Writing's By Jeri Magg
Mystery Guest
by Jeri Magg
Alafair Burke was always fascinated by crime. A law professor at
Hofstra University in New York, contributing law expert for Court
TV, and a former District Attorney, Burke is familiar with the
criminal mind. “I’ve always been intrigued by the bad things people
do — why they do it, how they cover their tracks, and the tricks
police use to catch them,” she states. The keynote speaker for the
Naples Writers Conference on February 24-25, Burke loves the mystery
genre and showcases her background to skillfully set-up the scenes
for very believable thrillers.
The daughter of mystery writer James Lee Burke was exposed to
writing at an early age. As a child she tinkered on her father’s
manual typewriter and listened spellbound while her family discussed
crime. Her artistic mother and writer father encouraged their
daughter to turn her ideas into something concrete.
A graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon and California’s
Stanford Law School, Burke returned to Portland to join the District
Attorney’s office. While engrossed in the everyday events of trial
law, she envisioned these proceedings as potential for a novel.
After five years, Burke left the prosecutor’s office to teach law.
Arriving in New York to check out the job market, she fell in love
with the city, liked the faculty at Hofstra Law School and decided
to stay. She bought a computer, outlined her book idea and started
studying for the New York Bar exam. Her first book, Judgement Calls,
took a year to complete.
Burke admits her father’s last name attracted agents to her
manuscript, but her book was also compared to his and had to be very
good, an unsettling thought for any novice. Any self-doubt vanished
once she had a signed contract in hand.
Unlike her father’s dark and morally ambiguous novels, hers are
clinical and likely to raise questions about correct procedures. Her
stories take place behind the scenes and focus on life outside the
courtroom—the bureaucracy and back room politics of the criminal
justice system.
In a three book trilogy, protagonist Samantha Kincaid mirrors
Burke’s educational and professional experience, but there the
similarity ends. “Sam is much more driven and determined than me,”
she laughs. Sam straddles the line between investigating the case
and bringing it to trial.
In Judgement Call Samantha Kincaid tackles the uncertainty of
convictions, while in Missing Justice she conducts her own
investigation, not normal procedure for a prosecutor. Close Case
looks like a car jacking gone bad until Samantha learns some facts.
Burke injects humor into her characters and gives them a
down-to-earth feeling. She’s noted for her realistic portrayal of
everyday people.
Her writing process is simple. She starts with a character and the
setting. Burke notes that the few times she’s encountered writers
block, it happened because something in her outline didn’t fit the
nature of the character.
It still takes about a year to write a book. She edits it as she
goes along, then does one last edit before sending it off to the
publisher.
The best part of the writing process for Burke happens after the
book is completed. “There’s nothing like the satisfaction of writing
a novel and being finished with a fully flushed out story. It’s
incredibly gratifying,”she states. After achieving writing success
she’s under more pressure to create a plot everyone likes. “When
you’re writing for yourself, it’s different. The first book I wrote
so my grandchildren could say ‘Grandma wrote that.’ Now, after three
books, it’s quite different.”
Some days when Burke questions her writing ability and the quality
of the plot, she’s reminded of what her father told her—“trust your
instincts”— and keeps writing.
Her advice to writers: “Think of yourself as a writer— even if
you’re not published yet.” She also suggests writing daily. A couple
of sentences will remind the writer of the character’s predicaments.
“You should live with your characters every day,” she states.
Writers hoping to publish in the mystery genre should write the book
first. She’s amazed by the amount of people who shop for agents
before they write the book. Forget what the genre wants — write the
story and be prepared for anything.
After submitting her first manuscript, the publisher suggested
writing a series. Burke jumped at the chance and is now on the first
book of her second series. “Most publishers like two book deals, so
learn to think on your feet,” she cautions.
During the week she manages to fit writing a few words into a busy
schedule as a law professor and contributor to law journals. But on
the weekends she commits the entire two days to writing, and
considers Close Case, her best book.
Besides novel writing, she’s contributed a short story to an
Anthology edited by Michael Connolly for Mystery Writers of America,
as well as an essay about the depiction of law on the TV series
Veronica Mars.
Her new book, Dead Connection, introduces a new series with a new
character, Ellie Hatcher. Hatcher is a New York City police
detective trying to catch a killer by working undercover for an
online dating service.
At the February writers conference in Naples, Burke will conduct a
workshop on “Writing A Series Character.” Her keynote luncheon talk
at the Cypress Woods Golf and Country Club will outline how she
takes lessons learned from the courtroom and classroom and uses them
in her books.
Alafair Burke is a wonderful example of a writer who uses her
knowledge and experience to authenticate her stories and weave a
wonderful tale. For those wishing to attend the Naples Writers
Conference February 24 & 25 and hear Alafair Burke, check out the
website, www.authorsandbookfestival.org. •
from the January-February 2007
************************************************
The Call of the Wild
by Jeri Magg
It was a cool summer’s evening in 1937 when eleven-year old Fritz
Hilton’s parents, just returning home after an evening with friends,
opened their refrigerator to find, stuffed between the shelves and
wrapped in newspapers, a partially skinned dead Great Horned Owl.
Fritz got the dead owl from a friend and decided to dissect it.
“That’s when my parents thought it was time to do something about my
interest in studying the anatomy of birds,” Fritz laughs.
Fritz’s father contacted a leading ornithologist for advice. He
suggested the boy apprentice as a field artist with a well-known
photographer so that he could learn more about the birds and animals
he wanted to paint. Thus began Fritz Hilton’s love of wildlife; one
that lead him to the halls of Cornell University and Johns Hopkins,
enabled him to work as a sketch artist for the Navy in WWII and
allowed him to paint commissions for both the National Audubon
Society and the American Museum of Natural History.
In 1943, he entered Cornell University with a declared major in
ornithology. After one semester, he was drafted, and only by a
chance meeting with a former teacher remained stateside during the
war.
“I was just about to be shipped out of Richmond to Mississippi to
join the amphibious teams who piloted the boats that landed on Omaha
Beach, when my former Art teacher saw me at the train station,”
Fritz recalls. The woman’s husband, an executive officer at Camp
Perry, Virginia, was searching for an artist who could paint
portraits and do illustrations. “She threw her arms around me,”
Fritz laughs, “ and told me how glad she was to see me.” The next
thing he knew, his orders were changed and he was back in Washington
illustrating anti-venereal disease posters or doing portraits of
admirals like Cordell Hull.
“I guess my anti-VD posters worked,“Fritz chirped, “because I don’t
remember a lot of deaths in WWII from VD.” Always under pressure by
the admirals to produce portraits quickly, Fritz developed his
monochrome technique. He’d paint in one color and enhance the
portrait by using the color’s different tints and shades. He’d take
a couple of photos of the subject, work all night to produce the
portrait and return the next day for the Admiral’s approval. It was
so stressful for the 19 year-old that for many years after leaving
the service, he refused to paint portraits.
After the war, he returned to Cornell where he met his wife, Mary,
who was an instructor working on her doctorate in Bio/Chemistry. He
received a B.S. in Zoology/Ornithology and went on to graduate
studies at Johns Hopkins where in 1958 he receive his Ph.D in
Pathobiology/Ecology. Later that year he joined the faculty of the
Department of Anatomy at the University of Louisville School of
Medicine in Kentucky. For the next forty years he remained there,
teaching and doing research.
“I nearly didn’t go to Louisville,” he states. To earn extra money
while an undergraduate, Fritz accepted painting commissions from the
National Audubon Society, the American Museum of Natural History and
Barton-Cotton lithographers of Baltimore. Barton-Cotton offered him
a good job upon graduation. In his chosen field, he’d expect to be
paid about $3,500 a year, but Barton-Cotton’s pay scale was more
like $8,000 a year. He gave the offer some thought, but decided to
teach and do scientific research, a choice he applauds today since
he’s applied his art to his research.
He continued to sketch and paint and became proficient in all
mediums, especially egg tempera, a watercolor technique used for
permanent, fine works. This paint is made from artist quality finely
ground pigments, egg yolks and water. The picture is then painted on
composition board.
His teaching profession continued to provide subjects for his art. A
sabbatical year in Aberdeen, Scotland, summers of research at the
Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine and a stint in Viet Nam
broadened his knowledge of native wildlife.
In 1968 and 1970 Fritz was asked by the American Medical Association
to teach at a medical school built by the USA in South Viet Nam. The
medical school was bombed so often it remained closed half the time.
When he wasn’t teaching, Fritz would visit the open market to watch
the Buddhists release birds as part of special religious ceremonies.
He sketched the market ceremonies and bought mina birds to use as
subjects for his art.
In 1972, Fritz was commissioned to paint a watercolor of the
mockingbird, the State Bird of Texas. It was presented to the Lyndon
Johnson Presidential Library in Austin where it remains today.
In 1995, he retired as Professor Emeritus of the Department of
Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology at the University of Louisville
School of Medicine. He and his wife had raised their four children,
and he now wanted to travel the world painting wildlife. He is
considered a wonderful “wildlife artist,” because his depictions of
birds and wildlife resemble photographs.
In the summers of 1997 and 1999, he joined groups of artists on two
African safaris, observing the wildlife in South Africa, Zimbabwe,
and Botswana. Some of his recent paintings, including pictures of
animals from these safaris, were exhibited at the Southeastern
Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, South Carolina. Prints of his
bird paintings have been sold nationwide by Four Winds, Inc., and
his original paintings are found in collections throughout the
United States, France and Germany. He still takes photographs of
birds and paints them until he’s satisfied.
Fritz, who will soon turn 80, has traveled extensively seeking out
unique wildlife. He’s painting portraits again, (but now of his
grandchildren), and he has a studio of work he’s “making better.”
He thanks that friend, who gave him the dead Great Horned Owl so
many years ago and his parents, who encouraged his interest in
wildlife painting.
Fritz and Mary have a permanent home in Louisville, but spend
several months each winter on Sanibel Island where he studies
wildlife at the ‘Ding’ Darling Wildlife Refuge where he continues to
follow that call of the wild. •
from the May-June 2005 issue
A year in Aberdeen, Scotland,
summers of research in Bar Harbor, Maine
and a stint in Vietnam broadened
Fritz Hilton's knowledge of wildlife.
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Great Blue Heron
Spoonbills
Turtle Alert
by
Jeri Magg
A thirty foot long gopher turtle has been sighted in the front yard
of a Sanibel home. Is this just another false sighting by the folks
who espy UFO’s? Not at all, this turtle does exist and his name is
Oscar.
Oscar is the creative answer
to a problem Linda and Wayne Boyd faced upon completion of their new
home on Sand Dollar Drive. To comply with Sanibel’s building code,
the Boyds wound up with a four foot high mound covering their septic
system.
Wayne and Linda, residents of
Ft. Wayne, Indiana, fell in love with Sanibel a few years back. They
eventually bought the last lot on Sand Dollar Drive in the Shell
Harbor subdivision and decided to build. The lot was not connected
to the sewer system, so the Boyds knew that to comply with the
Sanibel building codes they’d need a lift station for their septic
system. “No one at the City knew exactly when the new sewer system
would come down the street so we decided not to wait any longer and
build,” states Boyd.
Concerned about properly
landscaping this huge mound, the Boyds combed the island checking
out new homes with similar systems. They found nothing to their
liking. “The mound was kind of shaped like a turtle shell, so we
decided to go artistic while making a statement about wildlife on
the island,” states Wayne. A volunteer at Crow, he began snapping
pictures of gopher turtles to get an idea of color and shape before
beginning his sculpture.
“I almost got into trouble designing this turtle,” says Wayne. It
seems that a woman driving by noticed the shell he was using as his
guide. The shell had been borrowed from Crow. “She was going to call
the police until I explained the situation.” Wayne returned the
contentious shell to Crow that afternoon.
The mound was rounded out
when Wayne put one- by- six wood strips all around for definition.
He used bricks to make the divisions in the shell and was about to
start work on the head when Linda, watching from a dining room
window, announced that it was lopsided. Wayne took it apart and
started again.
His second attempt produced a
more evenly shaped shell and “Oscar” started to take on a
turtle-like form. Next came the neck which he created by placing 10'
long reinforcing rods in the ground in front of the mound, bending
them forward and anchoring them in cement.
To keep the head from
becoming too heavy, Wayne took two-inch wide sheets of Styrofoam,
cut them into different widths forming a round diameter, and slipped
it between the reinforcing rod. He put stucco wire around neck and
head and covered them with cement. The legs were done the same way.
“It seems like I was always running back and forth to Home Depot,”
laughs Wayne, “those bags of cement didn’t go very far.” A thousand
pounds of cement later, an almost completed giant gopher turtle
stood on the Boyds front lawn. By now the traffic stopping by the
house had increased considerably.
Wayne came up with a color
for head and legs by taking a tortoise shell to Flex Bon and
matching the paint. For the eyes, he found floats used in the back
of toilet tanks and then discovered red reflectors in an antique
shop that fit the slits. He took two-inch wide black plastic, cut it
into pieces, made the mouth and stuccoed around it. Lastly, he used
some dark brown gravel to make the mound resemble a shell. It was
finally completed, but, his creation needed a name.
One day while Boyd was
working on his sculpture, a man pedaling by called out to him, “It’s
the Beast of Busco,” and disappeared down the street. Wayne found
the statement incredulous since only someone from his neck of the
woods in Ft. Wayne would know about the “Beast of Busco,” a
tremendous turtle sighted fifty years ago in the area. “The story
even made Time Magazine,” laughs Linda, “ and the town of Churubusco
just celebrated the fiftieth year of this sighting with a big
parade.”
It seems that in 1949, some
residents of Churubusco, Indiana, claimed to have seen a turtle
whose shell was so tremendous it could be used for a dining room
table. Unfortunately those who hadn’t seen the turtle outnumbered
those who had. Turtle mania quickly caught on in Churubusco. Turtle
Days, begun in June of 1950, are still celebrated today. Though some
believed it was a hoax, a turtle named Oscar put Churubusco on the
tourist map.
A few days later the same
cyclist returned and admitted to being from Ft. Wayne. “That’s when
we decided to name our turtle Oscar, ” says Wayne.
Oscar has his own fan club. “Sometimes we’ll come home,” says Linda,
“ and find curiosity seekers in our driveway” Photo shoots are a
commonplace occurrence.
“We’ve had a lot of fun with it, “ laughs Wayne. Even the taxi
driver bringing them from the airport this winter joked about the
unusual sculpture before realizing his faux pas as he dropped them
at their house where Oscar stood waiting.
Wayne figures he spent 150
hours on his turtle. He explains that his creation is a little rough
on the under side of the neck because each time he’d mix a batch of
cement and try to work upside down it would fall off. “I finally got
it to stay, but it’s not perfect” he cautions.
Oscar now stands guard on Sand Dollar Drive reminding everyone that
gopher turtles are a big part of Sanibel Island.
After 150 hours of pouring
cement, bending reinforcing rods and cutting Styrofoam sheets, Wayne
Boyd created the only piece of art on Sanibel with a digestive
system. Perhaps this turtle, like his name sake in Churubusco, will
cause a little turtle mania on Sanibel Island also.
Copyright Jeri Magg 2006.
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The Writer's Excuse Machine
by Jeri Magg