TITANIC STRIKES ICEBERG

Most disasters have more than one cause. If this hadn’t happened, and then that at the same time... Such was the case on the night of April 14, 1912.

Was the ship traveling too fast? Each day it covered more nautical miles than the day before. Speed had not been its original priority. However, rumors hinted J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, urged Captain Smith to try for a record. Did Ismay do that? Did Smith heed him?

Six Marconigrams from other ships in the area warned of ice. At noon on Sunday, the Titanic received a warning of icebergs. Then, that night, the wireless system went down, and Radioman Phillips spent four hours fixing it. By the time he finished, he was swamped with passengers’ messages. Did that cause him to ignore the iceberg warning messages?

Strangely, there were no binoculars in the crow’s nest, as there should have been. The second officer searched the ship but couldn’t find them.

The night was bitterly cold. Although stars twinkled, there was no moon. Survivors described the sea “as still as plate glass.” No waves splashed up against an iceberg to reveal it. The lookouts saw only a “blue berg,” meaning one which had recently turned over and was dark with sea water.

At 11:40, Lookout Fred Fleet spotted the iceberg. He gave three tugs on the brass bell, picked up the telephone to the bridge, and said, “Iceberg straight ahead.” On the bridge, Officer Murdoch shouted, “Hard a-Starboard,” and Quartermaster Hitchens rang for “Full Steam Astern,” and spun the wheel. Slowly the bow turned to Port and they thought they had missed the iceberg. But its underwater mass scraped along the hull, popping rivets and opening a huge gash in the side of the ship.

THE MOON DID IT

In an article in Time Magazine on March 19, 2012, two physicists from Texas State proposed that on January 4, 1912, the sun and moon lined up with Earth in such a way that their gravity led to unusually high tides. The moon made its closest approach to Earth in 400 years, increasing its gravitational pull. On January 3, the Earth made its closest approach to the sun that year. By April, the physicists theorized, the historically high tides might have caused an old iceberg, grounded near Labrador, to break loose and move into the shipping lanes into the path of the Titanic. Was that the possible reason for the disaster?

TITANIC REMEMBERED - April, 1912

It’s been three years since the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the most famous ship in the world. Having written my novel about it, COLD APRIL, in 2010 and Camel Press having published it a year later, I wrote a series of blog posts about the many interesting things I learned in my research, which never found their way into the book.

The first was an incredible coincidence. In 1898, fourteen years before Titanic made its maiden voyage, a book was published by Morgan Robertson which seemingly predicted the disaster. It was titled “FUTILITY, or The Wreck of the Titan.”

Robertson named his imaginary ship Titan long before the White Star Line named the second of its three massive ships Titanic. But the similarities between the fictional and the real don’t end there. In FUTILITY, the Titan was the largest ship ever built and deemed “unsinkable.” Around midnight on an April night, while sailing between England and New York, it struck an iceberg on its starboard side and, due to insufficient lifeboats, took most of its passengers down with it. Sound familiar? There’s more.

In both cases the ships were made of steel, had three propellers and two masts, and could accommodate 3000 passengers. Many other details were close, if not identical. The Titan was 800 feet long, the Titanic 882. The Titan’s horsepower was 40,000, the Titanic’s 46,000. Titan had nineteen watertight compartments, the Titanic sixteen. Titan carried twenty-four lifeboats, Titanic twenty. There were 3000 people on board the Titan, 2228 on the Titanic.  Titan’s speed on impact with the iceberg was twenty-five knots, Titanic’s twenty-two and a half. However, whereas in the 1898 novel, a mere thirteen people survived, 705 survived Titanic.

I’ve read FUTILITY, and the plot is nothing like any other novel about the Titanic or any film about it. Aside from that, it’s not well written and no doubt sank quickly after publication (pun intended), rendering it all but forgotten by April, 1912.

Who would believe a story in which (1) the largest and strongest ship ever built, (2) deemed unsinkable, (3) on its maiden voyage, (4) carrying some of the world’s wealthiest people, (5) would strike an iceberg and sink in less than three hours?

There are six blog posts in this series. Be sure to read next week’s episode.

EDGAR AWARD NOMINATIONS

Every year the Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar Awards, named for famed mystery author Edgar Allen Poe. This year the Awards banquet will be held in New York on April 29. There are fourteen categories, such as Best Novel, Fact Crime, short stories, Juvenile, TV show, etc.

The nominees for six of the adult Awards are:

Best Novel

THE DARK ROAD TO MERCY, by Wiley Cash (Harper Collins)
WOLF by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic)
MR. MERCEDES by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster)
THE FINAL SILENCE by Stuart Neville (Soho Press)
SAINTS OF THE SHADOW BIBLE by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)
COPTOWN by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte Press)

Best First Novel

DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY, by Tom Bouman (W.W. Norton)
INVISIBLE CITY by Julia Dahl (Minotaur Books)
THE LIFE WE BURY by Allen Eskens (Seventh Street Books)
BAD COUNTRY by C. B. McKenzie (Thomas Dunne Books)
SHOVEL READY by Adam Sternbergh (Crown)
MURDER AT THE BRIGHTWELL by Ashley Weaver (Thomas Dunne)

Best Paperback Original

THE SECRET HISTORY OF LAS VEGAS by Chris Abani (Penguin Books)
STAY WITH ME by Alison Gaylin (William Morrow)
THE BARKEEP by William Lashner (Thomas and Mercer)
THE DAY SHE DIED by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)
THE GONE DEAD TRAIN by Lia Turner (William Morrow)
WORLD OF TROUBLE by Ben H. Winters (Quirk Books)

Best Fact Crime

KITTY GENOVESE by Kevin Cook (W.W. Norton)
THE SAVAGE HARVEST by Carl Hoffman (William Morrow)
THE OTHER SIDE by Lacy M. Johnson (Tin House Books)
TINSELTOWN, by William Mann (Harper Collins)
THE MAD SCULPTOR by Harold Schecter (Amazon - New Harvest)

Best Critical/Biographical

THE FIGURE OF THE DETECTIVE by Charles Brownson (McFarland & Co.)
JAMES ELLROY by Jim Mancall (McFarland & Co.)
KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS by Robert Miklitsch (U. of Ill Press)
JUDGES & JUSTICE & LAWYERS & LAW by Francis M. Nevins (Perfect Crime Books)
POE-LAND by J. W. Ocker (Countryman Press)

Young Adult

THE DOUBT FACTORY by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little Brown)
NEARLY GONE, by Elle Cosimano (Penguin - Kathy Dawson Books)
FAKE ID by Lamar Giles (Harper - Amistad)
THE ART OF SECRETS by James Klise (Algonquin)
THE PRINCE OF VENICE BEACH by Blake Nelson (Little, Brown)

For those of you interested in such things, here are some facts: Of the 33 authors, 8 are women, and 4 more might be women (I’m guessing about pen names). 30 publishers are well-known traditional publishers, one is a university press, and 2 are Amazon imprints.

NEW PERSPECTIVES

Recently I came across a clever saying attributed to a mystery writer. “Crime doesn’t pay... enough.” To me, this was more than just clever word-play, because I’ve just signed a contract for my first mystery novel and, after fourteen romance novels, and twenty-some years as a member of RWA, I dropped that to join Mystery Writers of America. Imagine my disappointment, therefore, to read this:

“In a rapidly changing publishing industry, it is harder for all writers to make a living from our craft. The sales bar for midlist and beginning writers has been steeply raised, while advances and promotion budgets have dropped just as steeply. Everyone is suffering, but for African-American, LGBT, Asian and Hispanic writers, the suffering is more acute. Disproportionate numbers of... those crime writers have been forced into self-publishing or have left crime fiction altogether.

“As a woman...I’ve been acutely aware of the marginalization of women’s voices in society and in the industry during...the last thirty years. We are more likely than men to lose contracts, to lose print options and to lose marketing and promotion opportunities. The marginalization of writers of color of both sexes and of LGBT writers is even more egregious. It is my hope that...we can start raising consciousness in the industry about these problems, offer ways to address them, and also provide support to more writers on the margin.”

The above article was an eye-opener even though I’m already self-publishing many of my titles and thought I knew all the reasons why so many authors do the same. Now I find that self-publishing is better than Traditional not only because of superior royalties, control over titles, covers, book prices, publication dates and royalty payments, but also because self-published women writers are doing fine, thank you. No one is denying them contracts, print options or marketing opportunities.

Just last week I read an article about publishers allowing writers to avoid agents and go straight to editors, an obvious tactic to attract more manuscript submissions. Self-publishers are already bypassing agents and even publishers, and Amazon welcomes them. Besides their own imprints, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, and 47 North, the latest program is Kindle Scout where ordinary readers, visitors to the site, can nominate books they think should be published. It would appear the Number One retailer in the country will soon be the top publisher of most of the books in the most popular genres.

This, on top of the recently-published fourth Author Earnings report, reveals why traditional publishing is hurting. Unlike Trad publishing’s authors, more and more self publishers report quitting their day jobs because they can finally make a living doing what they love to do. And, once those “crime writers forced into self-publishing” learn they can actually make more money and have more control on their own terms, they won’t be back. And they won’t be alone.

HOW LONG SHOULD A NOVEL BE?

If you don’t read the blog of Dean Wesley Smith, you missed a good post recently. It’s from his updated writing book, KILLING THE SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING, where, chapter by chapter, he points out that some things beginning writers are told, as if they’re etched into stone tablets, are flat wrong. In fact, they’re myths.

Smith points out that length used to be a criterion for whether a book was acceptable. Some traditional publishers still use length as a guide for whether they’ll consider publishing something, and that can severely limit an author’s ability to tell the story he wants to tell. Having been a published author for many years, Smith remembers when books suddenly had to be very long - 80,000 to 100,000 words - or not considered worthy. That was a hoax because the truth was those publishers were faced with rising expenses and needed to make more money. Their scheme was to publish longer books and charge more for them.

Now, thanks to self-publishing and small presses, authors are free from being forced to write to a certain length. Which is a good thing. Smith offers a list of famous novels which were less than 40,000 words long and enjoyed great popularity and acclaim. Here are some of them:

Jack London’s CALL OF THE WILD
John Steinbeck’a OF MICE AND MEN
George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM
Robert Louis Stevenson’s DR. JECKYLL AND MISTER HYDE
Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL
H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE
Philip Roth’s GOODBYE COLUMBUS
Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS
Stephen King’s SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
Ira Levin’s THE STEPFORD WIVES
John Steinbeck’s THE PEARL
Norman MacLean’s A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

This is only a partial list, and it can be argued that many of these novels are quite old, written before publishers decided to raise book prices as a way to avoid having to leave their expensive New York offices. But the desire and necessity to write short is growing. Today’s readers want to use their I-Pads, even telephones, to catch up on the latest romance or thriller from their favorite author. “Short is the new long” is the slogan of today. And that doesn’t mean the reader can’t have an excellent reading experience. After all, the author, not some publisher, is the better judge of the “right” length for her story.

Blog reader/author: Do you write shorter books than you formerly did? Do you find them more, or less, popular than your other work?

DOES TRAVEL INSPIRE WRITING?

A post about whether traveling results in writing books, which I read on another blog, reminded me it was time to write about how so often my books were inspired by my travels. I’ve been lucky because my husband spent his gainfully employed years working for a major airline. In fact, I wish we had traveled more, but we also raised children, and it’s not always easy to combine the two. But, at the risk of sounding like a travelogue, here are my completed books, in alphabetical order, that were the result of travel.

A DEATH IN PHOENIX, not yet published, didn’t require hopping on an airplane. I drove there, but, having been born and reared in Illinois, it was a different background for me. Palm trees, hot summers, Christmas shopping in short sleeves or even shorts, were exotic to me.

CHOICES. Currently unavailable during rewrites. This one takes place in Los Angeles and San Francisco, so it wasn’t a long trip from my home in Northern and - later - Southern California.

COLD APRIL. Obviously I wasn’t on the Titanic, but we did travel to Branson, Missouri, where there’s a replica of the ship, a guided tour and a large bookstore which provided me with plenty of information. I’ve also seen every film and documentary from the comfort of my TV chair.

FINDING AMY contains scenes in both London and Paris, both of which I visited more than once. But we were there for visits to friends and relatives or on vacations, not trying to solve a mystery. And, thank goodness, not arrested by French police.

FREE FALL takes place in California’s central valley, again not too far away from home. Research for that included going up in private planes and also a small helicopter which didn’t even have a door on my side. The seat belt worked, however.

THE GREEN BOUGH - about a schoolteacher in an Oregon logging camp in 1913 - got most of its research due to Aunt Gladys telling me about her adventures and material from the Oregon History Society (where we have our family name on a brick).

THE ITALIAN JOB. That time I got to fly to Rome, Pisa, Florence, and Venice, plus a train to Milan and a rental car to Lake Como. As did my heroine. After all, that was her job.

NORTH BY NORTHEAST required a flight to New Orleans, then a train trip from there to Washington, D.C. with stops in Savannah, Charleston and Richmond, and another flight to St. Louis to see the arch (but didn’t put the arch in the book).

SOUTHERN STAR required a flight to New York where we boarded a 56-foot yacht owned by friends and sailed up the river. It was very romantic, although we were already married.

STRANGER IN PARADISE took advantage of my extensive knowledge of Hawaii, especially the island of Maui, because we owned a condo there for twenty years and visited twice a year to maintain it for guests. Yes, we did find time to swim and snorkle between chores.

I’ve also traveled to Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Mexico, Vatican City, Switzerland, and a few other places, so I have material for more books. Now that I’m adding mystery to my romance repertoire, I may become another Jessica Fletcher, finding dead people wherever I go.

Blog readers, what exotic places have you visited?

BOOKS AND MOVIES

The big news this week is that a second book written by Harper Lee has been found and will be published. Actually, it was a first book, having been written before TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and, in it, Scout is grown up, not a child, and has returned to Alabama to visit her father, lawyer Atticus Finch.

The publisher, Harper, is planning a print run of two million copies, expecting all Lee’s many fans - who longed for another book - to want to grab a copy now that there is a sequel. I, too, read TKAM the year it was first published, but will wait for a few reviews, I think, before ordering one. Not that I fear it won’t be good, however. After all, Lee was 34 when she wrote it and, perhaps, at the height of her literary talent.

For some reason this story reminded me of a film, originally produced in 1966, that was remade in 2012. I’m afraid I must agree with a film critic who complained a few years ago about Hollywood’s penchant for remaking successful films into less-worthy versions, “Why,” the critic suggested, “don’t they choose a “flop” and remake that into a good movie?” Something the public actually needs. We don’t need a crappy version of a successful one.

I saw the second version on Netflix and it had the same title, GAMBIT, but of course, different actors. Instead of Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine and Herbert Lom, it has Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz and Alan Rickman. Now, I happen to be a big Colin Firth fan and I admire Alan Rickman, but Cameron Diaz leaves me cold, especially playing a Texan with an thick accent.

In fact, I barely followed the updated story because of all the accents: British, Texan, Italian (Stanley Tucci) and six Chinese (or Japanese) characters. No wonder they gave it only 2-1/2 stars.

I think you can still get a copy of the original GAMBIT, so order that and you’ll be pleased. It got 5 stars and was labeled a “Classic.” If they don’t have it, write and complain.