Guest Post: Author Carl Schmidt & "Dead Down East" Book Spotlight

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming author Carl Schmidt to Melissa Lee's Many Reads. He will be sharing his thoughts on "Writing with Humor". Also be sure to check out his mystery novel "Dead Down East".

Writing With Humor(by Carl Schmidt)

Humor involves surprise and misdirection, and requires that the reader, or the listener, not take things too seriously. Consider the third verse in Bob Dylan’s song, “Memphis Blues” for example:

Mona tried to tell me

Stay away from the train line

She said that all the railroad men

Just drink up your blood like wine

An' I said, ‘Oh, I didn't know that,’

But then again, there's only one I've met

An' he just smoked my eyelids

An' punched my cigarette

At this point in the song, Dylan doesn’t wait for you to get the joke; he charges into the chorus, “Oh, Mama…” while his droll juxtaposition of “eyelids” and “cigarette” is just beginning to take shape in your mind. This sudden change of direction makes the refrain even wittier.

Many of us think of intelligence as the comprehension of truth and beauty, and that mirth lies in some separate region. I don’t. Humor expands the intellect, making it more complete and satisfying. Intelligence without humor is like a fine meal without wine, dessert or espresso.

In his poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats penned the famous line:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

To which I reply, “Without humour, ye be living in a wasteland.”

When writing fiction in the first person, internal dialogue reveals the inner workings of the protagonist’s mind and is a great place to inject comedy into the narrative.

Jesse Thorpe is the narrator/private detective of my mystery novel, Dead Down East. Jesse has a cheeky sense of humor, which he allows to leak out now and again, not just because he likes to have fun, but also to maintain calm when things get perilous. The first really dicey moment for him occurs in the middle of chapter four, as he is trying to worm his way through an FBI roadblock. In the first draft, I had chosen that moment to insert a rather lengthy internal monologue, to expose the witty side of Jesse’s nature. I was having so much fun with it that by the time I was done, it was almost fifteen hundred words long. And while I liked the tension it created by suspending the dramatic moment in mid-air—for several pages—eventually I decided that it would be more effective as a prologue for the book. This way, on the very first page, the reader gets a preview of the inner workings of Jesse’s mind, a snapshot of his modus operandi and a quick peak at his girlfriend.

What follows are the first two paragraphs of that prologue. I hope it serves to demonstrate the use of humor in writing, and, most of all, I hope it tickles your funny bone.

Apologies and compliments are two remarkably effective devices for disarming adversaries in life and hecklers in bars. If you consider the socially adept people you know, you’ll see that they use these two conversational tools frequently and with ease. I remember the first time it fully dawned on me how valuable they could be.

Angele and I had been dating for a couple of weeks. Our next planned event was scheduled for Saturday night. So I was a bit surprised when she arrived unexpectedly at my place on Tuesday evening. I guess she decided that there was something that couldn’t wait until the weekend. The moment she walked through the front door, I began to suspect what that “something” was. She had a gleam in her eyes that seared me from the inside of my nimble imagination right down to my insteps. I surmised that she was either ovulating, or she had a sudden urge for a tour of the Thorpe habitat. I began to mentally review the floor plan of the house. “Now, where is my bedroom?” I thought. “I know it was here this morning.”

Carl Schmidt  (Author of Dead Down East)

Carl Schmidt graduated from Denver University with a degree in mathematics and physics. As a Woodrow Wilson Fellow he studied mathematics at Brown University.

Carl lived and traveled widely throughout Asia for seven years, including two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines and five years in Japan, where he taught English.

Carl has spent dozens of summers in Maine, on lakes and in the woods. He chose it as the setting for this novel because he loves its rugged natural beauty and the charming idiosyncrasies of Mainers. He has also written and recorded three musical albums. This, along with his formal education, proved invaluable when molding the persona and voice of Jesse Thorpe, the narrator of Dead Down East, and endowing him with both a creative eye for detail and a sense of humor.

Dead Down East is the first novel in the Jesse Thorpe Mystery Series, which includes A Priestly Affair and Redbone.  In 2001, New Falcon Press published his non-fictional book, A Recipe for Bliss: Kriya Yoga for a New Millennium.

Currently, he is a freelance writer living in Sedona, Arizona with his lovely wife, Holly, and their faithful German shorthaired pointer, Alize.

Links:

Link to Carl Schmidt’s mystery novel, Dead Down East, on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Down-Jesse-Thorpe-Mysteries/dp/1533502188/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469661229&sr=8-1&keywords=dead+down+east

Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/CarlSchmidtAuthor/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

Link to my website:  http://www.lightformfilms.com/Carl-Schmidt-Author.html

Dead Down East (by Carl Schmidt) 

Dead Down East, a fictional murder mystery, is both detective noir and smart screwball comedy rolled into one. Jesse Thorpe, a young private investigator operating out of Augusta, Maine, receives a mysterious phone call from a former client, Cynthia Dumais.  She begs to be rescued from an island south of Brunswick, within a mile of where William Lavoilette, the governor or Maine, was assassinated the night before. She insists that her life is in danger, but is unwilling to provide any further information. Reluctantly, Jesse goes to fetch her.

Within a week, Jesse has three separate clients, each with his, or her, own desperate need to have the murder solved. He assembles a motley team of compadres, including rock band members, a tie-dye psychic and his rousing girlfriend, Angele Boucher, to help him with the case. While the FBI and the Maine State Police investigate political motives, Jesse looks for the woman—Cherchez la Femme—as the trail draws him through the lives, and DNA, of the governor’s former mistresses.

Fresh, witty and loaded with eccentric characters, this first novel in the Jesse Thorpe Mystery Series is both clever and stylish. It’s an old-school private eye tale with inventive twists and local charm. If you enjoy a well-crafted and zesty narrative, lively banter, or take pleasure in the company of Mainers, you’ll love Dead Down East.

Guest Post: Phyllis Edgerly Ring (Author of The Munich Girl)

Today I am honored to welcome to my blog the author of one of my favourite books from 2016, Phyllis Edgerly Ring.

Thanks so much, Melissa, for inviting me to share a bit about The Munich Girl and what the process of researching and writing it was like.

When I reconnected with Germany as an adult after living there in the early 1960s, I wanted to understand more about that nation’s experience during WWII. I was given a biography about Hitler’s mistress – later wife -- Eva Braun, written by British-German writer Angela Lambert. I knew I needed to read more about Hitler and the Third Reich in order to understand more about Germany and the war. Eva Braun seemed a likely place to start. I just never expected how close that would bring me to Hitler’s living room.

While she’s a main character, Braun is not the novel’s protagonist. (That’s Anna, born just as the war came to an end in Germany.) But Braun’s 33-year life provides a metaphorical motif for exploring the effects of self-suppression in many lives, especially those of women.

For research, I immersed in reading about her life, and the time period (120+ books), and that “inner circle” that Braun moved within as part of Hitler's life. I spent hours watching the films she had made, and looking at many of her photographs. Eventually, I made two trips to the National Archives here in the U.S., where photo albums of hers that were confiscated by the Allies after the war have been stored ever since. Looking at those probably provided my closest sense of connection with her life, and with her as a “character.” As with most of my research, I was looking to read between the lines of what was known to be factual. I was looking for more of the emotional story that her life showed, that the pieces of her experience pointed to.

Among the discoveries my research turned up is the little-known (or infrequently shared) information from testimony given at the Nuremberg Trials that shows how an action she took in the last week of her life saved tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war. She likely did this to protect Hitler’s reputation – he was going to have them all killed. Among those who were saved were British members of my own family. That discovery stunned me when I unearthed it, and was definitely a turning point for me, as a novelist.

While she is famous because of someone infamous, Eva Braun came from what would be perceived both then and now as an extremely “ordinary” life. Lambert’s biography revealed how much of what was believed about Braun was inaccurate, right down to frequent misidentification of her in photos. Lots of assumptions and judgements about her have masked key information that her life could provide about Hitler. Paradoxically, although much of what has been conveyed about her was based on presumed understanding about him, it’s a more complete picture of her that can provide the most accurate view of Hitler.

She loved him, I have no doubt. Yet, in many ways, she gave up both her sense of self and of self-determination to “prove” that love, show her loyalty. (Loyalty was very important to Hitler, who trusted so poorly, if at all. But he trusted her.) I think the distorted self-denial she showed is still cultivated in collective culture today in ways designed to keep inequality in place. Many, especially women, give up the freedom of their own wholeness for the sake of proving love, and loyalty. I think the false value this behavior is given is a big part of what allows oppression and repression to continue, along with the imbalance of power that always accompanies them.

I suppose it’s natural that people might assume this novel aims to exonerate or redeem Eva Braun, but that’s never been its goal. She came to represent, for me, the many things that we can form conclusions about without ever delving deep enough to uncover the whole story, in order to genuinely find truth. If the story aims to convey any sort of message, it’s that no human being is all good or all bad, and human circumstances are always more complex than they appear. If we’re not willing to accept and understand this, we’re unlikely to learn from history.

This is also a story about outlasting the chaos and confusion of war and other kinds of violence and destruction by valuing -- and protecting – all of the good that we are willing to build together in our world. Many Germans did this, though until recently, their stories have remained unknown. The novel is also about the eventual homecoming we must all make to our truest self, and the role that others often mysteriously play in that process.

Novel Summary: Anna Dahlberg grew up eating dinner under her father’s war-trophy portrait of Eva Braun. Fifty years after the war, she discovers what he never did—that her mother and Hitler’s mistress were friends. The secret surfaces with a mysterious monogrammed handkerchief, and a man, Hannes Ritter, whose Third Reich family history is entwined with Anna’s. Plunged into the world of the “ordinary” Munich girl who was her mother’s confidante—and a tyrant’s lover—Anna finds her every belief about right and wrong challenged. As Anna's journey leads back through the treacherous years in wartime Germany, it uncovers long-buried secrets and unknown reaches of her heart to reveal the enduring power of love in the legacies that always outlast war.

Bio: Phyllis Edgerly Ring lives in New Hampshire and returns as often as she can to her childhood home in Germany. She has studied environmental and plant science, worked as a nurse, been a magazine writer and editor, taught English to kindergarteners in China, and frequently serves as workshop facilitator. Her newest novel is The Munich Girl: A Novel of the Legacies that Outlast War.

Blog: http://phyllisedgerlyring.wordpress.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2890301.Phyllis_Edgerly_Ring
Twitter: http:// www.twitter.com/phyllisring
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PhyllisEdgerlyRing?ref=hl
Information about all books by Phyllis Edgerly Ring:
http://www.amazon.com/Phyllis-Edgerly-Ring/e/B001RXUFD6/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

BUY LINKS:

https://www.amazon.com/Munich-Girl-Novel-Legacies-Outlast-ebook/dp/B01AC4FHI8

https://www.amazon.ca/Munich-Girl-Novel-Legacies-Outlast-ebook/dp/B01AC4FHI8

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Munich-Girl-Novel-Legacies-Outlast-ebook/dp/B01AC4FHI8

https://www.amazon.com.au/Munich-Girl-Novel-Legacies-Outlast-ebook/dp/B01AC4FHI8

Author and Book Spotlight: October 32nd by Larry Rodness

Title: October 32nd
Author: Larry Rodness
Published: October 31 2015
Published By: Deer Hawk Publications
Genre: Mystery 

October 31st. The quaint little town of Elora, Ontario has held its annual Halloween festival for the past 50 years but this year it takes a terrible turn. A young boy nearly drowns while bobbing for apples. Shortly after, a group of children are attacked by a flock of crows. Local eccentric, Missy Claridge, senses a mysterious connection between the two incidents and warns the town officials to postpone the upcoming festivities. Unfortunately her premonition is ignored and later that evening, all the children in the village suddenly disappear. The townsfolk are baffled. Soon, every person becomes a suspect as residents frantically try to discover what happened to the children and how to get them back.

For more information check out the links below:

Goodreads

Amazon  

 

Author Biography

Larry Rodness began his entertainment career as a professional singer at the age of 19 and has been performing in Toronto for over 35 years with his wife and singing partner, Jodi, at venues such as The Old Mill, Royal York Hotel, Skyline and Bristol Place Hotel as well as countless corporate and private functions.
In the 80's Larry studied musical theatre writing with PRO under Broadway conductor Layman Engel, which led him to write for dinner theater. He then moved into the screenplay arena where he has written over a dozen screenplays and has had 3 scripts optioned to date. “October 32nd” is his third published novel. His previous two were “Perverse” and “Today I Am A Man”.
Information on all his published works can be found on site pages at www.larryrodness.com