James Snyder's Blog: Berlin Diaries

Winter’s almost here again. Great. No, I mean that. Great. I don’t mind a salt shake of bad weather, as a rule. I’m a writer, for God’s sake. Cloudy days and rain on the roof give me inspiration. I find sunshine annoying, when I’m trying to create. And if there’s a soothing snowfall outside—whoa—look out. As I look through the window, I start having Tolstoyan daydreams of being huddled in at Yasnaya Polyana for the duration, with Anna K. just begging me to finish the damned sentence. Then my wife (a sun worshiper who despises gloomy weather) comes in and tells me to take out the garbage, and my Russian mind-bubble pops. But, as a rule, I find the more provocative, dark-and-stormy changes in weather a catalyst for creativity. For drifting into those world-and-word-building parallels of alternate reality; at least, until that fiery yellow real-world ball returns, messing it all up. So, winter’s coming. Great.

But then I remember the last winter and take pause. A long pause. Thinking, maybe not so great, after all. Let me explain.

We happen to live in an isolated area of the Texas Hill Country. Actually, in the middle of a working cattle ranch, remuda, and wildlife preserve: whitetail deer you’ve named and that pester you for carrot and apple treats; mouflon sheep that have head-crashing battles outside your office window; blackbuck antelope that, when they lose a horn, resemble fairytale unicorns drifting toward you across the fog-shrouded pastures; rafters of wild turkey strutting to and fro about like so many head-bobbing, suspicious-as-they-are-nosy neighbors; and, of course, the usual assemblage of coyote, fox (saw a vixen have her kits in a pocket of the stone wall outside aforementioned window), skunk, armadillo, panther (and, yes, they do sound like a woman screaming in the middle of the night), tarantula, scorpion, rattlesnake, and species as yet unidentified. You have to literally ford creeks, cross a single-lane earthen dam, and navigate the hilly-and-narrow tortuous ranch road should you suddenly experience a Big Mac attack at nine at night. The reason I mention this is to allude to the obvious fact that, when bad things happen, such as bad, bad, really bad weather, and when you choose to live in such a remote location, you can’t count on city services or block neighbors to come to your rescue. Isolation has its upside, of course. But when the downside comes, no one will hear you crying but you and whatever indifferent varmint happens to be passing by.

That was the situation when on Thursday the 11th of February, of this year of our Lord 2021 (the week before Mardi Gras), my wife happened to be watching the Weather Channel when I stepped in to the room, and she asked me, “What’s that blue circle of doom coming toward us on the weather map?” I looked at the television and saw that the entire country looked fine, everything was unusually and amazingly clear of any issues—except for the single, small blue circle approaching the hill country. “No idea,” I said, and went to refill my coffee cup.

As I recall, that night I was in the middle of some sort of dream about it already being spring, and I already being kayaked and fly-poled, drifting along in my nirvana state across the water’s mirror surface, when I woke up and heard what sounded like machine gun fire against the aluminum roof. Somehow I fell back asleep, and when I woke again, it was daybreak, and the machine gun fire was only then fading away. I was tired after mind-fishing and dodging gunfire all night and didn’t go outside till after the second cup. Then I opened the front door and saw what was there. The strange new world of ice…there. And not just a troubling sheen or thin, vexing layer of the stuff. The landscape was an inches thick block of ice, glittering with an artic-like beauty at first glance, and encased within an even bigger, more awe-inspiring world of total, frozen silence; a silence, for those who live among the variety noise of city, town, or tiniest country hamlet, can’t even imagine. That’s when I turned away, shutting back the door and went to scramble an egg and give the mess time to melt beneath the morning sun.

But it didn’t melt. Instead, as the sun stayed hidden somewhere behind its horizon to horizon canopy of dark gloom, the temperature throughout the day began to drop. And drop. And drop some more. “This is weird,” I told my wife at dinner. “First a major moisture dump followed by plunging temps. First the ice, then the frozen world to keep it there. I guess it’s our version of the perfect storm.” Of course, her glass was still half full, although evaporating rapidly. “It’ll be better tomorrow,” she said, “when the sun comes out. My sun. You’ll see.”
Then the next day was the same. The same frozen, silent world. “For crissake,” I complained again at dinner that night, “the rest of the country is doing fine. Why do we still have that little blue circle over us and everyone else is doing just fine?” But she only sat there, staring down into her empty hope glass, waiting for her sun.

The electricity went out on day three. Later, we heard something about the wind turbines freezing, and the cloud-covered solar panels pissing out their last kilowatt. It didn’t matter. When you’re in the middle of nowhere, and don’t even think about trying to drive the frozen nightmare obstacle course out of there, it didn’t matter. “How’s our firewood supply?” my wife asked. Well, we had the normal stack of oak, under shelter, for the normal, occasional, cheery fire, but not nearly enough for this. We had our main supply stacked out by the pasture, every piece now frozen together under several inches of ice. So while my wife kept the fire going, I took the sledgehammer and pick out to try smashing and picking apart our stacked ice palace, our only source of heat. We laid out these iron chunks of hope near the fireplace to dry, causing so much steam to rise I was afraid clouds would form and start raining. While this was going on I drug our portable generator out the garage, cranked it up, and ran an extension cord through the kitchen window to plug in the refrigerator. “What are you doing?” my wife asked me. “Just open the damn door. It’s colder inside the house than inside the freezer.” I shrugged. “I guess I just needed to do something. To stay occupied.” And she shook her head. “Well, go pick free some more wood,” she said. “That’s a better occupation than warming up our fridge.”

It was so cold, the fireplace heat only emanated out into the living room a few feet. Beyond that was the North Pole. So that evening we drug couch and chair inside the safe zone and spent the night wrapped in coats and blankets, afraid we would both fall asleep at the same time and the fire would go out. My wife’s two ankle-biters, Bella and Judy, loved it. Party time. Snuggled with mummy on the couch, treats at two a.m., and getting to watch me in my armchair with my head bobbing up and down in the firelight like a water-cork, fearful of sleep and the onset of hypothermia. To make matters worse, my wife had placed her bearded dragon’s glass enclosure front and center between me and the fireplace, blocking what little puff of vibrating molecules might drift my way. “Dammit, I’m cold,” I complained to her. “Well,” she said, “you know she’ll die if we don’t keep her warm enough. Go put on another coat.”

Our water well gave up its ghost on day four. Now, no electricity, no water. Not that we were taking that many showers in a fifteen-degree bathroom. Of course we had emergency drinking and cooking water, but toilets still needed flushing. So when I wasn’t hammering and picking away at the wooden ice palace, I was breaking the ice on our goldfish pond and bucketing water for sanitary necessities. That was also the night a firecracker pop exploded right before us, jarring my wife and me, the two dogs, and the lizard from our exhausted slumber. I looked and saw the floor tile before the fireplace had cracked and heaved up from the concrete floor beneath; evidently, from the temperature difference between the hot tile and frozen substrate. After that I sat there, watching the fire and hearing, for the first time, the loud, sickening cracking of massive tree limbs somewhere beyond, coated with their tons of ice, that just couldn’t take it anymore. And before it was over, a veritable forest of limbs and shattered tree trunks would litter the entire ranch.

By day five familiar faces began appearing at our front and side and rear gates. Of course the ranch was keeping the stock fed and sheltered as best they could, but the wildlife was left to itself, and to Mother Nature, who was acting in a frightening manner, it was obvious, none of these furry creatures understood. We always kept bags of corn and grain on hand to supplement the dry, sparse winter grass they survived on. But there was no grass now and you could already see them trying to gnaw the frozen bark off trees. We began to parse out the bag food as best we could, through day five, into day six and day seven, and on into day eight, when the power suddenly came back on at eight p.m. By daybreak of day nine we actually stared in disbelief as the sun rose over the frozen, glittering-diamond landscape and began to thaw things out. The Great Texas Ice Storm & Freeze of 2021 was over.

What we already knew but was now reinforced in spades was that anything, good or bad, could happen to anyone, or anything, at any time. We found one of my wife’s pet blackbucks, an old ram, lying frozen near our house. When we took it over to the ranch burn, where the dead carcasses were being placed, my wife said the old thing was probably standing there in the dark, knowing she would come to its rescue. She said she was sure, if she had only known, and gone to it, it would have followed her into the stable, lay down in the warming straw, and eaten its portion of grain and corn. She was sure of that.
​
Now another winter is coming. Again, I don’t mind the changing seasons. I’m a writer, after all. Life is a changing season. All you can do is prepare yourself as best you can and go into it. After that, it all belongs to the hands of fate, and whatever other miracle solutions you might be working at the moment.
 

As I’ve said, I tend to avoid (or try to) the black-and-white manifestations that present themselves to me in my life. By this I mean the uncorrupted or totally corrupted of anything. I really don’t believe that the absolute bad or good exists in anything; that is, giving exception to such things as tornados and Gold-Medal trout streams. But, as an author, my interest here concerns people, humanity, and specifically literary characters. Of course, I have no problem with authors and readers who prefer the black and white, the exactitude of good is good and bad is bad, and don’t upset my expectations and applecart, and certainly don’t throw me any gray-tinged curveballs, or you’ve got a one-star home run coming your way. I guess that’s why somebody created brown and white rice. But my life is too short to finally be anything other than discriminating in how I spend my time, and who that time is spent with. Again, in this instance, fictional characters that have been created from the wisps and dust of an author’s imagination. Or to put it another way, I can’t imagine having lived my life without rubbing figurative shoulders and minds with the likes of such flawed-good characters as Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina or Lisbeth Salander; or the flawed-bad ones such as Judge Holden, Iago or Mephistopheles. Now I’m not sure how well I truly understand any of these creations (though I feel more kin to the enraged Lisbeth than that snake-oil creation of the underworld; the Devil’s demon, that is, not the Indian scalper), but I am sure the more time I soak myself in their enigmatic presence, the richer my own life becomes for me, as well as the desire to seek it out and know it even more.

As I grow in my writing, I find the way I approach my characters grows simultaneously simpler and more complex. That is, in the beginning I guess I went about it similar to many others in the gist of it. I “created” them, usually from scratch, into people-devices I then placed in my “story” and wrote the damn thing. Nowadays I more often have the feeling these wisps and dust of my imagination are creating me. They are making me trust my imagination and intuition to ever greater degrees as I pursue this weird habit of world-building. And more often than not I find myself on a journey without the best of maps. Of course, I still do enormous preparation prior to beginning that trip—research (my God, the research), ideas, sketches, snatches of dialogue that pop into my head from nowhere—but now when I’m underway, I feel a Zen calm I was unaware existed in the beginning. Perhaps it’s maturity. Life experience. Wisdom from so many mistakes and screw-ups. When actually I think such things, questions or otherwise, end up at the same place as that eternal quest for meaning of our existence: Knowledge unavailable to the living. And to be honest, an insight I prefer to remain priviless as long as possible.

I’ve found that being on a journey without a good map to fall back on has allowed me certain freedoms of movement previously unknown. A flexibility, at least for me, most valuable when dealing with my characters. And that, even more so when dealing with minds that are morally damaged. That are evil within the endless layers of gray that evil presents itself. Again, I don’t really trust absolutes. Arguing nature versus nurture comes off as so much navel gazing to me, and I start to nod off. But at the same time, why someone suddenly pops up fully-fleshed in media headlines as the latest incarnation of Satan is the tantalizing secret spice that makes great, evil characters great. Pathology in medicine is the examination of the causes and effects of diseases, and I’ve borrowed that approach, that method of examination, in pursuing the hidden truths of my own characters. How much evil are people capable? Is there no bottom an evil person would refuse to reach in pursuit of their desires? Or, bringing it home, is there no awful gray layer—in painting the character portrait—a writer will not brush down to capture the essence of that figure before them? There could be an argument about taste. A writer is in control of the words they write, and my take is, to each his and his readers’ own. I remember how shocked I was the first time I read Titus Andronicus, where even the highest cornice and poor cuckoo bird in a cage were, by the slathered end, drenched in blood. But creation is a moving target. It involves risks. Sometimes stunning risks where the struggle between value and result, cause and effect, is monumental. And, in the end, to deny an artist from taking risks is to deny art and creation itself.

Also in the end, I can only tell you what motivates me. What I try to achieve for my readers and hope entertains them. And to find the compassion, the shades-of-gray empathy, in a truly twisted soul, and to have the reader (often deliciously against their will) feel that, is one of the things that makes me want to take my own stunning risks. After all, how many times have we all sat there watching the latest TV reporter interviewing the latest neighbor about the latest monster to emerge in our midst, asking: “What kind of person was he (or she) really?” And the neighbor saying, “Seemed like the nicest, quietest sort. Kept their lawn mowed and always playing with the kids. Would often see them walking the dog and waving. I mean, who would ever have thought?”

Copyright © 2020 by James Snyder

My interest in characters, fictional or otherwise, increases as their flaws, frailties and eccentricities are revealed. Preferably, surprisingly so, layer by layer, and with much painful angst; not belly-button gazing, but reflection and revelation and reaction to their human condition, and what the hell they’re going to do about it or no. Perfect or near-perfect or black and white characters bore me. No, actually they don’t, because I refuse to endure them. I skim them in my reading, if I must. Or usually either trash or delete the work at hand and move on. Life is too short for namby-pamby idealizations. I prefer those more infinite gray shades of our lives’ challenge and pain—emotional, psychological and often physical—descending into those tension and anxiety-ridden corners, unforeseen and unknowable, of imminent destruction, with salvation as the wild card one might hope or pray for, but is never guaranteed.

My writing reflects my reading interests. This may sound odd, but I’ve always wondered where certain of my characters come from. That is, I know some come from the more standard blood, sweat and tears approach. I start with a sinew of personality and build them forth into, hopefully, full life and purpose; others, meanwhile, not so much. Too often I’ve noticed that my best or, should I say, more complex characters come to me fairly well formed already. Subconscious gestation and development? Lives from one of my past lives? Who knows? I only know that when I really need them, they seem to arrive to me maybe three quarters or more full-bodied and hot-blooded and ready to go. Of course, there is always the endless mediation and meditation and refining that follows; but, in general, they seem to already know who they are and where they’re going, or think they do, all entirely unplanned by me, as best I can tell. And more often than I care to admit, they, as well, refuse to follow whatever itinerary I had for them and simply go their own way. And I must scramble to keep up. Wondering where they might be leading me now. Precious, spooky bastards. Talking with other authors, I know I’m not alone.

As an example, Dawson Shaughnessy, my chief-of-detectives, somewhat antihero main character in my novel FRENCH QUARTERS (Milford House Press) arrived so. Dawson is loosely based on the actual 19th century, New Orleans city-cop David Hennessy, who, walking home from work one dark October night in 1890 (and after just dropping by his local bar for a glass of milk and oysters on the half shell) was shotgunned to his knees, only steps from the modest wooden home he shared with his mother. Before starting the novel, I’d read everything I could find about Hennessy, and the more I read the more enigmatic he became. He seems to have been an iron-willed, cool-tempered, rather private man, and who happened to be the first cop in America to encounter and clash head-on with this unknown entity known as la Mafia. With my Gilded Age setting and Hennessy as backdrops, I spent some considerable time making notes on Dawson and the direction I wanted to take him. Then, just as I began the first draft, he suddenly appeared and basically threw it all away, including the plotline journey I had so excitedly planned in all its glorious detail. It was like a house of cards tumbling down around me, and it happened so quickly and effectively, I had no time to object or thrown down my author’s card. I simply gave a nod to this equally enigmatic, flawed and troubled soul standing before me, and hung on for the ride.

There followed a journey I was becoming more and more familiar with each passing work. A mixture of the planned with unplanned side trips, and occasional far left-field wildcard of the unexpected. Dawson appearing more and more as the flawed hero I’d envisioned, but something more, as he and others came at me as something evermore dangerously organic. They let it be known they wanted to go places and do and say things that were most important to them, and as close to breathing, feeling beings as possible. With aggravation ever touching the comic, the process became something of a theater playhouse, where I viewed the ongoing action from the audience, and where my directorial advice was occasionally taken; more often ignored.

But, in the end, does it really matter? For readers, I think, it’s mostly about the journey, not so much the origination or destination. And while they’re taking that journey you arranged, I think they could care less who made the tires for the car or what oil you put in the engine. It’s about the experience you gave them, and did it satisfy that readers’ hunger within them or no? Did they believe and enjoy the world you created, or did they abandon the offering and move on? In other words, love it or hate it, just don’t be indifferent to it, regardless. As I’ve come to believe, I don’t care where they come from—my characters—as long as they do come to me, revealing their flaws, frailties and eccentricities, as they descend toward imminent destruction, all the while hoping or praying for their own salvation.
Copyright © 2019 by James Snyder

Having lived in New Orleans for over a decade—those years of stumbling up and down the broken, midnight-hour cobblestone streets and secret pathways; the array of characters and endless meld of voices encountered; the archeological layers of decaying artifact amid ghostly generation, reaching back to its primeval mud, cut in twain by that great river; and the endless simmering afternoons tucked breathing the forgotten dusty air of archive and tome—I discovered a lot of what passed for popular consumption of that place, whether in books or movies or whatever other public revelatory outlet was used, somehow, quite often, failed to capture that unique essence I found most endearing and alluring. Beyond Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras, beyond the manufactured hype and sensation, the Isle of Orleans, I discovered, was a physical treasure trove (as much as a gold-veined state of mind) of the best and worst of humanity, and the awful and wonderful vagaries of our existence. But unique, in its own way. Certainly, a city, a place, of mysteries, secrets and enigmas. A setting as elusive, complex and often as dangerous, as Paul Bowles’ Tangier. Exotic is not an adjective one usually associates with the United States. New Orleans is exotic. Certain rules it lives by are different than anywhere else in America. That makes it appealing to a certain type.

The most delicious corruptions of life—of experiencing our rather pathetically brief moment of existence in its purest static and kinetic forms—are practiced there as a fine art, a badge of existential honor amidst the pack. While using politician and corruption in the same sentence is a redundancy, at least in New Orleans we’re usually not subjected to the more elusive sanctimonious weasels abounding elsewhere in the land of the free and home of the brave. If you live there long enough and happen to learn local-speak, you know the latest crop of elected crooks are crooks because they show and tell you they are. They take care of their own. And, dawlin’, if you don’t like it—well, hopefully, your crooks will do better next time, awright?

New Orleans has always been a magnet for the world’s tainted Crayola box of social outcasts, cultural vagabonds and human flotsam extraordinaire, in general. In the middle of the 19th century, when the Sicilian mafia felt the heat of the newly rising Italian government and began to look toward America for safer grounds to spread their own unique brand of toxic manure, need we guess that most ideal of locations of opportunity they chose? Of course, they came first to The Big Easy, and why not? Immigrants had already been pouring into the French Quarter, turning the once lush and lovely Creole neighborhood into a decaying slum they called Little Palermo. As well, the live-and-let-live attitude of those other stiffer-lipped natives raised little alarm. At least, in the beginning, before they (the foreign outlaws as well as local big-boss politicians) became too frisky. After all, when you’ve survived hands-of-God hurricane and flood, consuming fire and epidemic disease; when the duel, the fisticuffs or assassin’s bullet are your preferred method of agreeing to disagree and Voodoo your religion of choice, what were a few more naughty eccentrics just trying to make their groceries and get by?

When I began writing my recently released historical mystery FRENCH QUARTERS (Milford House Press), much of the impetus was to try and capture this exoticism and uniqueness of place and share it with readers that may know and even love (as I do) this tawny-tropic little collection of faubourgs, but not be aware of the more interesting underbelly. This was quirky world-building, I found. This was making gumbo with the most tantalizing ingredients of unknown origin.

If you look at a map of Southern Italy, you see the spur of the boot (too high-backed to be of use to a working cowboy) sticking some forty miles out into the Adriatic Sea. And in the center of this spur is the dark and looming Monte Gargano where, in the year 493, a local bishop went deep down into a cave on the mountainside to investigate rumors of a recent miracle occurring there. According to the bishop’s testament, he had only just arrived at the location when the Archangel Michael appeared in full shining armor before him, confirming the miracle, and proclaiming the cave an everlasting shrine to all angels. And so became Monte Sant’ Angelo a destination for worshipping pilgrims from every direction, and where, in 1016, a band of Norman adventurers came to bless their own jaded angels, when a miracle of more earthly nature occurred. There, the Normans were confronted by a mysterious figure appearing out of the torch-lit shadows, who turned out to be a Lombard noble named Melus, begging for their help to defeat the Byzantine Greeks, with whom his people were at war. It was a plea, carried back to France, that would change the course of history and civilizations.

The Normans came, of course, first as a trickle; then a torrent. Descendants of Franks, Gallo-Romans and Vikings, these young French knights and paladins were mostly poor and without opportunity back in their homeland, but they all had three things in common: a desire for adventure, an itch for fortune and some even elusive fame, and a foolhardy willingness to ride their stout steeds, with their sharp swords slapping a rhythmic measure against their legs, into a world where empires, at the moment, were colliding together. Or as John Julius Norwich describes it in his gorgeous histories of the events: “The great cauldron…the constant clashing of the four greatest powers of the time, torn apart by the warring claims of four races, three religions and an ever-varying number of independent, semi-independent or rebellious states and cities…” It was, in the most vibrant though bloody sense and meaning of that word you can imagine, a mess. But the Normans came, regardless, encountering and dealing with that mess. And more than a century followed—the year 1130, in fact—before the dust finally settled and a grandson of that original Wild Bunch, a man named Roger, was crowned king of what became one of the most magnificent, illustrious and certainly tantalizing kingdoms in history.

In a hopefully equally tantalizing fashion my just-released historical thriller, FRENCH QUARTERS, weaves elements of these events into the narrative. Of course, the main historical setting of the story builds the world of 1880s Gilded-Age New Orleans, which was a mess of a different sort. The city was still on its knees and recovering from the effects of the Civil War, corrupt machine politics controlled the city, and everyone there at the time was looking and praying for the Hail Mary that would rescue them. So an idea was hatched to host a World’s Fair, a Cotton Centennial, that would lure the world back to its muddy shores beside the mighty Mississippi and possibly return New Orleans to its Golden-Age status of the past. At least, that was the plan. So the invitations went out even as the giant exhibitions rose upon the swampy acres now known as Audubon Park. But, unfortunately, that same moment the world prepared to journey to The City That Care Forgot, in order to partake in the shindig, was also the moment the murders began.

In my story, one of the main characters, Donna Natalya Ruggiero Val Demona, a young Sicilian princess whose entire family was previously murdered, remembers her ancestral patriarch, one Richard the Wild, the Norman knight who rode with the Great Count Roger (father of the eventual king) into Sicily against Emir Ibn al-Hatta and his Saracen army. And she recalls the emir’s terrifying and derisive battle cry against the Normans: “French quarters!” By which he meant no quarter at all for these infidel Frenchmen. No safe haven. No mercy. Butchered to the last man, woman and squalling infant. And that battle cry is carried forward as a theme into the cosmopolitan war my detective brothers find themselves waging, as a fight to the finish. No safe haven. No mercy. This, as they uncover secrets and twisted motivations not only from their own time but deeply buried from that other long-forgotten time as well. A time King Roger of Sicily founded his glorious empire against all odds. One might hope my Crescent City cops working those mean, gaslit streets would be so lucky.
Copyright © 2019 by James Snyder

​When one bright morning I open my eyes and look around and find myself waking up in the thistly, chigger-ravaged cusp of a 3,000 acre working ranch and wildlife preserve, I experience the process of “life change” in what is known in music and dance and rate of pay (as well as, drill-sergeant jargon) as double time. I know this because as I lift head from pillow and gaze through glass-pane streaked with hill-country dirt and dew, I witness across the gnarly, twisted-oak, monolith-and-boulder-strewn horizon (worthy of a Hemingway novel or Karen Blixen memoir) the head-on, corkscrew collision of blackbuck antelope--crash!!! Only to see them back away from each other, shaking dizzy noggins, before lowering those twisted implements of impalement and charge again. Am I in the mountains of Nepal? I wonder. The vast plains of India? While, simultaneously just beyond, massive curving racks of mouflon rams shatter the morning air and tremble the earth with a smashing vengeance all their own--smash!!!, and again wonder: Am I in the desolate, black-slate mountains of the Caucasus? The wilds of Iran? And my state of momentary dislocation is only brought back to earth when a vision big as a boxcar comes drifting toward me, stilling the surrounding turmoil in an instant by its massive and aloof presence, sending hooves and herd fleeing in every direction, until only the longhorn bull stands there, colored red as July cherries, white as sun-blistered artic snow, with a tip to tip horn spread that (I swear at the moment) could touch down on both sides of a hometown football field. And my head plops pillow-down and weary with the effort.
 
At first I am enchanted by the night skies. There is no intrusive light in that place, and the countryside, when the sun goes away, becomes a vast inkwell. So the stars are your only point of reference, stretching across their infinite space like frozen drops of white and yellow oil on canvas by an over-caffeinated van Gogh on endless “I just can’t help myself!” stroke repetition. Next, I see some sort of satellite drift by, leisurely blinking and beckoning, and think a solitary night walk along a nearby lane would be nice at the moment. Then I catch myself, remembering the advice an old-timer gave me not long after arriving. “Just remember, city fellow, once the sun goes down, this place don’t belong to the folks anymore. It belongs to whatever’s out there where you can’t see and they can. And, believe me, they damn sure know what to do with all that can. So there’re only two places you need to be around here at night. In your pickup, headed out. Or between your walls with a good fire going.” After that, I snoop around a bit (writers call this research) and realize real, real quick that predators are indeed things that prey. And even quicker that there are species in extant those parts that don’t really care that I am bipedal and have bragging-right thumbs or know my multiplication table almost up to twelves. For this regard, all they know is hunger and satiation. So serendipity of serendipities at that moment, I hear a scream coming at me out of the darkness. Now I’ve heard it mentioned that such a scream resembles that of an adult female human. And, in a manner, it may. But it’s different than that. It’s a scream without any human heat, figuratively speaking. It is something rather cold and merciless and…predatory. Something unto itself. So I forget the late-night walk. And I turn and go inside my walls and get a good fire going, instead.
 
Meanwhile, in the light of day I observe that the wild turkeys (abounding there) have attitude issues; especially, the tom variety. I experience this when I am out, minding my own, working with utter hopelessness my useless limestone-strewn pastures, and see their approach: a rafter of plain-as-hominy hens surrounding a couple of strutting toms. And I watch out the corner of my eye as they jump atop my fence railing, one by one, and sit there in a row, balancing and weaving back and forth like so many beady-eyed-and-beaked bean bags. Then one of the toms jumps down into the pasture and begins a wide circular walk around me, eyeing me suspiciously, as I eye him suspiciously back. Then I hear another “plop”, and the second tom is down and following the same path around me as the first bird, albeit directly opposite the other. That’s when I notice that the stiff, cautious walks have turned into crouching struts, with wattles and snoods reddening and extending, and the circle tightening with each lap they make. And I have to smile, as they remind me of two comedic, melon-gutted WWE wrestlers circling their opponent in the ring, looking for an opening. “Gobble-gobble,” one tom calls out. “Gobble-gobble,” the other answers back. Really? I think. Now I have to put up with this? “You know,” I say finally, “this piece-of-shit pasture is big enough for the both of us. You can have the bugs and I’ll keep pulling these bull thistles. Okay?” And it’s as if my accommodating voice somehow breaks the menacing moment they were trying to create, and they both finally wander away, somehow looking simultaneously nonplussed and indignant, and are soon joined by the hens, everyone now pecking with great concentration at the hard ground and ignoring me.
 
When you find yourself living in such an open, equal-footed environment, you begin to realize that your needs—that is, the needs you need to survive—are no more important than the needs of everything else living and surviving around you. And, in fact, sometimes less so. As when my wife found an old mouflon ewe, lying afield, too weak to take water. And she medicine-dropped it back to health, and for some time the old girl stood atop our stone walls, looking down as if to thank her, before suddenly disappearing back into whatever nature had in its store. But the message was clear. All of us were just trying to survive. Trying to live our lives, however we were able. And we all had to find our place, sometimes giving a little, sometimes taking, but always seeking where we belonged at the moment. That is, so everyone else could get on with whatever they needed to.

Having worked in the corporate world for as long as I had, I knew (or at least felt) a good thing when it came my way. For years I had done what many writers do to make ends meet. You work the day job, or the night job, or the bits-and pieces jobs, and you write with whatever time you have left. Of course, we all had to eat. And the roof over our collective heads was a nice touch. Then there were those endless, pesky distractions called bills that had to be dealt with. The good news was, being in management, I didn't have to punch that godawful clanking time-clock or slide that employee i.d. card with the tiny smeared face-pic that always reminded me of the stunned and disbelieving selfie a prison escapee might take just before sliding over and down the wall and fleeing all jackrabbit in a prairie fire.

The bad news was, being in management, the man pretty much owned me body and soul, 24/7, for as far as my eye could see and mind could fathom. Now don't get me wrong. All honest work is honorable. And I've done my share of pitching newspapers (for any unfamiliar younger minds, those were unwieldy, non-interactive objects of information made of cheap paper and non-drying ink that smeared all over your face and hands as you processed the content), digging ditches, pumping concrete, hanging chemical-soaking animal skins in 140-degree warehouse ovens, yadda yadda yadda. I was also grateful of honest work. And, yeah sure, I always tried to do the best I could, performing it. And that included eventually moving into management and having all those perks executives enjoy, such attending endless, mind-numbing meetings, often with no practical purpose or meaning, and all in attendance feeling obligated to opinionate toward that end. Dealing with that variety of people, otherwise known as employees (for some reason, we called them Associates or, occasionally, Stars), that gave one insight into humanity's enormous baggage of fears, foibles and frustrations, but also its great strengths and wonderful potential. Then there were those always far-away seminars, conferences and team-building excursions, where all the self-important heads came together to envision the bright, brave, coming-year, and how change just to have change just to justify our existence was the real and unspoken purpose. When, at last and enough already,  we would all go bleary-eyed to that final cocktail bash and awards dinner (dear God those schmoozing soirees). When, decorum teetering on the edge of group-implosion, everyone would grab their bags and stampede back onto those same shitty air machines we arrived on, and go home, ready to don the pretense of indoctrinated change in a world that never seemed to, or, if it did, didn't seem to matter all that much when compared with the rest of our struggle for existence and, occasionally, survival.

Therefore, it was without too great a deal of consideration that when my business environment suddenly changed, and I was offered a full-year salaried buyout, I gave the man the nod and checked out. I can't fully describe the mixed rush of untethered euphoria and oh-my-God-what-have-I-just-done anxiety I experienced. But, as it happened, I had just received my latest manuscript back from my editor, and now my agent was shopping the damned thing, so I admit there was a bit of now-or-never attitude driving me onward into that dark and unknowing landscape of gun-jumpers and the ill-decided. To make matters worse (or at least a tad more precarious), my tribe also decided it was time we leave behind those comforting and sedating arms of civilization and move to a somewhat remote and abandoned wilderness abode, disarmingly (as we quickly discovered) occupied by an ever-changing potpourri of spike-tailed scorpions, night-crawling tarantulas and the occasional diamondback slithering through. And so there I sat one morning, eating my corn flakes, watching yet another of my new nature's unidentified creations--all hairy-stingered and dripping-fanged--creeping slowly across our saltillo tile floor, and thought: Sometimes we just have to do it, don't we? We just have to decide about things and then go for it. Otherwise, how would we know where things went? Where they might take us? Anyway, I had new projects I was working on, and now I had more time to pursue them. Besides, if it didn't work out in the end, I could always go back to that other place. That other world once again. I heard through the grapevine they were hiring.

Another story from my TALES OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY is one entitled “The Blue Light.” With the previously mentioned “Point Arena” it forms a sort of duology, fictionalizing at least one perspective of my military experience. This pair of stories may be the closest thing I would refer to as autobiographical; although, as a writer, I am wary of offering specific sources for anything I write, and especially my own life. Whenever I’m asked where does such and such come from—ideas, characters, story events—I’m usually not sure what to say. Not because I’m trying to be coy or evasive, but because I’m not really sure. In the first place I don’t think too much about it. Where these things come from. And in truth I don’t really care. What most matters to me is, does it add to the greater good? Does it expand upon the overall effect of what I’m trying to do? Does it help complete the work? I think a knowing writer steals whatever he can from wherever he can (sans plagiarism, to be sure). So beware befriending thine author, for thy secrets and heartaches are his rich garden for the harvest pluck and use.

Best I recall, “The Blue Light” was originally envisioned as a novel. There may even be ragged, yellow-sheet drafts still lying in attics and dresser drawers about the globe. For all I know it may still become one, at some point, should it make itself known as needing that platform. Regardless, the background details of the story were mostly there, intact, when I began sketching the initial notes. What I mean is, this wasn’t a story I recall blowing a fuse trying to imagine and put together. It was always there, for the most part, not because I was simply recounting things I’d experienced, but because I had made myself peek into the dark and occasionally forbidding box of my existence, others’ existences, and knew that experience was true as I encountered it. Beyond that, the era did lend itself to dramatic appeal. If you’re interested, there’s a film which captures the time and place my story is set rather nicely. It’s called The Baader Meinhof Complex, which deals with the terrorist group by that name, and which colored my time there in such unforgettable hues.

“The Blue Light”, hopefully, offers a similar verisimilitude. It tells the story of a young soldier named Paul Adams (originally introduced in “Point Arena”), who encounters a mysterious and somewhat lethally enchanting German girl named Nikki Lotz, and details their ensuing relationship. You could consider it a period piece; however, Russia was the Soviet Union then, but then as now it was and is the 800-pound gorilla lurking along the German border. Terrorists were a part of everyday life at the time, as they are now, even though ethnicities have changed. Migrant workers were the migraine headache the locals suffered through at the time, so perhaps I shouldn’t mention the adage about what goes around. In that sense the story could have taken place yesterday, as easily as the fading decades of the twentieth century. I like to think of it as a unique and provocative meeting of cultures, accompanied by the usual misunderstandings, enticements, and ultimate revelations.

The truth is a character such as Nikki Lotz is a dangerous gift to an author. When that happens, one almost feels guilty talking about character and “creation” in the same breath. I didn’t create Nikki, as such. She was, rather, a creature innate and organic and sui generis from my experience that lent herself so easily to the page. A girl whose every gene and corpuscle begged for fictional exposure. Brett Ashley in THE SUN ALSO RISES and Lisbeth Salander in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO come to mind. I can tell you with a fair amount of assurance, I doubt Hemingway or Stieg Larsson had to bust much a sweat in initially realizing these characters. I would think they came to them, as Nikki did to me, with a sudden gasp of breath, a flash of light within, and all they had to do was invent all those annoying little details, some call character depth, that make writing so painfully enjoyable. If anything, the larger problem is not one of invention but containment. Characters like Nikki do not behave well. They know who they are. And they know what they want to say and do. And woe to the writer who must convince them there is a larger importance at play than themselves. “What—a story? With other people? You want me to share my moment with other people, so you can tell your silly little tale? Das glaub ich nicht!”

Instead, they strut upon your stage, often picking up your various artifacts and props, occasionally dropping and breaking this one or that, always moving things about—including your other characters—as they think best, before, naturally, becoming bored with it all and wandering away. I believe every good writer has their bag of tricks (You do know, don’t you, that fiction, at its best, is the most wonderful magic show called Suspension of Disbelief?), and one of the tricks I learned very early was to let a maverick character have his or her own head, an unplanned scene its own momentum. Unnerving, I’ll admit. But mastering the trick is to know when it’s not working as when it is. And when it’s not is called artistic faux pas, a day’s writing pissed away, and a shot of brandy to console the loss. And when it is, is called nirvana, a victory fist in the air, and, perhaps, that shot of brandy to celebrate the win. So when Nikki first stepped out onto the screen of my Lenovo ThinkPad, I held my breath. I waited as she surveyed the setting I had placed her, the people I’d placed her with. Then she turned and looked straight at me with those most amazing eyes, letting me know with a glance who she was and what she was going to say and what she was going to do. And, by the way, me and my silly little story could go straight to hell.
Copyright © 2015 by James Snyder

Another story from my TALES OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY is one entitled “The Blue Light.” With the previously mentioned “Point Arena” it forms a sort of duology, fictionalizing at least one perspective of my military experience. This pair of stories may be the closest thing I would refer to as autobiographical; although, as a writer, I am wary of offering specific sources for anything I write, and especially my own life. Whenever I’m asked where does such and such come from—ideas, characters, story events—I’m usually not sure what to say. Not because I’m trying to be coy or evasive, but because I’m not really sure. In the first place I don’t think too much about it. Where these things come from. And in truth I don’t really care. What most matters to me is, does it add to the greater good? Does it expand upon the overall effect of what I’m trying to do? Does it help complete the work? I think a knowing writer steals whatever he can from wherever he can (sans plagiarism, to be sure). So beware befriending thine author, for thy secrets and heartaches are his rich garden for the harvest pluck and use.

Best I recall, “The Blue Light” was originally envisioned as a novel. There may even be ragged, yellow-sheet drafts still lying in attics and dresser drawers about the globe. For all I know it may still become one, at some point, should it make itself known as needing that platform. Regardless, the background details of the story were mostly there, intact, when I began sketching the initial notes. What I mean is, this wasn’t a story I recall blowing a fuse trying to imagine and put together. It was always there, for the most part, not because I was simply recounting things I’d experienced, but because I had made myself peek into the dark and occasionally forbidding box of my existence, others’ existences, and knew that experience was true as I encountered it. Beyond that, the era did lend itself to dramatic appeal. If you’re interested, there’s a film which captures the time and place my story is set rather nicely. It’s called The Baader Meinhof Complex, which deals with the terrorist group by that name, and which colored my time there in such unforgettable hues.

“The Blue Light”, hopefully, offers a similar verisimilitude. It tells the story of a young soldier named Paul Adams (originally introduced in “Point Arena”), who encounters a mysterious and somewhat lethally enchanting German girl named Nikki Lotz, and details their ensuing relationship. You could consider it a period piece; however, Russia was the Soviet Union then, but then as now it was and is the 800-pound gorilla lurking along the German border. Terrorists were a part of everyday life at the time, as they are now, even though ethnicities have changed. Migrant workers were the migraine headache the locals suffered through at the time, so perhaps I shouldn’t mention the adage about what goes around. In that sense the story could have taken place yesterday, as easily as the fading decades of the twentieth century. I like to think of it as a unique and provocative meeting of cultures, accompanied by the usual misunderstandings, enticements, and ultimate revelations.

The truth is a character such as Nikki Lotz is a dangerous gift to an author. When that happens, one almost feels guilty talking about character and “creation” in the same breath. I didn’t create Nikki, as such. She was, rather, a creature innate and organic and sui generis from my experience that lent herself so easily to the page. A girl whose every gene and corpuscle begged for fictional exposure. Brett Ashley in THE SUN ALSO RISES and Lisbeth Salander in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO come to mind. I can tell you with a fair amount of assurance, I doubt Hemingway or Stieg Larsson had to bust much a sweat in initially realizing these characters. I would think they came to them, as Nikki did to me, with a sudden gasp of breath, a flash of light within, and all they had to do was invent all those annoying little details, some call character depth, that make writing so painfully enjoyable. If anything, the larger problem is not one of invention but containment. Characters like Nikki do not behave well. They know who they are. And they know what they want to say and do. And woe to the writer who must convince them there is a larger importance at play than themselves. “What—a story? With other people? You want me to share my moment with other people, so you can tell your silly little tale? Das glaub ich nicht!”

Instead, they strut upon your stage, often picking up your various artifacts and props, occasionally dropping and breaking this one or that, always moving things about—including your other characters—as they think best, before, naturally, becoming bored with it all and wandering away. I believe every good writer has their bag of tricks (You do know, don’t you, that fiction, at its best, is the most wonderful magic show called Suspension of Disbelief?), and one of the tricks I learned very early was to let a maverick character have his or her own head, an unplanned scene its own momentum. Unnerving, I’ll admit. But mastering the trick is to know when it’s not working as when it is. And when it’s not is called artistic faux pas, a day’s writing pissed away, and a shot of brandy to console the loss. And when it is, is called nirvana, a victory fist in the air, and, perhaps, that shot of brandy to celebrate the win. So when Nikki first stepped out onto the screen of my Lenovo ThinkPad, I held my breath. I waited as she surveyed the setting I had placed her, the people I’d placed her with. Then she turned and looked straight at me with those most amazing eyes, letting me know with a glance who she was and what she was going to say and what she was going to do. And, by the way, me and my silly little story could go straight to hell.

That’s why I love to write.

In my short story collection TALES OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY is one entitled “Point Arena.” It is written in a somewhat fragmented, episodic, almost collage-like style that mirrors (at least, in my own mind) what it was like being a young soldier stationed at a very remote and isolated Northern-California radar station in the 1970s; knowing that at any moment you could be the first American to witness that dark and terrifying line of Soviet nuclear missiles approaching from over the western horizon on your radar screen. The Cold War was in full swing then and the fate of the planet hung, then as now, upon the Doctor-Strangelove precepts of the weakest link in the world-leaders’ chain. As I recall, we never really talked about it much among ourselves. Perhaps the prospect of a sudden and near complete annihilation of our civilization was too grim to ponder over a late-afternoon Rainier beer.

Instead, we talked about other things. Usually, music and girls, and movies and girls, and cars and girls, and, most likely, girls. Because of the rotating shifts we worked—two swings, two days, two mids—we were always in a sort of sleep-deprived, zombie-esque twilight zone anyway. Light or darkness had no real meaning or importance for us, except perhaps to help pinpoint what part of “the zone” we were moving at the moment. And because we were such an eclectic bunch, pooling our individual talents for our shared support and survival, we approached our common, selective-service fate in a variety of manners. Since music was our lifeblood, there were the electronic wizards among us who would drive down to San Francisco, purchase expensive stereo components, bring them back (“up the hill”), and then tear them down and rebuild them into these absolute Frankenstein’s-monster systems: gleaming, stainless-steel towers of row upon row of wavering and blinking lights that had Pink Floyd and Keith Richards sending us fan letters. Others were the early computer nerds, with the World Wide Web already hardwired into their ecosphere, even though our computers were big as doughnut shops, and had the eerie, late-night propensity of arguing back at you in irritating, HAL-9000 whispers: “What’s wrong with you, Dave? Why are you giving me that particular command, Dave?” Meanwhile, others were munitions and weapons gurus; while others could blueprint and build a big-block Chevy engine in their sleep; and then there were those that could lead you safely through the veritable minefields of the worldwide, interlinked operations systems we managed. We were sort of a Magic-Bus version of the Dirty Dozen, but without all the Hollywood glam and haute-cuisine catering services. We all had our slot in our shared, existential egg carton; our importance to the group as a whole. Which was critical, because there was a war going on (Vietnam), and the entire world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket real quick, while our unique little tribe was simultaneously about as cut off from that world as you could be, while, in reality, positioned front and center of the whole damn mess. So it was important that everyone had their place and did their job. And everyone did. That is, except for me. At least, in the beginning.

When I first arrived on site, it wasn’t long before it became obvious I was the 13th egg in the carton. Very quickly I was weighed and measured and found wanting. “What do you do, Snyder? What CAN you do?” No one actually asked me this, but it was inferred, I recall, to an obvious and uncomfortable degree. No one there had time to deal with this shit, this straight-line newbie, still sporting his tech-school buzz-cut, and with no apparent specialties the group needed or wanted. And, at first, I was surrounded by some very pissed-off eggs, having to move from one slot to the next to make room for me. Actually, at first, the only thing different about me they could surmise was this battered, Navajo-brown, Smith-Corona carrying case that sat on my barracks-room desk like some shaman’s forgotten tote-bag. Then there was the further mystery of the clickity-clacking noise emanating from my room in the wee hours of dawn.

Someone banged on my door early one morning: “What the hell are you doing in there, Snyder?”
“Typing.”
“Typing what?”
“Stuff.”
“Oh.”

To be fair, when they finally did figure out I was some kind of writer the consensus was that this was pretty cool. Useless as tits on a boar, but cool. Then I got in trouble with the First Sergeant, and that changed everything.

The truth is I was never your model soldier. Don’t get me wrong, I always did my job and did it well. But I was never your spit-and-polish, follow-the-rules-without-hesitation type that gives military brass their morning hard-on. Or, for that matter, not so much the American-hero, GI Joe, take-one-for-the-team type either. I became a soldier because America was at war, and my father was not a senator, and therefore you had three choices at the time: be drafted and go to Nam, enlist and take your chances, or hightail it for the Canadian border. Since heading north was never an option for me, and after I attended the funeral of my latest high-school buddy to come home from the war in a jelly jar, I knew pretty much which way my wind was blowing. I certainly didn’t have a problem serving my country. But after reading the headlines and stories about that particular faraway conflict for some time, I still couldn’t figure it out. I just didn’t get the whole falling-dominoes thing. Something didn’t add up, and although I argued with myself that my young mind was probably not yet mature enough to understand the complexities of what all these so-called experts were saying about it, my gut was saying something else. So one fine day in May I hitched a ride down to the Oakland Induction Center, raised my right hand, and suddenly found myself a soldier.

As it happened, at the time I enlisted I was sporting a nice beard. I was doing some acting then, in high school and college and the local Napa Valley community theater called Pretender’s Playhouse. I forget which play I was trying out for (I think it was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), but I recall I’d grown the beard to make me look older. Any event, call to duty came before casting, and I flew off to basic training at Amarillo, Texas with my full beard. In addition to this, at the time I also had something of an attitude problem, which might work to your benefit on stage, when you’re standing there beneath the bright lights, pouring out your guts to a sea of dark faces, but doesn’t translate as well with the military. The military, I learned, did not like guys with attitude problems. They hated them almost as much as they hated guys with beards.

Now jump some months ahead again to my first duty assignment—again, deep inside those Northern-California mountains, surrounded by dense forests of tall fir and medded-to-the-eyeballs coastal hippies, enraged that we were even there among them in their own private Eden, doing God only knows what kind of Black-Ops shenanigans—where I’d just had my first run-in with the First Sergeant, or First Shirt, as he was known among the troops. It wasn’t a big deal. I think I was ordered to police (pick up trash) an area of the compound, which I did, then went back to my barracks room and took a nap. Again, we were all always exhausted, and sleep was a precious commodity, whether given or stolen. Regardless, the First Shirt soon burst into my room, found me snoozing, and the rest, as they say, is official record. I received a Letter of Reprimand, and, being the wannabe wordsmith I was working hard at becoming, promptly wrote a rebuttal, explaining why I thought the LOR was a bit over the top, and why the First Shirt should have just cooled it about the whole thing, brought it down a notch, for chrissake.

I can’t remember now everything that took place immediately after that. But I do remember it happened very quickly, like a short fuse sizzling its way down to sudden conclusion on a long stick of dynamite. I recall being pulled into offices and people yelling at me; then there was the nice conversation with the site commander, a soft-spoken major who, I think, was mostly just curious what kind of fool would volunteer to be a soldier, and then actually believe he had the right to discuss the specifics of the arrangement; mostly I recall my brief, though very public one-on-one with the First Shirt, whom, it was obvious, everyone there hated as only one can hate another who has their scrotum in his cupped palm, with little or nothing they can do about it. Of course, I was repeatedly disciplined, spending my leisure time scraping ancient stalactites from the undersides of forgotten urinals; painting the frozen exteriors of various mountainside structures in the middle of winter; and, of course, the time-honored duty of shoveling clean snow atop dirty snow for the endless site inspections and VIP visits we were accustomed.

Finally, one of the old zebras (a sergeant with a lot of stripes) there came to my rescue. He pulled me aside and told me, “You know, son, I was once one of those rebel-without-a-cause types just like you. Fighting back at everything that didn’t go my way. Until one day someone pulled me aside, just like I’m pulling you aside, and told me that maybe I should pull my head out of my ass long enough to realize I was temporarily living in someone else’s house. And while I was there, being fed and clothed and sheltered and instructed, the honorable thing to do might be to abide by their rules. I didn’t have to like them. But, well, maybe I should consider the honorable thing, instead, for my country’s sake, and not my own.”

Things quieted down after that. I completed my tour, got my E-4 promotion and finally my orders for Germany. But the odd thing I remember is that after this dust-up I was no longer the 13th egg. I was taken into the group fairly pronto, I recall, and that was that. No one ever told me why. Because the truth was I still had nothing to offer them—this tribe of ersatz twilight survivors, living always on the edge of sudden annihilation, while trying to maintain some manner of perspective about it all—except that I tinkered around with words, on my ratty little portable, at all hours of the day and night. Which everyone still agreed was useless as tits on a boar.
Copyright © 2014 by James Snyder