Eva Sandor's Blog

Monsieur Parrot Investigates

On Friday evening Mrs. Day stood with her back to the kitchen window. Sunset flowed through the farmhouse curtains, past the pots of slightly ragged herbs, over the big old-fashioned sink and onto a little girl, upon whose jutting index finger a blue-and-yellow parakeet fluttered to keep its balance.

The little girl was a smaller, more intensely freckled copy of her mother. She raised the parakeet toward Mrs. Day and said: “Ah— may wee! You suspect the dog, ness pah?”

The little girl said this because Mrs. Day was now examining an aluminum baking sheet. There were no longer any frozen pollock fillets on this sheet and Mrs. Day set it carefully into the sink. Her words were full of annoyance, but her voice somehow managed not to be.

“Sunny! Stop waving that poor bird around. What do I always tell you? Be gentle with the animals. Put him back in the bird room. What’s that you’re jabbing at his face?”

Sunny held up her opposite finger, to which was stuck a curl of black electrical tape.

“It’s a mustache.” Her mother did not seem to understand, so she clarified, exaggerating her humorous accent. “Trademark of ze great detective, Hercule Parrot.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

“Monsieur Parrot is here, Madame, to investigate. He has, how you say, the theory. It may be that ze dog is not who done it.”

Mrs. Day plucked the dish towel up from where it customarily hung to dry over the edge of the counter, pinned down by a cutting board. She wet it under the faucet and bent toward the oven door that stood wide open, a red checkered hot mitt still looped through its handle.

The little girl thrust herself in the way. Monsieur Hercule Parrot fluttered more wildly than ever. “No, Mom! Don't erase the clues!”

Indeed, the inside of the oven door was marked with small, four-toed paw prints.

Before Mrs. Day could tell Sunny to move, she was interrupted by a clattering of claws. What looked like a perfectly miniaturized Husky came rushing into the kitchen and, despite the tiny dog's recent thievery, Mrs. Day couldn’t resist those sparkling eyes and that wildly vibrating curly tail. She tucked the dish towel back in its place and scooped the creature up in her arms.

“Naughty little Kleekie, stealing all that fish! Well, no more counter surfing. We’re trying to find you a home and who’s going to adopt a widdle, iddle, way too smart...”

And here Sunny was relieved, for her mother had exited the kitchen with Kleekie and left the clues, such as they were, behind.

Hercule Parrot clung patiently to her finger and scratched his head with one foot as she held the toy mustache under the blue flesh of his nostrils. “Inspector Day. Let us interview our uzz-aire suspects.”

***

Hercule Parrot now sat on Sunny's shoulder, safe from a suspect’s reach.

“Murder mittens,” whispered Sunny, for such was the name the internet gave to feline paws. The internet was packed with interesting reading: mystery novels, for example, and free French lessons.

“Mademoiselle,” she said to the barn cat, “Will you show to me your mittens? Or perhaps we call zem not mittens, but gloves. Yes: gloves for ze hands, booties for ze feet.”

The barn cat let Sunny take its right front paw. She squeezed each digit in turn, four toes and then a thumb, making each razor-sharp claw extend and retract. The owner of the murder mittens lay still, but when it raised its eyes to Sunny’s shoulder, and its pupils began opening wider and wider, and its thumbless hind paws suddenly shifted to a position under its body in preparation to leap, Sunny stood up. Monsieur Parrot took no foolish risks.

***

On Saturday evening, as Mrs. Day passed the bird room on her way to the kitchen to start dinner, she gave it the once-over.

In the furthest cage, a pair of doves looked peaceful. On the opposite side of the room, an enclosure full of finches bounced happily about. Between them a window with an old but mostly intact screen admitted just the right amount of clean, fresh air. With satisfaction she noted that the parakeet was not being tormented with any mustaches but was safely stowed in his own spacious cage.

But that didn’t mean the investigation was over. As Mrs. Day arranged frozen pork cutlets on the aluminum baking sheet, her daughter said:

“Madame. A message from Monsieur Parrot. He says: my theories progress. I have now ruled ze horses out.”

Mrs. Day smiled. “Oh?”

“Wee. Zey are too big, Madame, to enter ze kitchen, and do not eat fish at any time. As for ze bunny: true, he is an indoor bunny. And bunnies make ze leap— le grand boing!— but I feel we must clear him, too, of suspicion. He also does not eat fish.”

Mrs. Day set the sheet of cutlets to thaw in their usual spot on the range burners atop the oven. “And bunny paws don’t have pads. No pads, no prints, Inspector Parrot.”

“Mom! I’m the Inspector. Monsieur Parrot is a detective.”

“Well, you two won’t do much inspecting and detecting tonight. Kleekie is in his crate. And anyhow, it’s time to feed. Why don’t you go bring the horses in? I’ll give Kleekie his special food and Mr. Floppy his hay and we can do the grain together.”

“As Madame desires.”

The evening routine followed. Horses were fed and watered. They filled the barn cat’s bowl with the dry kibble that supplemented mice. Only human dinnertime remained. Creak went the back door, opening into the kitchen...

The biggest pork cutlet was gone. The oven door was once again open. Again, the paw prints.

“What the fungus?” exclaimed Mrs. Day.

“It’s all right to swear, Mom. I'm not a baby.”

But Mrs. Day was off in search of Kleekie. She strode past the room where they kept his crate. Obviously having escaped, he was unlikely to be in it... and yet a joyful high-pitched bark stopped her in her tracks. “Kleekie, where are you?”

A second bark. Mrs. Day turned back to the crate room. A third bark pulled her inside and then Sunny sprinted to join her mother, just in time to hear her repeat the words “what the”— but this time, followed by another that was definitely not “fungus”.

Kleekie was still in his crate, behind its closed wire door.

***

On Sunday evening, before feeding time, Mrs. Day secured the door of Kleekie’s crate with the twist tie from a bag of bread. And yet it happened again, exactly as before, the only difference being that this time a chicken tenderloin was the victim.

“Well, sh—” exclaimed Mrs. Day, staring at the completely untouched twist tie. “—shampoo! How is Kleekie getting out?”

Inspector Day, in the bird room feeding the Detective a small piece of fruit, considered the window. “Do you think...?” she whispered.

“Ah, but of course! What a bird-brain I have been!”

***

On Monday afternoon Mrs. Day sat on the sofa, petting Kleekie and listening to Monsieur Hercule Parrot as he concluded his report.

“I admit, mee za mee, that this was not the most satisfying case. It did not tax my mental powers— there was, after all, only one other suspect.”

Kleekie yawned as though the proof of his innocence had lifted a great burden from him. The window of the bird room was just visible from the sofa, made a bit ugly by the duct tape patching its screen, but now completely cat-proof.

Mrs. Day squeezed Kleekie. “Well, Sunny, thank you for spotting that tear.” As her daughter’s freckled forehead began to wrinkle and her mouth began to open, she quickly added “I mean, thank you, Monsieur Parrot.”

That was the right thing to say. Sunny wiggled the mustache jauntily in front of the parakeet’s beak. “Think nothing of it, Madame. But— you continue to have some concern?”

“Well, yes. There’s a first time for everything, so I’m not saying the cat didn’t finally decide to come into the house. But how do you explain Kleekie’s paw prints on the oven door?”

“It is of the simplest, Madame.” The finger with the mustache on it left Hercule Parrot and pointed directly at one of the dog’s little feet. “Ze kitties, zey have their five-toed murder mittens, have they not? Ah, but only on ze front! The hind toes number four, just like those of doggies! And what was hanging over the edge of the counter, Madame, for a climbing creature to cling to with its famous front paws? A dish towel. No prints can be left on a dish towel.”

Mrs. Day laughed. “Oh, my goodness, Sunny, it all makes perfect sense! I always knew that cat was an evil genius. You can just see her mind going, strategizing, when she hunts. And she is strong enough to have yanked the oven door open by pulling on that hot mitt. She has— how you say, Monsieur Parrot? Ze hidden powers.”

Sunny grinned and took the parakeet back to its room.

“That was fun, mom! It was just like those mystery novels I’ve been reading!” As she shut the birdcage door, she had a fleeting regret that the case had ended so soon. There would be no more improvised step-stool, no more illicit snacking for Kleekie or the barn cat...

Or for someone else.

In a corner, from behind his pile of hay, Mr. Floppy the indoor bunny gazed longingly at the kitchen window.

The pots of herbs lined up on its sill were so very tasty. But alas, he would never taste them again. He could only reach them from the countertop— and he could only reach the countertop if he started from the open oven door. Otherwise it was too far, ze leap, le grand boing.

###

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“I’ve noticed one massive problem for me with writing... any time I try to describe something I get really paranoid im just bloating my story ... I despratly [sic] want to describe them but none of my writing teachers ever bothered to talk about it in a positive manner and im sick of the “SHOW DON’T TELL, never describe” routine.

Does anyone have any advice on describing?”

A redditor asked about writing description, admitting s/he is sick of the old “show, don’t tell routine”. I’ve talked about this before— about how that advice was originally meant for screenwriters— but a lesser-known aspect of it is how your readers do their part decorating the set.

Another subreddit I chat in a lot is r/Better Call Saul. Have you seen this show? Lots of us love it because it's such a terrific example of what's known as visual storytelling— moments when the camera shows the story. Like when a character makes his (soon-to-be-ex) wife a cappucino... and she picks it up and dumps it into her travel cup without even noticing that her husband put a peace sign latte art on top of it.

“Show, don't tell” was originally meant as advice for screenwriters, to get them thinking in terms of the visual storytelling I mentioned above. As an author, you have the opportunity to do it all: visual storytelling, dialogue and description (expository writing). Such power!

In writing, YOU are the camera, the actors, the set design and everything in between. Imagine yourself directing a movie: in the scene you’re “filming”, would you insist something look a certain way? Would you tell the cinematographer to take care that something be lighted just so, or ask that a specific prop be used, a certain costume be worn? If yes, that’s the thing you should be describing in your writing.

If, on the other hand, your scene includes plenty of elements that really could be any which way— you leave the rest of your crew to sort them out— well, your readers' imaginations are the rest of your crew. If you've trained them well (meaning: your writing is appropriate in mood, vocabulary, etc) then they will probably fill in your scene with appropriate stuff, all on their own. Yes, you should be on guard for that one guy who might put a stuffed moose in the hospital room set... but overall, people are pretty good at this.

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“What makes a world feel ‘fleshed out’ and deep? ”

It’s been many months since I posted here on the blog, and that’s for many reasons. But I won’t go into them… I’ll just put this here for your consideration. Someone on Reddit asked the question above, and here’s the reply I gave.

***

This morning I've been reading Fritz Leiber stories. They're not all fantasies— some are sci-fi, some are horror, some are glowing hybrids. But they feel rich for, I think, the same reason that the drawings of a master are so valuable for a fellow artist to look upon.

Who was it who said the majesty of an iceberg comes from the fact that nine-tenths of it is underwater? That sense of power held back is what makes a master artist so mesmerizing, giving depth to what they create. When you look at one of Gustav Klimt's drawings, you know perfectly well that the man understood the construction of the thing he was depicting, fully and absolutely, and was now going beyond that simple ability to depict and instead was thinking on paper. Thinking thoughts wider and brighter than yours, letting you see them, making you grateful you got that chance.

So. On to writing.

If a writer describes something in ways that are simple yet wholly new— or uses well-worn old phrases with a wink and nod that brings them startling freshness— or gives the sense that what s/he has put on the page is in no way the entirety of her imagination on the subject, but only the most immediately necessary fragment from some neatly stored vastness— then we feel the weight. And we love it.

___

Since writing this, I’ve found that the originator of “iceberg theory” is said to be Hemingway. And you can see some of Klimt’s drawings in high-def scans here.

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Today I joined host Matt Struven on his podcast, “Writers Are People Too”.

Yes, indeed we are— and sometimes we’re even captured on video (you have to be quick, though— we tend to slither hurriedly back into our lairs). Watch now!

Once again, I was a guest on the delightful Story King Podcast, hosted by author Giancarlo Ghedini. This time around we talked about series arcs, book marketing and the new term “Small-Scale Fantasy”. Have a listen on your favorite platform!

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Want to check out something weird, but true?

Maybe you do, but maybe you don’t. I’ve found that a surprising number of people are on board for the first part— the weirdness— but not so much for the second. They hate it when miracles get debunked. They act as though, by pointing out the real-life explanation for some uncanny phenomenon, you’ve stolen something from them.

I never understood this. Some time ago I even summed it up in what I thought was a witty little aphorism: “Who needs the supernatural when the natural is so super?”. I’m not sure why that didn’t catch on. I think it’s pretty damn slick.

But anyhow. For me, learning that something astonishing has a mundane explanation doesn’t destroy its beauty. In fact it does the exact opposite— it demonstrates that our world does indeed contain wonders. And my books reflect that. The slang of Granny Almantree’s criminal crew, the flight of the cranes over the Breathless Heights, the hundred-plus towers bristling up out of the plazas of Spireburgh— all have counterparts in our own world.

So. Avid connoisseur of curiosities that I am, I thought perhaps I’d use this space to start sharing such things. As I go about my business, if it happens that I turn up a nugget of the real-life Stuff of Magic, I can post a link to it here. What do you think? Would that be fun?

Here’s one now: that bit about “Spireburgh”. The City of a Hundred Towers totally existed.

Okay, let’s be frank about the prank.

It’s been years since I came up with a really good April Fool’s gag. I think it was the classic “misplaced objects” one: Timm opened his box of morning cereal to find it full of packing peanuts, got in the car to find a stuffed animal already in the driver’s seat, that kind of thing. The genius of this one was that I had not one, not two, but just a seemingly never-ending series of such silliness. It was, as the cognoscenti used to say, a doozy.

But I haven’t really done anything too Fool-ish since. Thinking up new material at the last minute is hard, yo! (Because I always forget till the night of March 31.)

What kind of prankster are you? Do you come in prepared and kill it— or do you trust to eleventh-hour inspiration?

So it’s been a few months since I added to the blog— various reasons, hoooo boy, have I had reasons. But I’m getting back aboard now, filling the hopper with my blog staple: posts I’ve made to the fine communities of Reddit.

To that end, allow me to bring up this one… which didn’t get much traction, but was a genuine question: how to find out whether the good folks at Bob’s Burgers were inspired by my shadow puppet video?

I tweeted to the Burger-meisters. No answer. I put up this question on Reddit. I am still un-enlightened. Ah well, we may never know. But I like to think I touched a fellow artist’s life.

My answer to a Redditor who asked, how do I write a character who’s uninformed, but not stupid?

Don't think of it as "how can I show this guy isn't stupid?" so much as "how can I show this guy is SMART?".

What would a smart character do when he discovers he's been making a mistake?

He'd never make that mistake again. In fact, he might even stop another character from making that same mistake. Or better still, stop another character from making a mistake which is similar but not exactly the same thing— an action that makes readers, too, go "ah!".

What does a smart character do when he learns a piece of information that, despite being old stuff to other characters, is new to him?

A smart character doesn't just add a bit of lore to his mind stash and leave it at that. He uses that information later in the story, in an insightful way, so as to surprise and delight readers.

When a smart character comes to some new realization about his circumstances, he doesn't simply make an observation about it. He generalizes this information and applies it to another situation. "Ah! It seems that in this world XYZ applies. Well then— doesn't that mean ABC?". And this thought answers some question that's been nagging at readers.

See what I mean? The uninformed, but smart, character isn't just not-stupid. He (or she, obviously, but yours is a he) is a vehicle by which the readers themselves feel as though they are uninformed but smart, and learning quickly how to negotiate your storyworld.

A Redditor was asking whether it was all right to invent words. I replied…

If you've built up the style of writing where people expect that from you, then of course you can do that! The issue isn't so much that English has an Academy with rules (for good or ill, it does NOT), but that your skill with it determines whether readers come along with you for the thrill ride-- or bail out.