P.M. Castle

Colorado Author

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A hardboiled Christmas Carol

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I’m a big fan of Charles Dickens. I mean, what writer isn’t envious of the opening lines of “A Tale of Two Cities?” It really was the best of times and worst of times. But I’m especially fond of Dickens when the holidays bring to mind “A Christmas Carol” and the transformation of the miserly and miserable Ebenezer Scrooge into a kinder, gentler man. Talk about character arc.

But here’s the thing. As a mystery novelist, I’m also a fan of Raymond Chandler and his books featuring the iconic private detective Philip Marlowe.

I’ve often wondered what would have resulted if Dickens and Chandler could have collaborated. Here’s what I imagined … .

A Hardboiled Christmas Carol

Marlowe was dead to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that.

He was decked out in a powder blue suit, dark blue shirt and black socks with dark blue clocks on them. He would have looked sharp if he wasn’t crumpled face down in the middle of Bourbon Street in a pool of blood. Three bullet holes ruined the back of his jacket. They couldn’t have done much for his health, either. He’d built a reputation as a tough private eye in LA, an honest one in a corrupt world. Problem is, the Big Easy is anything but. Somebody got to him.

It was my job as a police detective to figure out who.

It was late afternoon. I’d planned to knock off early. Enjoy a quiet evening in my apartment off the Quarter. Just the two of us. Me and a bottle. After all, it was Christmas Eve. Now I faced a murder investigation as welcome as a lump of coal in my stocking.

“Hey, Scrooge. Got what you need? Coroner’s boys gettin’ antsy to haul the deceased to the morgue and head for home. It’s a holiday. Remember?” 

I’d seen everything I needed to see. I questioned the bystanders who, as it turned out, hadn’t seen a damned thing. What I didn’t need was a flatfoot and some lackeys rushing me.

“It’s Lieutenant Scrooge, sergeant. Remember? So you and your pals will just have to wait to clean up this mess until I tell you to.” I hesitated for effect. “OK. So clean it up.”

Judging by the scowl that twisted his face, the sergeant wasn’t amused. “You’re a real prince, aren’t you lieutenant? Heard that about you. Well merry friggin’ Christmas to you, too.”

#

It was nearly midnight before I shambled past the sad brick building on Villere Street full of cheap apartments, one of them mine. I scaled the rickety stairs to the third floor, turned the lock and fell into a sagging couch with worn cushions. Most nights I slept on that couch with a blanket and pillow for company. Tonight would be no different. I was dead tired. But my head kept spinning like I was stuck on a merry-go-round that wouldn’t stop. Who killed Marlowe? I beat on some doors and threatened to beat on some heads. It was difficult, though, to find out much of anything on Christmas Eve.

#

I awoke to a pounding on my door. The luminous dial on my wristwatch told me it was 1 a.m. I reached for the .38 stashed in a drawer in the end table by the couch.

I stood well to the side of the door, a finger tickling the trigger of my pistol.
“Who’s there?”

“Bob. Bob Cratchit.”

I hadn’t heard that name in years. We worked homicide together before he transferred. Last I heard, he’d moved to Peoria. Showing up unannounced at my apartment, he might as well have been the Ghost of Christmas Past. I invited him in anyway.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Not staying long, if that’s what you’re asking. Came back to town to see the in-laws and just heard about Marlowe. Thought you might want to know I saw him yesterday morning at Cafe du Monde. Remember Fizziwig, that strange fella we used to work with? Always joking around? He was there and they were yucking it up over coffee and beignets.”

#

I must have dozed off, because the pounding woke me again.

I resumed my stance at the door, gun at the ready. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Belle. Let me in.”

She sashayed past me on long, shapely legs below a tight red dress. She was an ash blond with greenish eyes. And until our latest fight, my girlfriend. She was like the Ghost of Christmas Present paying me a visit to show me what I was missing. There was no need. I knew.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” I inquired.

“There’ll be no pleasure, mister. I thought I made that clear the last time you stood me up for one of your damned investigations.”

“If you don’t want to kiss and make up, then what are you doing here?”

A face flush with anger turned pallid. “To warn you, Ebenezer. You’re in danger.”

#

I stretched out on the couch to contemplate the parade through my apartment and everything I’d heard. I closed my eyes to rest them for a moment, then didn’t open them again until my cell phone rang. I checked the number. It was the captain. At this hour, it must be something monumental.

“Scrooge here.”

The captain’s patient and empathetic voice came through my phone loud and clear. “Get your ass down here. There’s been a break in the Marlowe case, and it can’t wait.”

“Right now?” I asked. Stupid question.

The captain replied as though he was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, predicting in exacting detail what would happen if I didn’t heed his summons. It wasn’t pretty.

#

Christmas dawned bright, clear and sunny. For once I didn’t wake up with a hammer pounding my brain and a sweaty gym sock stuffed into my mouth. I felt light as a feather and happy as an angel.

It came back to me. Bob Cratchit. Belle. The captain’s urgent phone call. As if the spirits had done it all in one night. What seemed so real must have been the fever dream of a man sick with the strain of a mystery he couldn’t solve. One desperate for redemption. But it got me to thinking. Suddenly, I realized who murdered Marlowe. The only suspect with connections to Marlowe, Fizziwig and Belle.

He was a short man with a limp. A bookie I heard had cheated some rich football fan out of a big payoff on an improbable Saints victory. A fan who must have hired Marlowe to get the money back. Fizziwig was a gambler, too. A notoriously bad one. As for Belle, her work as a Bourbon Street bartender brought her into contact with all sorts. The worst sorts.

I didn’t know the bookie’s name. Only his nickname. They called him Tiny Tim.

#

I stepped onto Villere Street and headed to the station to round up some help to bring in Tim. I drew in a breath of morning air still crisp and clean. An elderly couple walked by hand in hand. The old man looked at me and smiled. “Merry Christmas, son. God bless you.”

I smiled back. “God bless us, everyone.”

Given trends, when will a terminator come for my job?

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Like most members of my nearly geriatric generation, I watched on TV and in movies the evolution of artificial intelligence. The robot that warned Will Robinson about impending danger on “Lost in Space.” The HAL 9000 computer that refused to open the pod bay doors in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” And, of course, the eponymous T-800 that wreaked so much havoc in “The Terminator.”

That was science fiction, though. Thoroughly entertaining. Even thought-provoking. But scarcely credible. I’ve since learned if you wait long enough, truth becomes stranger than science fiction. And sometimes more troubling. In particular, the latest, real life iterations of artificial intelligence and their implications for, well, real life.

Not to downplay the significance of existential threats on a global scale, but what about me? What about the use of AI to write news stories or, for God’s sake, fiction? Count me among the nervous newspaper editors wondering when an almost indestructible job-killing machine will come along to terminate us. As if that wasn’t bad enough, now I’ve also got to compete with computerized novelists penning mysteries? C’mon.

Like so many advances going all the way back to fire, technology offers the promise of both prosperity and destruction, of life-sustaining warmth as well as deadly conflagration. It all depends on how technology is used.

In the case of artificial intelligence and journalism, the Associated Press and other news organizations already use AI to report corporate earnings and sports scores — functions deemed important, but also formulaic enough to complete without humans. That’s one way to use the tool. To take on tedious tasks and devote precious time and resources to more useful purposes.

But AI also has been used to create other types of content. And here’s the concern. There’s an incentive for companies that make money to create content to use AI to cut costs and, therefore, make more money. One technology news site published stories written with the help of AI that contained errors and were subsequently discovered to have plagiarized other content. While AI might mimic human-created content, it also can produce what’s been described as pink slime journalism. Yuck. That’s another way to use the tool.

AI similarly has been used in various ways to produce fiction. Mostly in analyzing work and suggesting what could be helpful changes. But also in more profound ways. By one estimate, AI wrote 95 percent of a murder mystery with the ironic title “Death of an Author.”

I’m no Luddite. I have no desire to return to good old days that were anything but. Banging out news stories on typewriters and editing copy with a pencil. For that matter, I wouldn’t trade my trusty MacBook Pro for anything when it comes to the ease the computer affords in writing and researching. Technology has made my work far more efficient and my job far easier.  

Still, I’d argue journalism and fiction should remain human endeavors. 

A thoughtful process is required to not only report news stories, but also convey an understanding of what those stories are about. What’s important. Why it’s important. That’s not to mention the thought that should go into determining what stories to report in the first place.

I’d also like to believe I imbue every page of my fiction with the stuff of human experience in all its glory and shame. Triumph. Failure. Joy. Sorrow. Amazing grace. Despicable assholery.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence continues to evolve in TV shows and movies to portend dystopian futures, including one in which AI turns humans into batteries. That’s still science fiction. But also a real-life prospect that’s raised growing concerns.

I’m concerned myself. There’s danger. And not just for Will Robinson.

Will technology warn us of our peril? Or be the cause of it?

Literally a problem that makes my head explode

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I loathe the imprecise use of words. My head literally explodes at the mere thought of it. 

I’m exaggerating, of course, to make a point. But no less so than the growing number of people who use literally when they mean figuratively.

I admit it. I’m a grammar curmudgeon whose knickers twist over matters important only to English teachers, newspaper editors and certain mystery novelists. Confusion over there, their and they’re. Subject-verb disagreement. Incorrect capitalization. Don’t even get me started on Oxford commas. I loathe them, too.

Lest my latest lament go unheeded as yet another screed from a supercilious word nerd, consider the impressions people make with words spoken and written. I’m not foolish enough to judge people by the ways in which they talk and write. I contend nonetheless there are benefits to precise communication. If nothing else, it increases the likelihood of getting what you ask for — whether that’s a raise, a bank loan or a date on a Friday night.

That brings me back to what’s literally the most misused word.

By strict definition, literally means in a literal manner or sense. But literally also has come to serve as a replacement for figuratively as well as an intensifier intended to add force to another word.

Given trends in popular culture, it’s understandable to believe the misuse of literally constitutes a recent compulsion. But literally has been used in a figurative sense for hundreds of years.

Even famous authors used literally when they meant figuratively. Take a scene from “Little Women” in which Louisa May Alcott described an outdoor supper in a land literally flowing with milk and honey. Really? Wouldn’t that make it difficult to eat, not to mention awfully sticky? Or a line from “The Great Gatsby” in which F. Scott Fitzgerald stated his eponymous protagonist was literally glowing. From what? Exposure to radiation on Long Island? Even Mark Twain had Tom Sawyer literally rolling in wealth after duping a group of boys to pay him for the privilege of whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence. Better wealth than something else, I suppose.

In comparison to such literary luminaries, who am I to question the uses of literally in some of the best novels ever written? A persnickety wordsmith. That’s who. One who remains unconvinced. I’m more like another famous author,  Ambrose Bierce, who decried: “It is bad enough to exaggerate, but to affirm the truth of the exaggeration is intolerable.”

I confess. I’ve given in on occasion to the temptation to use literally. I’m particularly fond of what I deem a well-turned phrase describing someone who literally wrote the book on the subject. But only if it’s true in a literal sense. The person actually wrote a book and wasn’t just an authority in an idiomatic sense.

What annoys me is the more widespread misuse of literally with such disregard as to render the word meaningless and those who do so almost comic.

Here’s the thing about English. If a word is used incorrectly often enough for long enough, it gains acceptance and new meaning. By some estimates, literally has entered the third or fourth stage of a five-stage scale. In the first stage, mistakes are widely rejected. By the time a word reaches the fifth stage, its misuse has become so ubiquitous only people derided as eccentrics reject it.

Count me among the eccentrics.

It’s impossible for people to claim their heads literally exploded. Even if they swallowed the dynamite that caused the blasts.

But it’s no exaggeration to complain I loathe the imprecise use of words.

I do. Literally.

If this is the new normal, I’d better sharpen my quill

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It’s time once again to reveal some of my trade secrets for writing a blog. Pull back the curtain. Spill the beans. Show how the sausage is made.

Today’s lesson: How to make fun of things that deserve to be made fun of because … well, because they’re easy targets and remarkably ridiculous.

In case my brand of irony isn’t obvious enough, I don’t use cringe-worthy idioms because I like them. I loathe them. I intend instead to demonstrate the absurdity of using words and phrases whose meaning and usefulness — if they ever had any to begin with — soon wears off.

Because of my day job as editor of a business journal, I’ll focus my efforts for now on phrases used at work.

Prebly, a company that provides a language learning application and e-learning platform, recently surveyed more than 1,000 people about their perceptions of office buzzwords. You know. Those phrases and terms that initially seem impressive, but on subsequent reflection mean little. In other and better words — thank you again William Shakespeare — full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Fully 42 percent of those who responded to the survey cited “new normal” as the most annoying new buzzword of all. If the new normal includes the use of the phrase new normal, who wouldn’t be sick of that? “Lean in” came in a distant second at 18 percent, followed close behind by “hop on a call,” “level up” and “out of pocket.”

Other phrases also garnered disdain, among them “circle back” and “boots on the ground.” That’s not to mention “work hard, play hard” and such other terms that remind people of the stress of their jobs as “fast-paced environment” and “hustle.”

For that matter, people weren’t particularly fond of the comparisons sometimes ascribed to expectations for their performance, including “rock star,” “guru” or “ninja.” Weren’t ninjas mercenaries in feudal Japan whose covert methods were deemed dishonorable? That’s a plus? Maybe if someone at work deserves to be stabbed in the back. With throwing stars.

According to the survey results, generational differences affect the use of buzzwords. Members of Generation Z — those born between 1996 and 2015 and the newest additions to the work force — prefer “vibe,” “lit” and “basic.”

As a member of the nearly fossilized Baby Boom generation, I’d need a translator to understand what they’re talking about. Of course, they’d probably feel the same way if I ever gave into the temptation to “sharpen my quill.”

I suppose my secrets about writing blogs really aren’t. They’re obvious. Choose a topic that’s easy to ridicule, exaggerate more than a little and throw in some irony for good measure.

As for using buzzwords, don’t.

I feel the need. The need for speed.

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I’m reluctant to quote lines from a movie because of the nearly ubiquitous convention of so many who do. I’m willing to make an exception, though, because these particular lines encapsulate the sense of urgency I so often confront.

I feel the need. The need for speed.

Not as a jet fighter pilot, obviously. But as a writer.

From my vantage point, everyone writes more quickly than I do. They churn out whole novels — entire series of novels — in the time it takes me to plod through a single chapter. If other writers proceed at what seems to me like the speed of light, I move at a geological scale. A few million years of character building here, a few million years of plot development there.

So it was with considerable envy I read a story by Thu-Huong Ha posted on Quartz.

She describes romance novelists as the true hustlers of the publishing industry. They’re busy not only writing books, but also marketing and interacting with fans. They must work quickly.

She quotes as a poster child of sorts H.M. Ward, a self-published author whose novels have sold more than 20 million copies. Ward says she writes two hours a day and averages about 2,500 words an hour. What? By comparison, this little lament is just 620 words. And I can assure you I spent far more than an hour writing it.

Then there’s Katherine Garbera, who writes four or five novels a year and has completed more than 100 novels over the course of her career.

I’m fortunate to know several romance novelists. I’m not familiar with how fast they write, but I’m impressed nonetheless with their prolific output. I’m thinking of you, Christina Hovland. She’s written more than a dozen romantic comedy and contemporary romance novels and has more scheduled for release this year. I recommend her work. It’s funny and compelling. And frequently steamy.

There’s an element of romance in my work, but none of the stereotypical bodice ripping found in historical romances. Or, for that matter, any rock hard abs. That’s what happens when your protagonist is a middle-aged newspaper editor whose once athletic physique long ago slid into disrepair. Besides, my characters remain pretty busy solving murders and finding treasure. That and avoiding getting killed in the process.

I suspect, though, the measure of romance in my work bears no relationship to the pace at which I write. I’m just slow. That’s all.

I attribute part of the problem to my approach as a pantser rather than plotter. Writing by the seat of my pants affords freedom and accommodates serendipity. But I waste a lot of time backtracking because I’m uncertain of which direction to head next.

I attribute another part of the problem to the habits I’ve developed in my day job as an editor and the incompatibility of two processes. I believe writing is a constructive process — assembling something out of bits and pieces. Editing is a deconstructive process — dismantling something to replace it with something better. What slows me down is trying to engage in both processes simultaneously. To deploy yet another analogy, I’m like a bricklayer who can’t move on to the next course until the one before is as perfect as I can make it.

I realize I’d be better off remembering Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and hare and the promise slow and steady ultimately wins the race. I can’t help thinking, though, of Chuck Jones’ more modern fable of the coyote and roadrunner.

I still feel the need. The need for speed. But I’m resigned to the likelihood I’ll never catch up to faster writers. Not even with Acme rocket-powered roller skates.