say things like “she was a part of the family,” or, “she was like our child,” so let me unequivocally state right here, and right now, that I am not going to use any clichés like that. Not at all. Instead, I will just write the truth: Sally was a part of our family. Sally was our child. My wife, who never had children, raised Sally like a daughter, and I raised her like the firm, but caring father of five sons that I was, and still am. When she died, it really was as if we had lost our child, and the grief was so powerful, so seemingly insurmountable, it came dangerously close to ending our marriage.

 

            I can admit that now, just like I can finally look at that hole in my back yard, and understand its true meaning now. But I couldn’t last autumn, or over the winter, or even by the time spring came. On any particular day, in any one of those seasons, I could not have given you odds, good or bad, on whether or not we would make it and stay married. And what was even worse, for the longest time, I really didn’t give a damn. You see, I believe there are two basic types of people when it comes to experiencing the loss of a loved one and how they are able to process their grief. There are those whose hurt and pain flows outward like a river for all the world to see, and for others to recognize and reach out and embrace them with healing compassion, and then there are those who direct their hurt and pain inward in a highly volatile, concentrated emotional energy, a shaped charge set to detonate at ground zero in the center of their heart and designed to obliterate everything around it. From what I have written so far, you can probably guess which type of person I am.

 

            For the first six years that we had Sally, and while she could still walk and run reasonably well, we lived in that “no pets” duplex rental, a modern day canine version of The Diary of Anne Frank, with my wife and I constantly on the lookout for a surprise visit by the Property Management Gestapo. It was a frustrating time, badly wanting our own house, and having the money to buy one, but being prevented from doing so by corrupt politicians who had hyper-inflated the housing prices by forcing banks to lend money to people who had no means to ever buy a home, and which in turn had driven up the costs of new homes by a hundred thousand dollars or more in our own town. In some cases, virtually overnight. So we dug in, hunkered down, and continued to save our money, and when the Property Management Gestapo did pre-announce a visit as required by the Landlord-Tenant Law to do a routine inspection, or repair a failing major kitchen appliance, they never knew that on the other side of the blacked out windows of my 1999 Ford Explorer hunting rig they walked past in the driveway time and time again, was Sally, and all of her doggy beds, water bowls, and even her huge forty pound bags of dry dog food.

            That duplex, and the years we spent living there, hold my fondest memories of Sally. The two years of nights writing Little Blue Whales in my den with Sally curled up at my feet. Listening to Sally excitedly popping and snapping her jaws like a grizzly bear, and then howling like a wolf when my wife would get her leash ready to take her on their nightly walk. Dressing her up in different costumes at Halloween so she could greet the kids coming to our door trick or treating. Celebrating her birthday every year on Super Bowl Sunday, with cake and ice cream—an easily remembered date we had chosen at random because we never knew her real birthday. The night Sally and I cornered three raccoons on the top rail of the wood fence in our front driveway, and battled them with a broomstick, knocking each one off of the top and over into the next door neighbor’s yard like pins being felled in a bowling alley. That awesome time when I sat in my recliner chair one winter evening with a beer, and a bowl of Planter’s Dry Roasted Peanuts, and Sally caught 104 consecutively tossed peanuts—snatching them in mid-air and swallowing them whole—until tragically, she finally had a miss on peanut number 105. The thing is, we were a family then. Sally was of us, around us, inside of us. She was always there when I went away, and she was always there when I returned home, and that was the way I always wanted things to be.

            But of course, “things” would not—could not—always stay the same. Eventually, the housing bubble burst, home prices started to drop, and we bought a beautiful new home high on a hill overlooking the city below, and the neighborhood where we had once lived. Sally liked the new house, and she loved her huge back yard—something she had never had at the old place—but her health began to fail rapidly. She suffered from dementia, and would get up in the middle of the night and roam around the house, bumping into walls and then just standing there, head down, her nose against the wall, and panting rapidly as if she were waiting for the wall to hurry up and get out of her way. Her two past operations for hip dysplasia had now left her bereft of their previous benefits, her hip bones sunken, and concave, her gait, when she was able to walk at all, a swaying, crab-like progression which never took her anywhere in a straight line, but an ambling, arcing curve, final destination unknown.

            The last six months of her life were the worst. Watching Sally crawl across the living room carpet by her two front legs, the back half of her body dragging along behind like the mostly dead weight that it was. I see, clearly now, why we should not have let it go on—why I should not have let it go on. My wife wanted mercy for Sally, to take away her suffering, and pain, while I, on the other hand, only wanted mercy for myself. As long as Sally lived, I could mercifully avoid my own suffering and pain, because the truth was that I could not bear the thought of losing that dog.      

            In the end, the decision was not mine, but my wife’s. I was away on a hunting trip to Idaho last October when Sally died, peacefully, in her own back yard on October 17 after my wife called our local vet and tearfully asked him to come to our house. A thousand miles away, sitting around my campfire on the night before Sally died, I suddenly had the strongest premonition wash over me that I was never going to see her again; that she was going to die while I was away on my trip. I shrugged it off, stirred the coals of my campfire for the last bit of heat I could coax from them against the chill mountain air, and then went into my tent and went to bed. Five nights later, I stood in front of my open garage door at home, looking for Sally, waiting for her to come out of the house and greet me like she always did, but instead my wife came out, alone. She told me that Sally was gone, and then she collapsed onto the concrete floor of the garage, sobbing.

            I cannot tell you what happened next, in the days and weeks that followed. I won’t tell you, because it is too personal, and because I am really not sure what happened myself, other than I started visiting that hole in my back yard. It was the last place I had seen Sally before I left, the last place we were alone together when I had stroked her fur and patted her head, telling her what a good girl she was, and at the same time feeling filled with guilt that I would just leave her there, helpless in the grass, because hearing her cry when I tried to move her was going to be more painful to me, than it was to her.

            After Sally died, I watched as that hole was buried in a soft carpet of falling autumn leaves, watched as it resurrected itself one dark winter day, the depression where Sally had lain black and soupy with moldering leaves and rimmed with an outline of jagged ice. When spring finally came, I saw new grass starting to grow inward in the hole, closing itself up like a wound scab in an attempt to heal. By the middle of this summer, the healing of the hole in my back yard was nearly complete, and my own healing, at last, had finally begun.

            The last time I sat down next to the hole, only a few days ago, and ran my hand across the top of the now almost invisible, shallow depression in the grass, I finally understood that this had not been just a hole in my back yard at one corner of our house. It had also been a hole in my heart, healing on its own time schedule, slowly and painfully, but inevitably, as the seasons passed. A few days after the pet crematorium had delivered Sally’s ashes to us last year in a big red plastic container with “Forever In My Heart” printed on it, my wife had said to me, “You should write something about Sally.” I told her that I wasn’t ready to do that. That I probably would, someday, but not right then. Well, it looks like someday, is today.
 

            Good-bye, Sal. I miss you. More than you will ever know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

Getting Guns Write in Crime Fiction by Kenneth R. Lewis

Ken Lewis is a police chief and crime fiction author who lives in Oregon. He is the author of “Little Blue Whales” (2009, Krill Press) and “The Sparrow’s Blade” (2011, Krill Press). He is currently at work on his third novel, “The Helical Vane” to be published in late fall, 2012

website: http://www.kennethrlewis.com

Facebook Page: Crime Fiction Author KENNETH R. LEWIS

email: author@kennethrlewis.com

           

GETTING GUNS WRITE IN CRIME FICTION 

by

Kenneth R. Lewis

 

            When I was nine years old, I fell in love for the very first time.

            Her name was Daisy, and every time I saw my reflection in her carbon blue barrel, felt the raised, fake wood grain of her chestnut brown plastic stock when my fingers closed around her pump, my heart would pound, my mouth would go dry, and in the deepest recesses of my adolescent soul it would be affirmed that this was going to be a love that would last forever.

            We met at Christmas that year, under the tree in our living room. Daisy was a beautiful, sleek Model 25 pump action .177‑caliber BB repeater, with a pressed-sheet metal steel barrel housing and receiver, a 50 round magazine feed tube, and a rear sight adjustable for both windage, and elevation. It was, as they say, love at first sight, and by the time summer arrived there was not a field mouse, hornet’s nest, or marauding neighborhood cat in our back yard that was safe from Daisy’s lethal reach while I cradled her lovingly in my arms.

            Daisy and I were inseparable for many summers to come after that first memorable one, but as is the case of most first loves, we eventually grew up, and began to grown apart. Daisy found solace hidden away in a dark corner of my bedroom closet, given a considerate coat of Hoppe’s gun oil and laid gently back inside of her original cardboard box, while I turned my eye, and my affections, toward a new blued-steel beauty, a Remington “Fieldmaster” pump-action .22 rifle that I received as a gift on my thirteenth birthday.

            Ten years after that milestone birthday, and after owning a succession of different rifles, shotguns, pistols, and revolvers growing up which I enjoyed collecting, hunting with, and target shooting, I was finally out of college and a member of the work force. However, in my case, it was the police force, work force, and I found myself now carrying a gun for a living every day of my life. Twenty years after that, I became an author, writing about police officers carrying and using guns, every day of their lives, in the age old fight of good versus evil. Today, I am still a police officer, and I still carry a gun, every day of my life. But in my other endeavor as a writer I’ve become more and more surprised, and even somewhat dismayed, at the number of mystery and crime fiction authors who seem to know so little about guns; many of them, admittedly, having never even held a real gun before, let alone fired one.

            Getting guns wrong in crime fiction is like baking a delicious, lemon meringue pie to serve your dinner guests for desert…but leaving out the meringue. It’s still a pie, all right, but it is not going to have that same flavor they were all expecting without it. If you are going to write crime fiction, you are going to be writing about guns at some point, period. And putting aside all notions of political correctness, personal prejudices, fears, bias, general misgivings, or just plain feelings of foolishness, or inadequacy, I believe you owe it to your readers to get guns right.             Many of today’s crime fiction readers and fans are shooters, hunters, gun enthusiasts, or even people in law enforcement themselves, and while for the most part they don’t expect a certain type of gun to necessarily take center stage in a story, they wince in near-pain when an author gets a gun wrong in a book. It’s a big letdown, and it jars the reader back to reality…the reality that the author is only human, a fallible human, and they are just making all this stuff up. They must be making it up, because they got something factually wrong. Therefore, it is not believable as fiction. Remember, good fiction is always very believable, even if it is one hundred per cent “made up.”

            Writing about guns is easy for someone like me, because I know a whole lot about them. And I do like giving certain guns minor “starring roles” in all of my books in an understated, yet accurate manner. Like Thud Compton’s off-duty Smith and Wesson Airweight .38 Special in “Little Blue Whales,” and Larry “The Rat” Luebcke’s WW2 .30-06 M1 Garand rifle in “The Sparrow’s Blade.” But what happens when a writer gets a gun “wrong” in their book? Here’s a recent example (a really glaring one) from a book I’m currently reading; Sweetheart by Chelsea Caine, published by St. Martin’s Press.

            ...Henry came around and unlocked the desk drawer where Archie kept his

            service revolver. Henry picked it up out of the drawer, flipped open the

            cartridge to make sure it was empty, and then closed the drawer.

            Ouch! Revolvers have cylinders, into which the cartridge, which contains a bullet (projectile) is placed, and then rotated in line with the chamber (rear) of the empty barrel, then fired out the other end of the barrel (the muzzle.) Now, please don’t get me wrong. This is not a dig at Chelsea Caine, who is, by the way, an Oregonian like me. Her first novel, Heartsick, was flawless, perfect crime fiction, the highest example of the art form today, and my impression of Sweetheart so far is that it is every bit as good as its predecessor. We all aspire to be Chelsea Caine! Nevertheless, either Chelsea, or her editor, or both, goofed—big time. In the writing world of firearms faux pas’ this is a biggie; not knowing the difference between a revolver’s cylinder, and the cartridge which is inserted into the cylinder—a single, multi-component object often mistakenly referred to in books as a “bullet” but which in reality contains a bullet, and a brass casing to hold the bullet, a charge of gunpowder (the propellant), and a primer (which is struck by the gun’s firing pin, and ignites the gunpowder).

            Oh–but it gets even better. That first passage from Sweetheart is on page 103 of the St. Martin’s paperback edition. On page 126, we have this:

            Archie snapped his phone shut and unholstered his gun. Henry was already out of the car, his badge out, barking orders, shouting at the uniforms to enter the school.

            Archie turned the safety off on his weapon and got out of the car.

            I am sorry to report, ladies and gents, that Detective Archie Sheridan is carrying a revolver, according to page 103 of the story, and revolvers do not have “safeties” to be “turned off.” Also, while I am at it, I might also add that nowhere along the way between page 103, and page 126, has Archie bothered to look for his box of cartridges in his home, or his car, or in his desk at work so he could LOAD his weapon before he sets out to find Gretchen Lowell, one of the most psychotically murderous serial killers ever to grace the pages of a crime fiction novel and the woman who had previously abducted him, tortured him, and carved a heart into the bare flesh of his chest. There are 326 total pages in this book, and I would be willing to bet that if a firearm is somehow referenced again, there is a fifty-fifty chance the description, nomenclature, or other details about the weapon will be in some way wrong.

            As a crime fiction author, you basically have two ways to mess up when writing about guns. You can be overly specific about a certain weapon, it’s ammunition, accessories, and characteristics, and if there isn’t a dammed good reason for such an in depth description as it pertains to furthering the story line, it will make many readers wonder if you are nothing more than a Wikipedia whore, trying to make yourself look good as an author. Or, you can go the Chelsea Caine route and become a “gun minimalist” and hardly make any reference to a weapon at all, other than the bare minimum. Either way, you run the risk of getting guns wrong in your novel if you really do not know what the hell you are talking about. The solution? Learn the basics of firearms, and learn to shoot. And no, I’m not talking about watching YouTube gun videos; although there is a certain amount of merit to some of these—the downside being the large number of idiots also posting on the internet doing idiotic, dangerous things with guns.

            Almost every small town, city, and county in this country has organizations dedicated to the furtherance of firearms education, hunting, or the shooting sports. These range from the NRA (The National Rifle Association) to your local gun club which may offer firearms familiarization courses, classes in obtaining a CCW (Concealed Carry Weapon) permit, or just fun target shooting—after an appropriate firearms safety course first, of course. Other options which could lead into an eventual firearms learning opportunity may be to attend a Citizen Police Academy in your area if one is available, or take advantage of a police Ride-A-Long program if your local law enforcement agency offers one. Another excellent source is retired cop Lee Lofland’s online, and real-time, Writer’s Police Academy. Shooting guns is usually not a part of the curriculum of these activities. However, introduce yourself to a friendly officer while you’re there, let him or her know that you are an author wanting to learn more about guns and give them an autographed copy of your latest novel or even a draft copy of your W.I.P. and you may just find yourself out on the range with that same officer in the very near future, having the time, and firearms education, of your life.

            Another variation of the above theme is to seek out, find, and cultivate your very own “gun guru” such as myself. Most police officers, and especially the recently retired ones who have the unlimited time to do it, make excellent gun gurus. These are people who have not only used and handled a multitude of guns throughout their careers; they have also experienced a vast array of “non-police” type firearms used in criminal activities—sometimes against the officer personally himself. You can’t buy this kind of real-life information to use in your writing, but get to know the right cop, and you can earn it.

            As a self-professed writer’s gun guru, my email inbox is always open to all writers of every skill level, from the not-yet-published, to the bestsellers in Chelsea Caine’s category (Chelsea, you shoulda’ called me!) and what used to be in years past, just a handful of firearms inquires sent to me, has now turned into an average of over a hundred a year. In just the past year and a half alone, I have been able to play a direct part in saving several authors from making egregious firearms errors, and, hopefully, adding an air of authenticity to the guns and the characters using them in their novels…Julie Dolcemaschio, Jonathan Quist, Earl Staggs, Beth Anderson, Mike Nettleton, and Donald L. Ball. The questions posed to me ranged from what happens to a person when they get hit dead center-chest with a 158 grain solid lead .38 Special bullet while wearing a ballistic vest, to the #1 All Time Champion Question of Questions…where is the safety on a Glock pistol? The answer to question #1 is, it hurts like hell, and the answer to #2 is, there is NO SAFETY on a Glock pistol. I repeat: there is NO SAFETY on a Glock pistol! Forget about the “Glock Safe-Action Trigger” on this most popular, and easily recognized semi-automatic pistol in the world. It is NOT the same as a traditional safety mechanism, and it will NOT prevent a Glock pistol with a round loaded into the chamber from firing!

            Now, if I only had a buck for every time I saw that particular firearms faux pas appearing in a book, or a movie, or on TV, I could retire tomorrow…and become a gun guru full time!

Saturday Evening Meanderings - My Week

So many of you have sent me cards and notes and emails to wish me well in my retirement - Thank You.  And a lot of you have asked how my first week in this new phase of my life has been going.  Well, I have to say, in all honesty, so far it only feels like I'm on vacation.  Just one of those lovely "stay-at-home" vacations. 

I've read a lot (imagine that!), and I've done some blogging and I've played a lot on my laptop.  I have one very big complaint.  I'm able to read my favorite blogs, but leaving comments on some is problematic (heck of a problem to have, huh?).  You know, we're on dial-up here on the edge of the wilderness.  So those of you who think I've been missing your blogging this week - not so.  I just can't always leave my comments.  And then too, some of you might have wished I had left some of my comments to myself this week.  I'm speaking of the heartbreaking piece Sarah Strohmeyer wrote for The Lipstick Chronicles about Melissa Mia Hall. If you missed it, I encourage you to read it, even though it will break your heart.   It may make you furious, and it may make you want to do something, like write to your representatives (like I did).

Sticking to my rule about attempting to balance out the negative with the positive - - there are benefits to our internet service being slow, so I'm not going to complain too loudly about it.  Actually, it's one of those things I could use to my benefit.  I could use it as an exercise to learn a bit of patience.  (we'll see how that goes . . . ).

I've also been able to keep up with the laundry this week.  AND the dishes, and I've actually even cooked a few meals.  All this in an effort not to feel that "I am already dreadfully inclined to indolence, lassitude, self-indulgence and procrastination."  (that's stolen borrowed directly from Amanda Cross IN THE LAST ANALYSIS.  I've recently discovered Ms. Cross' Kate Fansler mysteries and am besotted with them).  Aside from that, all in all, I think living the life of a reclusive housewife suits me to a "T."  I know that it wouldn't have a few years ago (I tried it, and it didn't), but the role seems to fit quite nicely now.

Another really good thing is being home with Harley Doodle Barley.  Margaret M. thought it would be fun for me to see what he's up to while we're gone.  Well, so far - he appears to just kinda sleep a lot.  Tasha Tudor said she believed Corgis have a lot of "cat" in them, and I do believe she was right.  Not that he has turned down any offers for a little walk outside though.  

Another good thing this week brought was an end to my haggling with our insurance company.  You'll remember, perhaps, the blog I wrote back in July about the insurance company denying claims for the helicopter ride Donald had to make from Boone to Asheville in May when he had a heart attack.

Well, this latest battle has been with the same insurance company denying the claims for the hospital stay during this same incident (or as we now refer to it here at home "that incident from back in May").

Suffice to say - with perseverance (like a pit bull), the good guys (that would be US), win again.  Y'all - I know many of you have had very good response from your insurance.  But some of you,  in all likelihood, may go through this torture of fighting them for what's fair and right at some point in your lives.  Please, please, please don't give up the battles.  Seek help anywhere and everywhere you can.  Keep a log of every phone call you make to the hospital, the doctors' offices, and the insurance company.  Note every person's name you speak with, the date AND the time and what the discussion included.   Arrange for a conference call with all parties involved and take notes on what everyone says.  Get your insurance commissioner involved.  Get your government representatives involved.  Get the media involved if necessary.  Do NOT let them intimidate you into giving up.  If you need to hire an attorney - do it.  A good attorney will handle this on a contingency basis so that you shouldn't end up winning the battle, but coming out of it broke.  

So, as you can see - it's been a week of ups and downs.  But more ups.  Way more ups.

My office sent me off with a lovely "do."  Nice things were said and lovely gifts were given. 

 

 
I only teared up a little.  No big emotional scenes, but I admit I came close.  The first time when my first Chair (Dr. Jesse Taylor, the man who hired me) in the Dept. of Philosophy and Religion said some awfully sweet things - 

Remember me telling you about how very much I loved and would miss a particular piece of art which hung in my office?  

A collage by Janet Bloch.

Dear Prudence.

I adore this collage.  I would even make up little stories in my mind about it.

My department decided to give the collage to me as my retirement gift.  But.  That didn't work out.  It's part of a permanent collection at Appalachian State University's Turchin Center for the Visual Arts (which is faboo!).  But the Turchin Center got in touch with Ms. Bloch and made arrangements for me to have a signed print.

How sweet is that?!

Was I touched?! Pfttttt - I guess!  I was a puddle!

I don't have the print yet - but soon.

What I do have is a framed certificate saying "The bearer of this certificate is entitled to a framed, artist-signed print from the original "Dear Prudence" by Janet Bloch.

I love this.  And I've chosen THE perfect spot for it to hang.  Life is good.

And then came one more teary moment (but not till I had left the building), and it came when I said good-bye to my present boss - well, present up until we said out good-byes.  Dr. Conrad Eugene Ostwalt. aka "Ozzie."  No one could ever make up a boss as good as this one.  I will miss him.

 Then, the next evening my neighborhood gave me a little party.  One again - another of life's little gifts; our neighborhood.   It's the type of neighborhood people dream about living in, but don't really believe they exist.  Well, I''m here to tell you - they do.  How we were lucky enough to find this one is beyond me, but we do dearly love it.  (as a side note - they're all just the teeniest bit nuts - I mean that, of course, only in the nicest way).

Next up -

dinner with some of my favorite women on God's green earth - The Nutz - ta DA!

And rambling on, as I'm wont to do - there were some additional lovely things associated with my retirement.

Lovely words written by very good, and very cherished friends.  Bo Parker, Earl Staggs, and Ken Lewis.  Thank you - you guys are the best  . . . 

"I want to take this opportunity to offer a testimonial and a toast.

As one who has spent only a few minutes compared to the many hours

Kaye Barley has spent promoting the mystery genre as the host of

Meanderings and Muses, words within my vocabulary are not adequate to express the appreciation I have for her efforts.

Nor are they adequate to express the pleasure I have received from

the fact she opened her virtual door to others, providing an

opportunity for enjoyment and enlightenment that I know I would not have otherwise experienced.

So I ask all other DLers to join me in a toast to Kaye, Donald, and

Harley (yes, they are part of M&M).

Retirement opens a door to an almost endless list of opportunities.

It is my wish that you experience all of them, and find joy, peace,

and contentment in each and every one."

Bronson L. "Bo" Parker

January 27, 2011

It started right here on DorothyL. Kaye posted a picture of her mom and dad. I went to have a look and saw something familiar behind them. They were standing in front of Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street in Baltimore where I spent many Sunday afternoons cheering for Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts. I had to write her a private email to ask if she was from my hometown.

That started a long line of correspondence between us. Turned out she was not from Baltimore, but her family visited there often. Kaye grew up in Cambridge, a small town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. I passed through there hundreds of times on my way to Ocean City. We chatted about how you can’t get better crabcakes anywhere in the world, about the magnificent beach and Boardwalk in Ocean City, the fudge they make there (finger-smackin’ good), Thrasher’s French Fries (world famous), and Maryland-grown tomatoes (slurpable right off the vine).

Before we were halfway through sharing our memories of Maryland, I was completely and unabashedly charmed. I’d never met anyone so delightful in my life. The way she talked about her adored husband, Donald, and Harley Doodle Barley, the Wonder Corgi. From her “Boy, howdy” to her signature “Pfffft,“ I looked forward to her emails with a warm smile.

She even sent me a box of fudge.

Then, she dropped the bomb. “I’m not a writer,” she said. “I’m only a reader.”

ONLY a reader? Pffft! Readers are more important than writers. Readers like her are why we do what we do.

NOT a writer? Boy, howdy! What is a writer but someone who strings words together in such a way you’re drawn into her world and want to stay there and whose infectious personality and love of life shine through in every sentence?

“You’re the most naturally gifted writer I know,” I argued. She countered with she’d have to learn how before she could be a writer. “Don’t even think about learning how to be a writer,” I persisted. “Just be natural and be yourself.”

I may have gotten through to her because she started a little blog called “Meanderings and Muses.” She began by writing about her life and the people in it and “squealed” about books she liked. Then she started inviting other people to guest blog on the site. Now, the guest list looks like a Who’s Who of the best writers around. I know those writers, like me, look forward to the entries by the Belle of Boone herself.

So that’s how it started, and my love affair with Kaye is still going strong, even though we’ve never met in person. One of these days, I hope to drive up to her house in Boone, North Carolina, and give her the biggest hug she’s ever had in her life. I’ll shake Donald’s hand, give Harley a good scratching behind the ears, and go inside full of hope she baked a cake that day.

Then I’ll pester her once again about writing her memoirs, something she absolutely must do now that she’s retired.

Tonsahugs to you, Kaye Darlin', as you begin a new chapter in your life.

Earl Staggs

January 29, 2011

Dear Kayester:

A little retirement poem for you:

For years she labored

And slaved at school

Then started a blog

That's oh so cool

She's retired now

And home every week

But all of us know

She's not ready to peak

She'll Meander here

And Muse over there

Keep on trimming

Her cute pixie hair

She'll laugh, and cry

Spit coffee from her nose

While bringing her readers

The best in prose

She's "Kaye from Boone"

Remember her name!

Retired, or not

She'll still be the same

Chief Kenneth R. Lewis

January 29, 2011 

Did I boo-hoo when I read these sweet words from friends I treasure?!

Pfft!

what do you think?!

a total and complete puddle.



but in a very good way.

I Have Seen the Elephant by Kenneth R. Lewis

Ken Lewis’ crime fiction thriller “Little Blue Whales” won the Public Safety Writers Association 2010 First Grand Prize for Fiction. His next novel, “The Sparrow’s Blade,” will be published this November by Krill Press. He lives with his wife, JaNell, and their black Lab, Sally, in a small town in Oregon where he is the chief of police.  You can read more here - http://www.kennethrlewis.com or find him at Facebook as Crime Fiction Author Kenneth R. Lewis

I Have Seen the Elephant

by Kenneth R. Lewis

In the middle of the 19th century, around the time following the civil war, the popular American phrase, "I have seen the elephant," referred to a person having overcome adversities and hardships in their life, or having experienced something completely extraordinary, and unexpected. It grew out of a country legend about a farmer who heard that the circus was coming to town. He had never seen an elephant and headed to town with his cart, filled to overflowing with produce, to see the elephant. Along the way, he encountered the elephant on the road and unfortunately for the farmer, his horse had never seen an elephant either. The horse spooked, and bolted, upset the cart, and ran off. This destroyed all the farmer's produce; much of his cash crop for the rest of the year. Even so, the farmer declared as he picked himself up from off of the ground, "I don't care, for I have seen the elephant.” This is how I’ve come to think about my writing every time something momentous has happened, good, or bad.

The first time I ever saw the elephant was when I was in the sixth grade. I wrote a story in my English class which I titled “The Forest Ranger.” I don’t remember if I was assigned to write it, but I do remember getting an “A” on it (my first ever in elementary school) so it must have been sanctioned by my teacher. It was about a handsome, brave, and rugged man who wore a green, whipcord uniform, lived in a log cabin in the mountains, and with his trusty Winchester .30-.30, he was the only thing that stood between a marauding mountain lion, and the certain destruction of the people in the small mountain town in the valley below. Today I live in a big house in the mountains, wear a dark blue uniform, and sometimes have mountain lions traverse the pine dotted open field across from my front lawn. Remember Ralphie from /A Christmas Story/? Yeah, I was that kid, growing up.

It was to be a very long time before I saw the elephant again, and this lingering interval would be the start of a pattern in my writing life, the far, and few between sightings of the elephant seeming to grow exponentially with the passing of the years from boyhood, to adolescence, to young manhood. But I still wrote. When I was twenty I sold a short story titled “The Willow Tree” to a magazine in Milwaukee, Wisconsin called Farm Wife News for which I was paid fifty dollars. The fact that anyone had paid me anything, for something I had written, was fantastical in its own right. But the enormity of knowing that I was not a wife, had never lived on a farm, and that “The Willow Tree” was the first professional short story I’d ever tried to write—and first piece of writing I’d ever sent anywhere to try and get published—was enough to bring the elephant looming into view once again. What an amazing sight he was! So, I wasn’t just a moody, angst ridden young man, with a seemingly terminal case of maudlin sensitivity, after all! I was a writer, that’s what I was, and now the entire world belonged to me. All I had to do, was reach out and write it.

Flash forward decades, the period in my life as a writer I used to refer to as “the wasted years.” After all, what had become of my great beginning? My great promise of a meaningful contribution to the world of literature? I had wanted to write about adventure, and danger, about great loves won, and lost, and won back again, and seemingly against all odds. But I didn’t have any reference point from which to start, I had no colored push pin to stick in the map of my life at point “A” in order to chart a course, and then proceed in the direction of “B.” At that time a young man seeking the experience of extreme adventure basically had two choices: a military war, or the war at home in our society. Viet Nam had not long ended, and had ended badly, and even though I knew another war would soon come along, I chose the sure thing; the never ending war within our own often violent culture. I joined the police force.

I didn’t see much of the elephant over the next long stretch of time, and what I did see of him left me wanting, left me feeling a little empty, and a lot disillusioned. Oh, I still wrote, and even sold some of my stuff. A freelance newspaper piece here, an outdoor magazine article there, the terrific short story that was almost...almost...bought by a big New York magazine, but instead was ultimately published by a small literary magazine that paid me in contributor’s copies. These were all sightings of the elephant, to be sure, but in my estimate, he looked a little dusty, a little broken down, and tired now. His swaying stride into the center ring of my life was more forlorn, than it was fabulous, and even though I knew he wished to trumpet proudly the major accomplishment of my life, the great novel I’d started a hundred times on paper, and a thousand times in my mind, he could not, because I hadn’t written it yet. He would make his brief appearance, and then turn his massive back to me and shuffle off, the only sound from him the derisive swishing of his tail.

The years slipped by. I married, and raised a family. My career in law enforcement progressed, my writing did not. It’s funny how you can sometimes cling to a dream for years and years, and then one day suddenly wake up and realize it was never a dream at all. That it was always a part of your reality; just the part you were most frightened of, and for whatever reasons, most ill equipped to face. My long marriage eventually ended, and I divorced, moved away to Oregon. My old life was at an end, as were all of my previous non-writing excuses and procrastinations. I started my novel, and a new life began.

For the next seven years, while I worked on, and finally finished “Little Blue Whales,” it was a virtual three ring circus which paraded past me, with many more acts than just the elephant alone. There were enough thrills and chills to give Barnum & Bailey a run for their money. Halfway into the writing of the book, it won an award at a regional writers conference for best fiction work in-progress, and when I was called up from the audience to accept my award, and asked to remain on the stage while a conference official read an excerpt from the manuscript, the audience of word lovers erupted into long, and loud applause. In 2006 I won over another audience, an audience of one, at the biggest yearly writers conference in Oregon, when literary agent Angela Rinaldi, in a mini-bidding war with another agent, signed me as her client. It was an intoxicating day, with the elephant so close by he felt as if he was sitting on my chest, joyously crushing me.

Then came the entire “un-writing” of the book after a favorable nod from St. Martin’s Press, who indicated they were interested in buying it, but it was seventy four thousand words beyond their editorial requirement of a maximum one hundred thousand words for a new, unpublished author. Would the author be willing to edit the book down for length? The author would…and did…in a grueling, eight month ordeal from which emerged, finally, the real  “Little Blue Whales.”

I had always wanted to write about adventure, and danger, about great loves won, and lost, and won back again, and seemingly against all odds. And now, I had done exactly that. When Angela, a normally very reserved lady, received the new manuscript, she called me at home and we both jumped for joy over the phone. I’d done it! The book was perfect! She would start sending it out again tomorrow, and we both knew, it was absolutely going to sell. We were, that night, both of us, staring the elephant square in his trunk.

But, like I said, it was thrills, and chills. It was The Fat Lady, The Lion Tamer, The Man On The Flying Trapeze, and the red nosed, flat footed clowns running in one door of their little clown car, and out the other, in an absurd, unbroken circle, all wrapped into one. Now, eight months later, St. Martin’s Press couldn’t buy the book after all. Their list was all filled up, two years out, but please send them the next one. Nine more major New York publishers said much the same thing, all the rejections very positive, but none of them substantive.

I started work on a sequel, “The Sparrow’s Blade,” and in 2008 over lunch with Angela at the same writers conference where we’d previously met for the first time, two years before, we discussed abandoning “Little Blue Whales,” in favor of concentrating on the new book. Instead, I announced to her that I was abandoning the perceived safety and comfort of the huge, ocean going, commercial publishing ship, and planned on putting myself adrift in a tiny lifeboat as an independent author. She was still my agent, if, and when, I might ever need one. But in the meantime, I was taking myself, and my pretty damned good first book, out into the storm. Alone.

I didn’t know if I would ever see my old friend the elephant again. Especially after I had turned down my agent’s gracious offer to submit “The Sparrow’s Blade” once it was ready. It was a tough decision, but I said no. What sense did it make for New York to want the sequel, first, and then the first book, second? What sense does New York publishing make at all these days? I have friends who’ve written really great books, received a modest advance and then waited almost two years for publication, only to watch a precious piece of their soul, their books, fade into obscurity and literally be out of print a few months, or a year later. That’s enough to stampede even the most stalwart herd of elephants, and send them trumpeting away in panic into the black of a jungle night.

So, you might ask. Have I ever seen the elephant again? Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. And recently.

On a hot July day this summer, a day I would normally have been off but had to work because of our town’s annual celebration, I came home for lunch and decided to check my email, something I hadn’t done for a few days…and there he was. He was sitting smack in the middle of an email from an official with the Public Safety Writers Association. “Little Blue Whales” had won a prize in Las Vegas at the association’s annual conference the weekend before, a prize in their annual writing contest, which I had entered in January, and nearly forgotten about. I had to read the email three times, before it all sunk in. “Little Blue Whales” hadn’t just won a prize, it was the First Grand Prize Winner in the competition. The prize of all prizes. I not only saw the elephant that day, he victoriously hoisted me aloft with his mighty trunk, deposited me on his leathery, scrabble board back, and took me for a few floor rumbling, wall shaking celebratory laps around my writing room!

As a writer in today’s world of overwhelming competition, shrinking publishing budgets, and the explosion of digital, small press, and self-publishing ventures, whether you are rich, or poor, famous, or unknown, mainstream, or independent, count yourself as one of the lucky ones, as I do, if you are ever fortunate enough to see the elephant yourself. He doesn’t appear for everyone, and when he does, he can sometimes look like something other than himself. Even so, if you do see him, never doubt him.

They say that an elephant never forgets, and as a writer, once you’ve seen the elephant, neither shall you. After all, when it comes right down to it, that’s the whole purpose of writing, or should be. To see the elephant. And hopefully, more than once.