Istanbul

One of the most interesting cities in the world is Istanbul. It’s beautiful, mysterious, alluring, poetic, colorful, historic, and during the big war (that’s World War II for those of you who don’t remember it) it was neutral. That made it a mixing bowl of intrigue and danger where people from the warring nations gathered to be—for a moment or two—civil and curious while their countrymen were killing each other.  Some of the action happens there. 

Victory in Defeat

For the last two weekends Sam and I have been in the field trying to complete the requirements for the Senior Hunter title conferred by the American Kennel Club. A dog needs four qualifying hunts, and Sam has two. We’ve both made mistakes, she and I, but we were confident now. 

All sports offer their participants moments of exquisite beauty. To me there are few sights more thrilling than a good dog working a field, then suddenly locking up into a rigid point that says to its handler, “Bird, right there!” The hunter may not see it, but the dog knows: “Bird, THERE!” The discipline of holding that point until the hunter flushes the bird and shoots followed by the dog’s obedient retrieve on command is perfection to warm the heart.

On Sunday Sam did it all. She was magnificent. She found and pointed three birds, held her point, honored another dog’s point, and made a good retrieve, all the requirements of the test. She and I were incandescent with joy. When the last bird flew and before the gunner fired, I saw in the corner of my eye the blur of a running red dog a nanosecond too early. Disqualification.

The judges gave her eights and nines in four categories. Her extraordinary intensity and enthusiasm—her most spectacular qualities—were also her downfall. But it was our best performance yet, and for that a victory. There’s always next week. 

Check Off

The master playwright quoted above also said that if there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

Relationships

A day or two ago I mentioned the loneliness of writing a novel. Here’s an example. I have a special relationship with this guy whom I created. I know almost everything about him, and he’s in my head constantly, but I can’t talk about him to most people. I think about him all day every day, go to bed at night thinking about him, wake up in the morning thinking about him, and it’s the same with all the other characters.

They become very real in my mind. I have conversations with them. Sometimes I wait to see what they’ll do, how they’ll react. Other times I know in advance what they’ll do. I know how they think most of the time, but not always. Sometimes they surprise me.

A couple of days ago I was writing a tense scene involving the main character, and quite to my surprise he lost his temper and said something very rude to a polite person. I was shocked and tried to make him apologize. 

As it happened, one of my readers objected to the apology, and instantly it felt as if the character himself were objecting: “It was a foolish mistake, but I will not apologize. I was fed up, and it felt good to say so.”
I like to think that if the reader had not spoken on his behalf, the character would have complained to me directly, shaken me by the lapels if I had them, and said, “Frank, don’t make me apologize!” And I would have had to listen. 

A Dark Day

On this day in 1944 the German army launched a brutal occupation of Hungary and wiped out the last relatively safe haven for Jews in central Europe. Most 21^st century Americans either do not know or have forgotten that for most of the war Hungary was unoccupied and that Germany was on the run when Hitler decided to crush his unwilling ally. Budapest, until that day untouched, would become one of the most damaged cities in Europe.

Think of how late in the war this was: three years after the occupation of Yugoslavia, four and a half years after Poland, five and a half years after the annexation of Sudetenland, and six years after the annexation of Austria. The Wehrmacht was already being chased out of Russia, about to be driven from Italy, and three months later the Allies would land in Normandy.

But because Hitler did not trust Hungary—and with good reason; it had been bullied into the alliance and wanted out—Hungary would become one of the last and most bitterly fought over battlegrounds on the continent. 

Budapest, 1945

Good Advice

Anyone who has done it will tell you that few activities are as lonely as writing a novel. The thing exists only in your head, and you have to coax it onto the page or, if you’re lucky, enable it to burst onto the page by its own inexorable force.  Either way, you spend a lot of time entirely alone, resisting friends, loved ones, and collection agents, sometimes rather brutally.

But one can get a special kind of help if one choses helpers well. Last night I sat down with two such friends who write novels themselves. I call them my readers. We regularly exchange manuscripts for constructive comment by trying to provide a practiced eye that sees what the author misses.  Last night they told me I needed better balance between the historic and the personal drivers of my plot and characters—more personal, less historical. It also would help, they said, to trim some of that detail I turned up in research. Just because I love historical detail does not mean that everyone will.  Too many names, especially hard-to-pronounce foreign ones, are hard to remember. If they’re not scheduled for a reappearance, don’t use them. It was all good advice. Today I’ll be hitting the delete key.    

The Audacity

How in the world could I have decided to write a novel and do a simultaneous blog about the process without some knowledge or experience as a novelist or blogger? The best answer I can think of, at least regarding the novel, is the remark made by an experienced novelist whose name I’ve forgotten. Asked why he was struggling with his book when he’d written so many, he said yes, he’d written lots of books, but he’d never written this book.      

As for blogging, I’ve no explanation. My sister threatened an intervention when I told her, and my good friend rolled his eyes. But I press on regardless.

The blog is stimulating helpful questions. Why, one of my favorite readers pointed out (it wasn’t a question), would one write bucolic pieces about hunting and geese and dogs—nature pieces set on the eastern shore of Maryland—on a blog about a history novel set in Europe.

My answer is that the story will include scenes of hunting, game birds, and dogs, and the eastern shore is where I was located. Perhaps those pieces were a simple case of entertaining an imagined action that might occur anywhere.

The word reimagine keeps coming into my head. Strictly speaking, it's not a word, at least not one recognized by my dictionaries. But I've heard it used regarding history novels, and I find myself doing a lot of it, that is putting myself in the midst of an historical situation with real historical figures and reimagining it, imagining what they were thinking, what their personal concerns were, what they would have felt, filling in, as it were, what history does not tell us so that the event takes on a new richness of meaning.  

Alright, enough of that. Here’s a real and concrete scene for you where a critical action will occur, the Budapest Opera house. I love this building, both interior and exterior. What a sumptuous place for a bit of intrigue. And what a challenge it’s going to be create this picture by words alone. And to reimagine what my character saw and thought and said on that historic night. The real person climbed those stairs. Take a virtual tour here.

And Another Thing . . .

Yes, I know. I promised this would be about writing The Moon, didn’t I? Okay, it will be. But before I get to that there’s one other thing. It has to do with this business of blogging, which I’m just learning. One of the people I’m learning from is my very cool niece whose blog you should visit at http://sloanesspot.blogspot.com/. I recommend it, not because she’s my niece—well, that too—but because she’s got a great eye for design, she knows how to use a camera, and she’s doing a blog I admire. She just posted some nice pix of her first visit to San Francisco, lucky girl. 

Now, about that novel ...

Tools of the Trade

My pal Norman stopped by yesterday and gave me a Corona portable typewriter he no longer wanted, and I was thrilled to get it.  I’m guessing that it’s from the 1940s, maybe the ‘50s. In any event, it looked as familiar as an old shoe.

Hard to believe there was a time when novelists wrote whole books on these things. I tried it—Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back.—and it worked perfectly. But I’d forgotten how long the key stroke was and how much effort it required. Those folks must have had serious hands.

I rescued my father’s typewriter (Underwood circa 1933) a few years back when my mother happened to mention that she’d donated it to a charity auction. Glad I still have it. There’s something about the old engines of production that seems to me worth preserving. In small numbers.

Glad I’ve got ‘em. Thanks, Norman.

Oh, and if there's anyone who can date these dinosaurs more accurately, or has another comment, I’d love to hear from you.  

Bop the Pubbly

Today we’re celebrating: Writing the Moon, the Blog, is a day old.

It was a long gestation but an easy birth, thanks to some crucial help Friday evening from my friend Steve Bailey, whose blog www.touristfirst.blogspot.com is a gorgeous model. With the tools he showed me, I spent Saturday playing and coaxing mine into being and ended with a sense of a good day’s work.

If the posts seem out of time, they are. As the idea germinated last summer, I started experimenting. The first two, A Good Nose and Geese in Summer, were written in mid-July. A Goose in Winter and The Meaning of It All were added when it began to appear that birthing was near. That was February 13. I wrote another piece that evening called On Being Young and Egyptian, but it has been overrun by events in Libya. More about that later.

Now, please comment. Good, bad, or indifferent, your reactions are wanted. Hit the Comments button at the bottom of the post you wish to comment on.  

A Good Nose

Our dog has a Sherlock Holmes nose. Vizslas do. It’s part of their equipment. She can find a quail in cover by scent alone at forty yards or more if there’s any breeze at all, and within feet with no breeze. But that’s not what this story is about.

It’s about a rockfish, a striped bass as they call them here, a fish I’ve been doing battle with for the last twenty-four hours. A single fish. Rockfish are such a delicacy on the shores of our bay that a few years back it became illegal to serve them in restaurants. They were becoming too hard to find. I can report now that they’re back.

At least, Sam can find them. Sam is the vizsla.

As I said, my battle began twenty-four hours ago, but this is not The Old Man and The Sea. I’d done nothing more heroic than open the screen door to let Sam out for a mid-afternoon pee. And she disappeared.

I always worry about that around here. She usually sticks pretty close, but there’s no accounting for the attraction of a young deer. A couple of years ago we got one of those hidden fences. The first time a deer crossed the property she lit the afterburners and vanished in a heartbeat. I heard a small yelp three seconds later and found her standing stock still beyond the driveway that she wasn’t supposed to cross.

But that’s not the story either.

This time when I found her she was rolling on her back in the grass. A bad sign. When she does that she always comes back smelling worse than foul. As I approached, she started eating what she’d been rolling in. On close inspection I saw that it was the head of a fish whose body lay nearby and was of a size worth frying, though it was too late for that. The body still bore the telltale black horizontal stripes of a rockfish, a striped bass.

How a rockfish had found its way into the center of two acres of grass I couldn’t guess, unless an osprey dropped it there. We have lots of them here, and they fly about with the fish they catch, as with a trophy before dinner. Perhaps this osprey was a klutz.

It was also too late to get the head out of Sam’s mouth, so I waited while she crunched it down.  Then, in one of her very rare moments of inattention, I grabbed her collar and took her to the house. 

The following morning I remembered that fish and went out with doubled  plastic bags to gather its smelly remains before she got them. To my surprise there was nothing left there but some bones and cartilage. The place where the nice, white rockfish body had been was empty. Perhaps the osprey who dropped it had come back to pick it up. Or maybe a raccoon.

This afternoon, Sam asked politely whether she might be allowed out of doors. I readily agreed and confidently opened the door. She left like a shot, heading straight for the bushes, hurried down the row to the second opening on the right and ducked inside, tail vanishing last.

“Sam?” I called.

“Oh, Sam!”

It took a minute or so.

Then I saw a white rectangle emerge in the mouth of our dog, now crawling belly-to-the-ground out of the boxwoods. Yup, it was the body of the stripped bass I’d been fighting for twenty-four hours, and now it was riper than ever. 

A Goose in Winter

This story won’t be easy, I suppose.

It began with a charity auction for an environmental center. A good enough cause, isn’t it? After a whisky or two—was it three?—I found myself bidding on the offering I was most interested in, a guided goose hunt for four, everything provided except hunters and guns.

Next thing I knew, I had won. Won? Well, maybe that’s not the right word. I’d outlasted the other bidders and bought the hunt. Still, it was at a price I considered a bargain. Except I’m not a goose hunter. Never was.

What now? My dear wife, who’s much smarter than I am and always was, suggested that we should invite Sam’s breeder. Sam’s our dog. And her breeder’s a genius, judging by Sam.

Fortunately they, the breeder and her husband, were up for a hunt and the date chosen was the day before Thanksgiving. We’d have goose for dinner. And in the event of failure we’d have a turkey in reserve. Good Plan.

At sunrise, accompanied by a local guide named Cutter, we headed for the blind. It was located in an open field a hundred yards or more from open water. Cutter said nothing would happen until eleven o’clock. But how did he know? Indeed, at nine o’clock a single goose came by. Should we shoot? We did and missed.

Nothing more for two hours. The weather was bright and sunny and windy. Very windy. Canada geese were flying high overhead, and Cutter was doing his best to call them in. The decoys were out. He made very goose-like noises with his caller. They didn’t come in.

Then, precisely on schedule, the eleven o’clock flight arrived. Cutter honked, the geese turned, surveyed the landing site, and started coming down.

“Keep your heads down,” Cutter said. “Here they come. Be ready.”

Sure enough. When told to do so, we looked up and saw eight Canada geese crossing our line of sight twenty yards out. Now, when Canada geese land in a field they look like Phantom jets, landing gear down, flaps down, and rapidly losing forward momentum. There is a moment when they practically stop in midair, an awfully vulnerable moment if you’re a Canada goose.

We fired. Three fell, one clearly dead. One wounded, perhaps mortally. And one trying to fly, or walk, away. The other five, deciding they’d made a horrible mistake, wheeled and flew away, gaining altitude and distance beyond our range. Cutter left the blind on foot and quickly, mercifully, dispatched the walking wounded.

The hunt was a success. There would be—and was—roast goose for Thanksgiving.

But there was something ineffably sad about it. I’m not prepared to be a vegetarian, but I know what it means to eat meat. 

Geese in Summer

The sun had risen well above the tree line on the opposite shore of our cove and was casting long shadows through the birch and cherry trees. The lacy tops of a little copse of young locusts barely moved, as if they couldn’t be bothered to expend any energy this early on yet another blistering day.

I’d had my coffee and was about to go indoors for my morning bath when a pair of Canada geese glided silently into view from behind my neighbor’s Phragmites wall. Then came another pair, then two more. Soon it was clear: Our local family, maybe thirty in all, with the goslings that now have grown indistinguishable, has moved onto our shoreline for the summer instead of going to Canada as Canada geese should.

In the fall and winter hundreds of them graze in the harvested corn and bean fields around here, but in spring they fill the sky with their noisy choruses and point their flying wedges northward. To Canada, I suppose. Why, then, does one family choose to summer in Maryland and our oppressive heat? After all, geese are built for cooler climates, aren’t they? They have goose grease under those thick feathery coats. Or has the fat reserve been used up over the winter? Our winters here indeed have become more harsh lately. Maybe this family stayed for the corn left on the ground. They didn’t say.

In any event, here they are. As I had intended to do, they’re bathing themselves. They splash and wash in the rising tide and pick at their feathers to arrange them just right. Then they repair to the grassy bank for breakfast. Where did they spend the night, I wonder, and is there no bathroom there? Who gave the order to swim over here for baths and breakfast?

And who is that delicate snowy egret that keeps them company? She’s such a fragile little porcelain bird. Her legs and her long delicate neck and beak are so fine that a loud noise might break her into pieces. The geese look ever so much fatter and more awkward beside her. That must be why she prefers their company.

Mind you, these geese have a strong sense of entitlement to the privileges of our grassy bank. They aren’t easily got rid of. One morning in the earliest half light, Sam our vizsla spotted them and charged, damn the torpedoes, full speed into them. The geese held their ground until, as if truly bored by Sam’s warlike display, they turned and serenely swam into the cove, the vizsla paddling after as hard as she could go. She was gaining on them, and I admired her progress until I grew alarmed and called to her. She turned, and, with eyes like saucers, started a long swim back.
By the way, I was wrong in saying that geese aren't easily got rid of. It seems one only has to write about them. As I looked up just now, there was not a goose in sight, nothing but a hummingbird. The locust tops were dead still.