Camp NaNo April, 2023

 I’ve won NaNoWriMo four times now, starting in 2019. I’ve really tried to parlay that success into a self-publishing empire based on my own series of novels. It just hasn’t happened. In real life I’m a ridiculously busy person, and the motivation to write two thousand words at the end of a long day is really rather difficult. 

Another problem, I feel, is a lack of good plot ideas. I have plenty of ideas for characters, situations and scenes, but very few ideas that I can figure into a full, cohesive plot that can carry a fifty-thousand-word novel. 

Camp NaNoWriMo is an unofficial event hosted by the NaNoWriMo organization that takes place in April and July. The format and goals are much more open than the official event. In November you have to write a fifty-thousand-word novel, at Camp NaNo you can write whatever you want. 

• Set your goal to thirty and write a haiku a day for the month.
• Set your goal to sixty and write a sixty-page travel guide of Barcelona.
• Set your goal to fifty thousand and write a fifty-thousand-word novel.

I’ve only attempted Camp NaNo once before - and failed. Without the hard goal of fifty-thousand words, and the community that forms around the official event, I just haven't been able to motivate myself for Camp.

Last year I tried to write a story about a tabloid reporter who went to a small town in Northern California to solve the mystery of a murder that was allegedly perpetrated by a sasquatch. I couldn’t find the plot, the story kind of meandered and didn’t get anywhere as I tried to force fit everything into the plot that didn't work. Bah!

I’m setting my goal to twenty-five thousand. My plan is to send the tabloid reporter to the town in search of a general bigfoot story. Instead of writing a story, I'll write about the weird characters he meets in the town and describe the scenes between them. My hope is that I will discover a good plot that I can then turn into a good novel. 

If it works I will have discovered a great process. If not, well I'm working on my writing habit.

Adventures by Disney review - Egypt adult exclusive

This is my official review of our recent trip to Egypt with Adventures by Disney.

Those of you that know me know that I’m a dreamer when it comes to travel. I want Germans in lederhosen and snake charmers in India. In England I want to drink tea, in her majesty’s colonies - cold gin. I want to meet the locals and sketch their stories into watercolor memories. I want the fantasy of travel and I’m more than willing to make sure that happens. That’s why we chose Adventures by Disney for this trip, there is certain promise of fantasy adventure. 

Let’s start before the beginning, then I’ll talk about the trip and finally, the good, the bad and the ugly.

There’s no doubt about it, it’s expensive, very expensive. Adventures by Disney isn’t any more expensive than other premium travel outfits, but there are others offering almost the same trip for a third the price. 

Why Disney then? Firstly, the promise of fantasy adventure. The ABD commercial features a father and son sword fighting in front of a castle. Who doesn’t want that? Secondly, ABD offers exclusive access to attractions, like getting into the pyramids after closing. Finally the accommodations are - well, you do get what you pay for. 

We booked the trip for 2021, but COVID wasn’t done yet, then rescheduled for 2022 and the trip was cancelled because of COVID and terrorism. A lot of people on the tour had the same experience, it is what it is, but Disney’s communication wasn’t great on this and they specifically did not offer any sort of priority rebooking for members of cancelled trips, you have to get back into the queue with everyone else. On the west coast that means getting up at 3AM to have any hope of getting a popular Disney booking. Disney, like every other east coast company, forgets that twenty-three twenty-fourths of the world lives in a different time zone. 

After booking, Disney communication continued to be lackluster. The phone queue is impossibly long for working people, they take up to a week to respond to an email, some emails went unanswered, and they don’t have any chat or contact form. Often responses to emails with specific questions about the trip were answered with responses like, “you’ll have to Google that.”

The departure date finally arrived and it’s off to the land of the pharaohs. Flying to Egypt isn’t easy and our only option was to arrive a day early. Disney arranged for expedited VIP service at the airport. They say that’s part of the Disney experience, but it’s more a product of having spent a lot of money. Either way it was nice to not have to stand in line for customs and immigration. 

With the extra day we booked a local cooking class and had our first experience with our ABD guides. The cooking class was an hour away, in Giza, and the address was unclear. Mostafa, our local guide called the class and got the address in Arabic, talked with our Uber driver to make sure everything was clear and arranged for him to call when we arrived safely. He went way above and beyond for a booking that wasn’t even part of the Disney tour. 

What they call day two, is actually day one, (that’s something to keep in mind if you’ve never gone on an arranged tour, they count your arrival and departure days, so a ten day tour is really only eight days), we had the meet and greet breakfast, where everyone introduced themselves. The people on the trip were lovely people, and I enjoyed spending time with them, but this kind of trip attracts a certain kind of successful person from a certain social status. It’s my own insecurity speaking here, but I really didn’t feel like I fit in. So, if you’re like me, more comfortable downstairs with the staff than upstairs with the Crowleys, this is something to consider. 

As we introduced ourselves, we each said what we were looking forward to. Many people said they were looking forward to experiencing the culture, this is my number one problem with Adventures by Disney. They have something they call the Disney Bubble. At Disney World this means never leaving the property, on an adventure by Disney it means keeping you totally sheltered from the real world. The only experience we had with real Egyptians was our service staff and the uncomfortably aggressive hawkers at each attraction. Never once did we experience the culture of Egypt. 

From the hotel our first stop was the Citadel of Saladin and the Mosque of Mohamed Ali. I’m not going to talk about each stop in detail, just a few that make a point. First of all, I hate mosque tourism. I am,  by philosophy and learning, an anti-religious person, but any time you visit the Middle East, they have to drag you through a bunch of mosques. Once again I turned to Mostafa. I had noticed there’s a police museum in the citadel, so I wanted to visit that. I didn’t think he would let us, but he did. This is when I had the most fun, the times when we got away from the tour to forge an adventure. 

This brings up the most important point to my review of Adventures by Disney. There is no adventure.

The tour runs at an exhausting pace, keeping us out late and getting up before dawn. The guides explain this by saying, “this is Adventures by Disney, not Vacations by Disney,” but, there is no adventure in running people into the ground just to see more sites. Adventure is a product of chaos. Disney mitigates the unexpected by obtaining exclusive access or maintaining a tight schedule, rarely providing any time on your own or interaction with real local culture. 

The next day was our trip to the pyramids. We got exclusive access to the site, after closing hours, which meant going inside the great pyramid with just 28 of us, not packed in with 200 tourists. Climbing inside of a pyramid is exactly what you think it would be - it’s dark and hot, cramped and scary as hell, and that’s why it’s so much fun. The climb is miserable and sweaty, but that’s the joy of it. The graffiti on the walls date from as far back as the eighteenth century making you feel like an old-timey explorer. 

Inside the king’s chamber, I asked the docent if I could climb inside the sarcophagus for a picture he said, “it’s forbidden,” he looked around the room, “wait ‘til everyone leaves.” 

As he helped me into Khufu’s afterlife vessel, I asked, “will I get the mummy’s curse?”

“Yes,” he said, “but it’s ok.” 

As long as it’s ok. 

After escaping the pyramid, I set off on my own, between the two largest pyramids. I was all alone in the Sahara, standing between the pyramids of Khufu and his son Khafre. This was a definite benefit of the Disney bubble. 

The next day we flew to Aswan. 

The amount of time this trip spent in airports and on airplanes is ridiculous. There is nothing adventurous about commercial air travel. It’s miserable, uncomfortable and Egyptian security assumes you are a terrorist with a bomb strapped to your balls. 

In Aswan we dined at the Old Cataract Hotel. Being a mystery writer, this was a hilight for me. In the lobby I found the picture of Dame Agatha, grabbed a selfie with her and ordered a Sapphire martini. Word of warning - the Old Cataract can’t make a good martini.  

Probably unfairly, I expect the Victorian colonies to turn out a good glass of gin, I’m usually disappointed. 

That brings up drinks - ABD will usually cover beer and wine, but if you want a cocktail, waiters will waffle as they don’t know what to do. You’ll go thirsty until you’ve ordered it a few times and someone finally tells them it’s ok to bring a separate check. 

A late night, followed by a dawn flight, is exhausting. Abu Simbel is cool, well the facade is cool, but inside is a crush of tourists. You visit a lot of temples on this trip, and they start to feel very samey. Was Abu Simbel worth the plane ride? At the time I was undecided. By the end of the trip I would have said no.

In Aswan we had moved aboard a cruise ship and spent the next few days drifting down the Nile, stopping at tourist attractions. The ship itself was relaxing and there was a party where we dressed in local clothes. I don’t get to dance as often as I’d like, and the Electric Slide was somehow removed from my memory to make room for something probably much less important, but it was great time. Word of warning - the MS Tulip can’t make a good martini.

The last night on the ship was a late night at Luxor Temple. We had exclusive access to the Temple after hours, but little free time, just the guided tour. And, once again, the late night night was followed by an early morning. It’s a consistent pattern. Every late night is followed by an early morning, late mornings follow early nights - it’s bad planning IMO. 

This early morning was a bus ride to the Valley of the Kings. Was it worth it? This time, yes. The valley is so different from everything else we’d seen and the early morning gave us cooler temperatures and fewer tourists. 

The Valley of the Kings was followed by a trip to the Hilton for lunch. The food on this trip was, in a word, bland. According to the guides, Disney specifically forbids the eating of street food on their tours. It introduces an element they can’t control. From my pre-trip research, I learned, the best food in Egypt is the street food. 

On this trip the food was either generic resort buffet, or the same mix of grilled chicken, beef and kofta served with rice. The flatbreads that are normally used to eat meals, instead of utensils, were served to us as appetizers with the condiments that would normally accompany the meal. 

The one dining hi-light was the rice-stuffed pigeon. The rice was savory and rich, like the best Stove-Top Stuffing you’ve ever had, and oily in good way, as the whole bird had been deep fried in butter. We were told that you ate it with your hands by tearing it apart. Again I felt out of place amongst my fellows by doing so. While my table mates daintily picked at their birds with forks and knives, I heard comments like, “look at him,” which made me feel self-conscious for eating it correctly. It was the most delicious meal on the trip, and the only one different than the others. 

After lunch we went to the airport. This was probably the worst part of the trip. We were going to Sharm El Sheikh, a resort town on the Red Sea. Because of Disney’s contract with EgyptAir, there wasn’t a direct flight, so we had to bounce through Cairo. And this would mean double trips through the draconian Egyptian security. But, before we could get to Cairo, the flight was delayed several hours. This isn’t Disney’s fault, but it does speak to an over-dependence on air travel. This was doubly painful because we were going to Sharm for only 36 hours before coming back to Cairo for the final night. The whole thing didn’t make a lot of sense. Two miserable hops on an airplane to spend thirty-six hours at a luxury resort. Once again, this is the exact opposite of an adventure. If they want to give us a wind down after the go-go-go of the last several days, an overnight train to Alexandria would have been a much better choice, and trains are inherently adventurous. 

The resort was just a cookie-cutter beach resort - laying by the pool, generic buffet, bottom-shelf drinks, in a word - boring. Word of warning - the Coral Sea Sensatori resort can’t make a good martini.

A few days earlier we had been given a couple hundred pounds to buy a gift for the white elephant exchange. We were told that if it was something we wouldn’t want for ourselves then we got the right item. I was actually embarrassed to have followed that advice. I did decorate the bag with a watercolor painting of Abu Simbel. IMHO I liked the painting so much that I considered it a better gift than the monkey ashtray. Later I was horrified to find out the painting was discarded as “just a bag.”

The final night was spent in Cairo, at the Ritz. We had a supposedly Mexican dinner, followed by a wonderful slideshow. The guides took pictures throughout the entire trip, so many that you could probably get away without taking any of your own.

The good: 

I cannot say enough about our guides. They were friendly, helpful, treated us like family, and even when one of them got sick with the rest of us (it was sugar cane season, the smoke-filled air left most of us with respiratory ailments), they always had a good attitude.

They took enough pictures that you could go without taking any and still wind up with a great album.

Accommodations were very high-end, if a bit boring. 

The bad:

An over-dependence on air travel makes for frustration and wasted time. The entire tour was two-hundred forty hours. At least twelve hours of that was wasted at airports or on airplanes. No one likes airports, and evidently Egypt has very good passenger rail service, so the dependence on airplanes is totally unnecessary. 

The food was just boring. I did my research, I saw all the delicious dishes we could have been enjoying, but all we got was the same boring food over and over. 

The pace was exhausting, to the point of being un-enjoyable. I considered skipping some things just to have a few minutes rest. I can’t imagine doing this tour with kids, I’m sure they’d be constantly crying and cranky - I was. 

The ugly:

There was absolutely no social interaction with the locals, or introduction to local culture. 

Tour buses. Tour buses are uncomfortable, they’re huge and have no way of getting through traffic. We should have rounded up fifteen tuk-tuks each day and moved through traffic like crap through a goose. 

But, the biggest problem - there was no adventure. This was a site-seeing tour. We trudged from site to site with little expectation of something exciting happening. 

Would I go on another Adventure by Disney? Probably not. We’ve gone on trips with other tour companies that specifically provide interaction with locals and plenty of chaotic adventure. IMO Adventures by Disney is boring and over-stuffed, perhaps it’s a good tour for people who want cushy site seeing, but that’s not adventure. 

Scooby Doo is an Unreliable Narrator

 The problem with the Scooby Doo genre, the horror/mystery fusion, is making a believable scare. How do you create a convincing supernatural horror story that is not supernatural? People are familiar with special effects, it’s easy to recognize the difference between a real face and a rubber mask and what criminal is going to go through the trouble of building a convincing hoax to cover a criminal enterprise? And, there’s the additional problem that, these days, hauntings attract more attention than they discourage. 

My theory is that the supernatural events aren’t as realistic as they appear, my theory is that the Mystery Incorporated gang are unreliable narrators, but not on purpose. 

The scare doesn’t have to be realistic. It just has to be scary enough to get people to run from it. All the Scooby Doo mysteries are told from the perspective of the gang. If they were studying the witch and her zombie slave up close, they would see the loose skin around the eyes and neck, the Converse All Stars and that they have the exact same build as the only two residents of Swamp End. But, they’re not studying the witch and the zombie, they’re running from them.  

Zeke and Zeb grew up in Swamp End raised by Louisiana’s version of Mama Fratelli. They were bullies in school, they know how to make someone panic and run, and that’s what they do. They don’t want TAPS showing up to investigate, they want people to stay away so they can search for the armored car. 

That’s why the Scooby Gang are unreliable narrators, the best look they get of any supernatural threat is over their shoulders on a run. Daphne is brave enough to stand up and get a look, but that usually results in her getting captured before she can confirm any suspicions.

And, that’s the secret. The supernatural threat doesn’t have to be real, or even appear close to real, it has to scary the curious enough that they don’t look back. The images they build in their minds will fill in all the supernatural details and the stories they tell will get weirder and more horrifying with every telling. And, since you’re writing from their perspective, the trick is to write what they perceive, not what is actual. 

Magical Places

There are some places in the world that are truly magical. These are the offbeat places, the giant balls of string, the Worlds Biggest … whatever. These places are often the single-minded dream of a visionary, who lives far off the beaten path, so they can build their dream away from the building codes and HOAs that would deny them their first amendment right to personal expression in the name of property values. Because of this, these places are hidden in far-away corners of the world. They need to be sought out and discovered. One of these places is Marta Becket’s Amargosa Opera House. 

Marta Beckett was a ballerina from New York City. She performed on Broadway and as part of the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall. In the early sixties, Becket started getting turned down for jobs, hearing she was too old, that ballerinas her age are retiring. Like so many visionary artists before her, in the face of opposition, she said, “I’ll do it myself.”

Marta’s husband booked a tour of one-woman shows across the nation. While driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles their car suffered a flat tire in the former mining town of Death Valley Junction. Becket peered through the window of the abandoned theater and it spoke to her. 

The building she leased, former home of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, once contained an entire company town - housing, shops, a doctor and dentist, as well as a theater where the miners received church services and watched the latest silent films. It sat empty for forty years until Becket and her husband moved in. 

She re-christened the Building as the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel and performed three shows a week - for the next forty years. 

But, the building isn’t even close to the middle of nowhere. Often Marta went without an audience. That’s when the magic happened. To make sure she always had an audience, Becket would soak her clothes with cold water and work through the blistering desert night painting permanent spectators on the walls and ceiling. 

I leaned about the opera house some time in the early nineties. It was always on my bucket list to see a Marta Becket show, but I didn’t make it before her passing in 2017. Since then the foundation that runs the theater and hotel books bands into the theater and keeps the hotel running. 

Then Covid happened. I watched places I wanted to visit, like Lord Fletcher’s in Palm Springs, close for good. Many places on my list were gone, and all I had was a memory of a fantasy of a visit to a magical place that might just have well never existed. I sent money to the Marta Becket foundation, shared their go fund me link on Facebook, I did whatever I could to make sure the Amargosa Opera House didn’t die.  

As soon as I was able, I booked a room for Karalee and me and we went. My birthday weekend - a bucket of Original Recipe and bear claws from the Black Bear Diner. We spent the night in the parking lot, with our telescope trained on faraway objects, drinking my patented  pre-mix old fashioneds. 

We stay in a lot of supposedly haunted places, but this place gave me the heebie jeebies like no other. The creaky floors, the long, silent hallways, painted with portraits, done in the Marta Becket style, of foundation donors, and one empty frame. I joked with Karalee that the empty frame is where you appear when the hotel gets you. It was a joke, of course, but I had a weird feeling it might be true

The grand finale was the tour that covers the history of the hotel, borax mining in the region, Marta Becket, and ended in the Opera House. It was indeed a magical place 

The hundred year-old floorboards were worn into a washboard pattern, the footlights were made from Folger’s cans, Marta Becket’s favorite drink, and the audience, permanently gazing at the stage, watching a show that none of us could see. This was Marta Becket’s dream. For many years it was my dream - owning my own theater and putting on whatever show I wanted, with an audience every night. I felt the magic, I understood the magic. 

Magical places like The Amargosa Opera House and Hotel are disappearing from our landscape. Suburban sprawl, super highways and a general lack of interest may someday lead to its demise. But, for now it’s there, an inspiration to all of us.

Cannery Row

 This March we took a road trip to Oregon. On the way back we stopped in Monterey to check out the aquarium. We stop at aquaria whenever we’re road tripping, it’s one of our things. On this particular trip we stopped at the Crescent City Aquarium on the way up, and Monterey Bay on the way back down. 

The only thing I really knew about Monterey was that it had a world class aquarium, and it had once been home to a sardine fishing fleet that decimated the fish population off the west coast. 

I didn’t know about John Steinbeck’s association with the town, or the history of the weird population that lived there in the first half of the twentieth century, but he’s all over that place. There’re statues of Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, Mack and the Boys, plaques, streets signs, and Western Biological is still there, patiently waiting to be turned into a museum  

As we drove home I downloaded Cannery Row and gave it a read. That was two months ago. Since then I’ve read it three times. 

I was a terrible student, and until I could get books on my phone I didn’t dig reading. So, while all the students were being taught the American literary canon, I was teaching myself to program computers - something they didn’t teach in schools at the time. Consequently I never read Steinbeck. Now, I’ve only read Cannery Row, I don’t have the bandwidth to read more, my backlog is too deep, but I’m deeply in love with the writing  

They say that a musician’s style is defined by his failed attempts to imitate his inspirations. I think the same thing is true of any art form, including writing. While I wouldn’t venture to replicate Steinbeck’s poesy, or his social commentary, the narrative structure of the book speaks to me. 

At 49,512 words, it’s shorter than a NaNoWriMo book, arranged in 32 chapters. The plot is simple, and follows a relatively standard format - Mack and the Boys want to throw a party for Doc. They have some adventures preparing for it, the party fails in a big way, they seek the advice of someone wiser than them, and they double their efforts, resulting in a smashing success. 

It’s a simple plot, but the structure built around it is a series of narrative digressions that introduce interesting characters and locations. These characters may or may not show up again, and some of them appear (at first blush) to have nothing to do with the story. 

I love this structure, it makes it easy to read. And, I imagine, easy to write. Each chapter is a self-enclosed vignette, or short story. The plot moves in the background, and occasionally comes to the front when Mack and the Boys are featured, but even then the chapters are self-contained. Ages ago I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And I remember it having a similar structure.

This gives me the opportunity to write small vignettes, designed to introduce a quirky character or location, in easy to work with chunks. If this strategy works for me, I think it will be fun. Keep watching this space for further updates. 

Getting back in the Saddle

What am I? Crazy?
I want to be a paperback writer. I want to write novels. Documenting the process basically doubles the workload. Perhaps that's why the interval between my first post and my second post is eight months.

Returning to the office after covid quarantine has definitely affected my work as a writer. In a way quarantine was good for my literary career - I read a lot, I wrote a lot, I analyzed my reading in depth. In short, I was making progress, despite the fact that quarantine was having a noticeable effect on my mental stability. Quarantine gave me time, all it asked was my sanity.

So, I'm trying to get back in the saddle. I suspect my struggle is familiar to many beginning writers. I have characters, I have settings, I have ideas for scenes, but I struggle for novel-length plot ideas, particularly mysteries.

When I was working as a storyteller I rarely wrote my stories. My usual modus operandi was to take an existing story, and re-write it with my own characters, places and especially my own voice. The question I'm asking myself now is, could I do the same thing with mystery novels? Should I do the same thing with mystery novels? And, I think the answer is, why not?

A lot can be learned from reading other writers, but re-writing other writers I'm hopeful will teach me a lot more than reading. Starting with short stories will be easier, of course, so selecting one is a process of its own. I'm leaning towards the very first detective story ever written, Murders in the Rue Morgue, despite the fact that I don't care for the solution. Maybe I can make it better.

Carving a Turkey takes Practice

Carving a turkey is one of those things that you only get better at with practice, but you only get to do it once a year. 

That’s a problem I’m trying to fix. 

Tomorrow I’ll be starting my third NaNoWriMo. The whole point of NaNo is to create a habit of writing everyday. It took me a couple of years to get started, I opened my NaNo login in ’17, and I put up a title in  ‘18, but I really didn’t get going until ‘19.  

Why did it take so long? 

Firstly, I had to sit down and brainstorm ideas. This was something I just needed to make time for. I have a busy job, my wife keeps our off-hours busy, and I have a lot of hobbies. But, when I finally decided I was going to do it, I started writing down ideas until I came up with something to write. I’ll talk more about my brainstorming process in a future post. 

Secondly, I needed technology. There was no way I was going to be able to write that much without an iPad mini. The form factor of the iPad mini allows me to write on the couch, with the TV going in the background, and the landscape keyboard is just the right size for me to type quickly at a desk. That, plus the tech required to make my documents available anywhere, whether I’m pumping gas, or sitting at a library desk, I can work anywhere. 

Finally, it was the decision that, if I want to write books, I have to, we’ll, write books. I had a similar realization when I was 35. I read that you lose the ability to learn a musical instrument when you turn 40, as if some magical switch goes off in your brain. Because of that, I decided that if was going to learn an instrument I was on a clock, so I did it. The same thing applies to writing novels, when I die I’ll lose the ability to write, so I have to do it now - while I’m still alive. 

But, what about the turkey? I want to be good at writing books, and writing a book is like carving a turkey, if I only do it once a year I won’t get good at it. (I have been carving turkeys for twenty-five years, and I have gotten good at it, but I don’t want to wait twenty-five years to get good at writing books).

That said, I did write a book in the off season, Kendrake the Amazing in: Sword to Death. I wrote it in what I call NaNoWriMay, so I know I can write when it’s not November. 

My personal philosophy says that if I write eight books, I’ll be good at writing books, but I have to write eight books. 

So, that leaves me with one question: do I want to get good at writing books in eight years, or eight months?