Bev Vincent

Stephen King Revisited is back for 2016! My historical context essay about Cycle of the Werewolf (By the Light of the Silvery Moon) is now live.

Had to go online to watch the first episode of the new X-files because the football game ran long (and the post-game even longer), so my DVR only captured the first 30 minutes. I think that happened to a lot of people. A good start, laying the groundwork for what is to come in the next handful of episodes. It was a little talky, but I like what I saw and I have high hopes. I’m ⅓ of the way through season 7 in my long-term rewatch of the series, something I started when I had the chance to write a story for the second X-files anthology, which comes out in a month.

After watching Making of a Murderer, I heard about an earlier documentary called The Staircase, in which an Oscar-winning French filmmaker had complete access to the defendant and defense team in the Michael Peterson murder trial in Durham, NC over a decade ago. The victim was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. The prosecution insists she was beaten to death (despite a lack of blood spatter, minimal skull injuries and no weapon), whereas the defense maintained she fell (despite some rather inexplicable injuries). Peterson, a novelist, had written some scathing editorials about local politics that put him in political crosshairs. He had a large, loving, extended family, most of whom supported him (all but one step-daughter), but he comes off as a rather cold, dispassionate man. He didn’t testify, so the jury didn’t get to see him “in action,” which was probably just as well.

There was no implication that evidence was fabricated, as with the Avery case, but there was still some questionable forensics, and then it was discovered that a family friend had died under similar circumstances a number of years before, and the prosecution successfully got that introduced into the trial. That and the fact that Peterson was a bisexual who had hooked up with men while married. The assistant district attorney got a lot of mileage out of that. It’s definitely worth watching, especially since it appears there will be a retrial this year. One theory that has arisen over the years is that she was attacked by an owl. Twin Peaks anyone? I also saw a BBC program hosted by Ian Rankin about the documentary in which a number of British crimewriters (including PD James) discuss their fascination with this insight into the American trial system.

On July 1, 1994, I was in Atlanta working at a scientific conference. I had driven the company van filled with gear, which was an adventure in its own right. When I got into Louisiana, I encountered torrential rain crossing the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, just about the most severe deluge I’d ever driven in. The bridge is 18 miles long and there’s nowhere to pull off, so the freeway traffic traveled at stupid speeds in tight formation and if anyone had made a mistake it would have been a huge accident. When I got to the other end, I pulled into a rest area, in part because my nerves were frazzled and in part because the van was making strange noises. Turns out both rear shocks had broken and were dangling. So I had to find somewhere to get it fixed and fast, because I had to get the equipment to Atlanta the following day. Fortunately it wasn’t as big a problem as I feared and I was on the way and into Mississippi before I stopped for the night.

For my return trip, I planned to stop somewhere along the way for the night—it’s almost 700 miles—but I was also meeting an electronic pen pal the next afternoon, so I decided to drive all the way through, getting home late that night after over 12 hours on the freeway.

I met my friend at the Hard Rock Cafe in Houston for supper before we went to Rice Stadium to see Melissa Etheridge open for The Eagles on their Hell Freezes Over tour. It was a great concert and a great day. I didn’t see my pen-pal friend again until early the following year, but things moved along quickly after that, and now we have been married for over 20 years. So I have a special place in my heart for The Eagles and was shocked when we saw that Glenn Frey had died. I’ve always been a fan, bought Hotel California when it was a new record, and I think I own all their albums. But they will forever be linked with the day that I met my future wife face to face for the first time.

We watched a couple of episodes of a Netflix series called I’ll Have What Phil’s Having. Phil is Phil Rosenthal, who was a writer on Everyone Loves Raymond. He travels around the world sampling the cuisine. The first episode is in Tokyo and the last one is in Los Angeles, and features a host of special guests, including Norman Lear, Martin Short, Paul Reiser and Allison. It’s fun, light entertainment, and reinforces my belief that Martin Short is one of the funniest humans alive.

I also binged on 11.22.63—all eight episodes of the forthcoming Hulu series, thanks to a web screener provided by Hulu. I’ll be writing previews and reviews in the near future, but I thought it was exceptionally well done. There are a lot of changes to the source material, but they still captured the essence and heart of the story.

A number of years ago, there was a call from the MWA for a member anthology where the stories all had to feature lawyers. I’ve had fairly good luck with these books, so I decided to give it a go.

I did a lot of research, and I stumbled upon this trial in Wisconsin where a lot of the proceedings were available as audio files. I read up on the defendant and used his story as general inspiration for my tale. At the time I wrote “The Best Defense,” I don’t think a verdict had been rendered yet. Maybe it had. I can’t recall. My story didn’t depend on it, because in my story, very little happened in the court room. It focused primarily on the relationship between the defendant and his public defender. It had nothing to do with the real case at all: this was just the launching point for my fiction.

The story wasn’t accepted into the anthology (sad face), but sometime later I read about the Hofstra Law School/Mulholland Books Mystery Writing Competition, and my story fit the bill, so I entered it. Took third place out of over 130 submissions, much to my delight, because the judges were two lawyers and a law school graduate: author Alafair Burke (daughter of James Lee Burke), OJ Simpson prosecutor and author Marcia Clark, and thriller writer Lee Child, creator of Jack Reacher. The second and first place winners were a trial lawyer and a law professor, so I thought I must have done a decent job with the legal angle.

So, I’ve been hearing a lot about this Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer and I finally had some spare time to watch the first episode or two. Imagine my surprise when I heard the name Steven Avery in the opening seconds. I know that name, I thought! This was the case that had been the inspiration for my story. I know a lot about this case…I thought. But I’m still only on episode two, so there may be a lot more to come out than what I got from simply researching the published accounts at the time.

I had a fairly good year reading. Here is my list of works finished, in order and including audiobooks:

1. Sunshine on Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
2. The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons
3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
4. Archie in the Crosshairs by Robert Goldsborough
5. Texas Vigilante by Bill Crider
6. The Death House by Sarah Pinborough
7. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King (audio)
8. Finders Keepers by Stephen King
9. Niceville by Carsten Stroud
10. Ireland by Frank Delaney
11. Elimination by Ed Gorman
12. Tales from the Lake, edited by Joe Mynhardt
13. The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl
14. Gray Mountain by John Grisham
15. Tipperary by Frank Delaney
16. Tin Men by Christopher Golden
17. Perdido by Peter Straub
18. The Last Drive and Other Stories by Rex Stout
19. Brothers by Ed Gorman and Richard Chizmar
20. Double Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
21. The Complete Crime Stories by James M. Cain
22. Dry Bones by Craig Johnson
23. Pale Gray for Guilt by John D. MacDonald
24. Charlie Martz and Other Stories by Elmore Leonard
25. Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami
26. Last Words by Michael Koryta
27. Drunken Fireworks by Stephen King (audio)
28. Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
29. The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
30. The Murderer’s Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman
31. Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee
32. The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper by John D. MacDonald
33. The Shining: Studies in the Horror Film edited by Danel Olson
34. Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay
35. Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? by Stephen Dobyns
36. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
37. Dress Her in Indigo by John D. MacDonald
38. Dexter is Dead by Jeff Lindsay
39. The Second Life of Nick Mason by Steve Hamilton
40. Zer0es by Chuck Wendig
41. The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson
42. The Long Lavender Look by John D. MacDonald
43. Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea by Frank Delaney
44. A Tan and Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald
45. Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (Audio)
46. Dead Ringers by Christopher Golden
47. Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin
48. The Crossing by Michael Connelly
49. The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
50. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)
51. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
52. The Log of the Snark by Charmian Kittredge London
53. A Long December by Richard Chizmar
54. Interior Darkness by Peter Straub
55. The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow
56. The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald
57. The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates
58. Hap and Leonard by Joe R. Lansdale
59. The Last Interview by Ernest Hemingway
60. The Turquoise Lament by John D. MacDonald
61. The Opium-Eater by David Morrell
62. Teaching the Dog to Read by Jonathan Carroll
63. The Revolution Was Televised by Alan Sepinwall
64. The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald
65. You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

I received my first copy of the Cemetery Dance limited edition of The Dark Tower Companion the other day, and it’s a beauty. I see that it is out of print from the publisher, which is a nice surprise.

Over the past several days, I read a book my daughter gave me for Christmas . It’s called Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, and it is a delight. It’s about a guy who lost his job to the economic downturn who takes a job at the strangest bookstore in San Francisco. It is three stories high, but all one floor, with tall ladders required to access the books on the upper levels. Very few customers, except a group of people who are “members” who come in at odd hours to exchange one volume from the upper levels for another. They’re trying to solve a puzzle related to a book from hundreds of years ago. The main character has a lot of spare time on his hands, so he uses his computer to solve the first part of the puzzle, which sets him on the way to the bigger goal. It’s a nerdy literary book, with a character who works for Google bringing in all the modern tech tools, an ancient order out of Umberto Eco, a love of literature and puzzles: it has it all. Great fun. The first book I’ve ever read where the climax is in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.

Didn’t stray very far from home over the past week since my last post. We didn’t even go out to see any other movies, since none appealed to us. We don’t generally watch live TV very often, but we found all sorts of things to entertain us while we visited. We watched the Adele concert and a couple of Christmas specials, plus an Austrian version of The Nutcracker.

A lot of older TV shows don’t stand the test of time all that well, but we stumbled upon The Andy Griffith Show and watched several of them. They’re obviously dated, but the show was pretty good, with only a minimum of bumbling and pratfalls and some decent storylines. The best of them have Opie reflecting something bone-headed Andy did.

On New Years Eve, rather than watching the increasingly insufferable countdown shows, we stumbled upon something called Drunk History on Comedy Central. Drunk comedians and actors recount interesting incidents from American history while other actors and comedians recreate the incidents and lip-sync the drunk person’s narrative. It’s as hilarious as it sounds, especially when the narrator loses the thread or stumbles over words and the re-enactors have to deal with it. I didn’t know most of the narrators, but one was the guy who played Badger on Breaking Bad and another was Jane Curtain’s daughter. Familiar faces popped up in the re-enactments, though, some of them surprising. It was the best way to ring in the new year, I swear.

We watched the twisty-curvy Christmas episode of Sherlock: The Abominable Bride. Once it was finished, I described it as a Möbius strip. Sherlock2100 goes into his mind palace to try to solve a 19th century crime. Sherlock1880 extrapolates forward to the 21st century, envisioning himself in that era as someone who might create a mind palace to come back to the 19th century to solve a crime. It’s enough to put your brain into a knot. There were a ton of touch-points to both the Conan Doyle works and to Sherlock itself, many of them tongue-in-cheek. It was all highly enjoyable while at the same time highly improbable. It seems to be the setup for what we’ll get in the next series in 2017. Did Moriarty kill himself to complete an impossible scheme? Will he be back as “the virus in the data”?

Last night, we watched the first episode of the final run of Downton Abbey. The course of true love never did run smooth, especially on this show. The best parts were the scenes where Mrs. Padmore is delegated to find out from Mr. Carson what he expects from Mrs. Hughes in their impending marriage. Mrs. Padmore is so embarrassed, she can’t even look in Carson’s direction. And, finally, the Bates/Anna plot is laid to rest, although Anna (a character I used to like more) can’t help but gainsay every good thing Bates claims about their future. It will be interesting to see how they wrap things up. Will the dowager survive the series? Will their be another wedding (or two or three) at the Abbey? Will the show end with everything being auctioned off?

What an unusual Christmas week we had. It was so warm, we had to turn on the air conditioner for a couple of days. There were high temperatures in the eighties and overnight lows in the seventies.

We celebrated a day early, because of family travel reasons. Christmas Day evening we walked through the neighborhood to see all the lights. I think I like these new laser gun star projectors. Plug it in, point it at the house and shazam–lights everywhere. The first time I saw one, I thought it was a net of lights. Then I realized that there were even lights in the surrounding trees. It’s a cool effect.

The weather broke on Sunday, dropping thirty degrees during the daytime amid a heavy round of storms. Nothing near as bad as the tornadoes 200 miles to the north in Dallas, or the foot of snow at the panhandle, though. Now it’s back to “normal” winter weather, and the heat is on again. We were even able to run the fireplace last night.

We’ve seen a few movies over the past week or so. We all went to The Force Awakens last Wednesday, and had managed to avoid all spoilers so it was a thrilling experience. My first observation to my son-in-law and daughter was one that seems to have bothered a lot of people: the number of parallels between it and A New Hope. I didn’t mind them that much; it was just an observation. I really liked Rey. Two of her early scenes stood out. First was the one where she was being mugged for her droid. Finn starts moving toward her to help but sees she has things under control and just shrugs and leaves her to it. Then her insistence that he stop taking her hand. Fiercely independent. Even crusty old Han Solo liked her. I think I know who she’s supposed to be, or who we’re supposed to believe she is. Looking forward to the next installment.

Yesterday we saw Joy, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Deniro and a host of others, including Bradley Cooper. It’s about a high school valedictorian whose life is derailed by her family and she spends years toiling in obscurity. She was always creative but stifled. It’s built on the base of the Cinderella fairy tale, with camera angles and characters drawn from Roald Dahl, including a mother who almost never gets out of bed. The mother watches soap operas all the time, and a fictional soap opera created for the movie stars all sorts of old soap opera stars, including Donna Mills and Susan Lucci. Joy’s home situation is dysfunctional to the max. Her ex-husband lives in the basement and, later, so does her father (DeNiro) after his latest break-up. She has two kids, a “wicked” half-sister (Elizabeth Rohm) and a live-in grandmother, who’s the only one who supports her. She gets an idea for a revolutionary invention and meets up with Bradley Cooper, president of the new QVC shopping channel.

It’s a difficult movie at times, because the hits just keep on coming and every piece of news comes with an even worse follow-up. Finally, the audience’s patience is rewarded with some terrific scenes at the end. This is entirely Lawrence’s movie and I can only watch her in awe of her ability to internalize and externalize all this stuff, realizing that she’s four years younger than my daughter. I sincerely hope she manages to maintain an even keel in her personal life because she has greatness in her future. Heck, in her present.

Last night we watched the Doctor Who Christmas special, which was fun and entertaining. Lots of great gags with the head in a bag, and the Doctor getting to pretend to see the inside of the TARDIS for the first time. Then we watched Windtalkers from 2002, the Nicholas Cage movie about the Navajos who learned to communicate over open frequencies to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific. It was a mediocre film, but has some good supporting performances from Mark Ruffalo, Christian Slater and Noah Emerich (The Americans). Probably would have been better with someone with more acting chops than Cage in the lead role. Even Adam Beach looked good by comparison, and he’s a stiff actor at the best of times. Some good battle sequences, though.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Eleven years after it was first published, The Road to the Dark Tower continues to sell, and twice a year I get an earnings statement from my agent. These now come with royalty checks, including the one I received yesterday, since the book earned out its advance a while back. I’m always interested in the ratio of physical copies to ebooks, which is about 25:1 over the lifespan of the book.

I hear that the first physical copies of the CD limited edition of The Dark Tower Companion have been seen in the wild. I haven’t received my copies yet, but I expect I will before long.

I sold another short story today. The anthology in which it will appear hasn’t been announced yet, so I can only “vague-book” about it, but it’s a story I first wrote for another themed anthology that didn’t make the cut. I only sent it out once or twice after that, but I like the tale a lot and I’m glad it’s going to make it into print in 2016.

Last night we watched Birdman, the Michael Keaton film. I’d seen it before, but only as an in-flight feature and with subtitles since I didn’t have earphones, so it was a little like seeing and hearing it for the first time. It’s equally impressive on second viewing. It’s a very strange film, with its long tracking shots that essentially make the movie one continuous timestream. Even the nights are shown, though in fast-forward/time-lapse. It makes me wonder what kind of drama goes on backstage (or behind the scenes) on any given theatrical production or movie set. As the actors are interacting, what else is going on in their heads.

It was a soggy weekend. Mild, but it rained more or less non-stop. Since we aren’t caught up in the pre-holidays rush, we took it easy. Thought we’d stay in, but ended up going to our favorite pizza place for supper on Saturday. My wife asked me if there were any movies I wanted to see. There was one, and it started in fifteen minutes. Fortunately, we were only a block from the theater.

I was surprised to learn later that In the Heart of the Sea “flopped” during its opening weekend. It may not be Citizen Kane, but we enjoyed the heck out of it. I thought that some of the matte paintings that formed the background of Nantucket looked stage-y, but once the adventure got out onto the open ocean, everything worked. The whale, when it puts in its appearance, is convincing and terrifying, but there’s also the various survivor stories. We came away feeling like we got our money’s worth.

The movie is based on the real events that inspired Melville to write Moby-Dick. It has as a framing device Melville calling upon one of the survivors of the Essex, an older man who was but fourteen at the time of the incident. The man is reluctant to speak about his experiences but his wife, some cash and some liquor all conspire to loosen his tongue and he reveals the darkest secrets of that long-ago misadventure. For some strange reason we’ve been watching and/or reading a lot of nautical adventures lately, so this one played into an ongoing theme.

This was the first time we experienced DBox, those theater chairs that rock you around to enhance the viewing experience. I wondered if we’d be tossed about like ships on the ocean, but the usage was mild and didn’t really contribute much. I don’t think I’d pay extra for it in the future.

We also watched a Netflix documentary called Chaos on the Bridge. It’s a 60-minute documentary written and directed by William Shatner that explores the problems Star Trek: The Next Generation had during the first couple of years of its run. Brian Keene mentioned it as a cautionary tale about the perils of writing for TV, and when you hear how many writers left the show or were fired in the first couple of years, you’ll see why. It was a power struggle among massive egos with vastly different visions of what the series should be about, and the show only got on its true course with new blood (including Michael Piller, father of Haven’s Shawn Piller) and a better vision in its third season. Nautical connection: Captain Horatio Hornblower—those were the books given to Patrick Stewart when he wanted to know more about his character.

Fargo ended on a solid note. The ties to season 1 crystallized, and the fates of the various characters resolved, though I still wonder if Peggy got her room with a view of San Francisco Bay’s pelicans. Some wag offered the opinion that Ted Danson’s character invented emojis, which is pretty funny. Was it better than Season 1? I never know how to resolve issues like that, but I think so. It felt more invested in humanity.

Lots of other shows coming to a close soon. The Affair—they’re sure trying hard to make us think that Noah was the hit-and-run driver. Why else all those visions on the road? Homeland—it’s up to Carrie to save Berlin next week. Haven—the two-hour series finale this week. The Returned—I wonder how much of this convoluted story they can clarify in one more episode. I want to at least know more about Victor/Louis. Where he comes from, what he is, really. Creepy, creepy kid. Survivor—I’ll have to work hard to avoid spoilers because I rarely see the show live. And we get a one-off Luther this week, too.

I read a short story collection by Joyce Carol Oates (The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror) and am in the midst of another by Joe R. Lansdale (Hap and Leonard). I also read Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview, which actually consists of two real interviews and a couple of interview attempts, all of which took place while Hemingway still lived in Cuba. It was interesting to compare some of the things Hemingway said between the two formal interviews. He definitely had pat answers that he delivered in certain contexts, and he was irascible and testy at times, impatient with stupid questions and totally unwilling to discuss writing in any detail. This is the second book in this series that I’ve read recently (the other was about Ray Bradbury, thus the call-out in this post’s title), and they’re well worth exploring. This one was only 90 pages and I was able to read it in an evening.

Here are some recent reviews, books that I read during our cruise: Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin, Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith, The Crossing by Michael Connelly, and Dead Wake by Erik  Larson.

The Leftovers (HBO) begins where most speculative fiction ends. Once the characters in a horror novel defeat the Big Bad, the story wraps up quickly. You don’t often get to spend time with them to see the lasting impact of the experience.

The events of October 14 that are so integral to the story are long over before the show starts. What was behind the sudden departure of 2% of the planet’s population at that remarkable instant in time? The show will never answer that question, because that’s not what it’s about. The characters might seek the answer, but they won’t find it.

The big picture question of The Leftovers is: how do individuals and society respond in the face of something inexplicable. The departure isn’t apocalyptic. Society isn’t decimated and, for the most part, can continue to function as before. Most people know someone who departed, or know someone who knows someone. If you worked in a company with a hundred employees, a couple might have vanished, but business can continue, with a few adjustments. If you worked in a company with ten employees, maybe no one vanished that day.

Owing to the vagaries of randomness, though, there can be clusters. Nora Durst lost her husband and both of her children that day. She was in the kitchen making breakfast and they were at the table in the adjoining room. One minute they were there; the next, they weren’t. It’s easy to take the event personally when something like that happens.

Then there’s a place like Jardine, TX, the only town where absolutely no one vanished. Again, random chance can explain this apparent aberration, but the residents choose to see it as a sign that they’re special. People flock to the town to drink the water or see if there’s something about the town that can help protect them if the departure happens again. Residents keep doing the same thing they were doing on October 14, like superstitious athletes warding off bad luck.

A lot of people are concerned with identifying the commonality among the departed. The government sets up a questionnaire to look for trends. Did everyone who vanished have blood type B-, for example? The questionnaire is far-ranging, because no one has a clue. It probably wasn’t a Biblical rapture, because some of the people who vanished weren’t very nice, and some of those who remained behind are. One minister makes it his mission to demonstrate that fact. A lot of people are invested in lending some meaning to the incident. Others are equally determined to show that it had no meaning, and neither does life in general. People go crazy. They commit suicide. They abandon their families and join cults. Some of them realize the inefficacy of the cults and attempt to rejoin their families.

For most people, though, life goes on. Society continues to function. But everyone is a little bit less confident. The ground feels less solid, as if it might disappear from underfoot without warning. There’s no denying the departures. It’s not like vampires in a small town that are ultimately defeated. As the Season 2 opening credits demonstrate so well, there are a lot of gaps that can’t be filled or explained. It happened. Now people have to deal with it, each in his or her own way. It’s one of those moments everyone has a story about. Where were you when everyone vanished?

The show doesn’t exactly have a through-line. There’s no goal. No problem to be solved each season. It’s all about the characters. Many of the episodes are more-or-less stand-alones, although dependent upon our understanding of the featured characters. It’s a rich world peopled by characters of every type imaginable. The show allows viewers to come to conclusions and doesn’t spoon-feed every detail. What exactly was the first fifteen minutes of the first episode of Season 2 about? How did it relate to the rest of the show? You’re free to draw your own conclusions. There is no answer.

There are no answers.

Some people might question our choice of reading material before we went on a seven-day cruise. Not long before we departed, we finished reading Simple Courage by Frank Delaney, an account of the Flying Enterprise, which was hit by two rogue waves in the North Atlantic in late 1951. The first one “broke” the ship and the second one knocked her into a 60° list. Little wonder my wife was humming “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” while we drove to the Port of Houston for our cruise to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.

Little did we know: on the first full day at sea, the program listed a book club. The title on offer was Dead Wake, which sounded like a murder mystery, so we checked it out. Turns out it’s a non-fiction book by Erik Larson about the last voyage (and, ultimately, the sinking) of the Lusitania. Inspired choice to pass out on a cruise ship. However, we really enjoyed it: it presented the historical context (and you know, I’m all about the historical context!), the personalities aboard the ship, the political situation at the time—as well as Woodrow Wilson’s personal anguish—and it also presented the point of view of the captain of the U-20 whose torpedo brought down the mighty ship, thanks to his log book. Being on a cruise ship allowed us to compare and contrast the experience in 2015 to that in 1915. I’ve never read Larson before, but I plan to tackle some of his other books. Maybe we’ll read Isaac’s Storm (about the 1900 Galveston hurricane) during our next hurricane. I emailed him when we got back to find out if he knew that his book was being featured on a cruise ship, but he said that neither he nor his publicist were responsible, and he seemed greatly amused.

We splurged and got a suite at the back of the ship, with a balcony. The room was comparable to what you’d get at an extended-stay motel, with a bedroom, living room (divided by a pull-curtain), bathroom with separate spa tub and shower area, and a sink, mini-fridge area. Also a DVD player and two TVs, one facing in each direction, which were surplus to requirements. We received a lot of special perqs throughout the cruise as suite residents, which made us feel pampered.

The main feature for us was the balcony. It was about ⅓ the width of the ship, big enough for two deck chairs side by side and a small round table that could seat four. We spent a lot of time on the balcony, watching the Gulf and the Caribbean roll out behind us. There was an overhang, so we were only rarely in direct sun, which meant we didn’t have to ration our time for fear of sun burn. Except when we were in port, it was never too hot to sit out there, nor too cool. We even took a couple of our meals out there. Did I mention we loved the balcony? So much so that we decided not to go on any shore excursions (Grand Cayman, Costa Maya and Cozumel). We preferred to stay on board, taking advantage of the lower census of passengers.

It was also a good perspective from which to watch the docking and departing process. Seeing these great ships almost parallel parking, backing up, going sideways, it’s quite impressive. In Costa Maya, we left at 7:30 PM, when it was dark and drizzling. A couple of workers on the wharf were waiting for the ropes to slacken so they could pull them off the bollards. They were in yellow rain slickers and one guy was dancing to pass the time. We could just barely hear him whistling “La Cucaracha.” My wife is a world-class whistler, so she whistled the song back at him. We were four or five decks above the waterline, so maybe fifty feet up, but he heard us all the same, and we had a little back and forth with them. They were all alone on the wharf. It was a fun little moment.

We partook of some of the entertainment options, but we didn’t darken the doorways of the casino (not our thing) nor any of the shops. A lot of the on-board activities are thinly disguised infomercials, so we tended to steer clear of those, too. Lots of music, which was nice. Great dining options. I’m amazed I didn’t put on any weight, because we ate multi-course meals and had desserts galore, which we don’t often do. We ended up sharing tables with total strangers on a few occasions, but we always enjoyed the encounters. A lot of our fellow travelers were multiple-repeat cruisers, having logged tens of trips. One couple goes on a cruise every other week. The record-holder on this cruise was a man who’d spent something like 1400 days on cruises, or four solid years at sea.

Given that this wasn’t a holiday week, there weren’t so many younger people and we were at the younger edge of the median range, I’d say. For some reason, I also noticed a lot of the older men had pony tails. We met up with one interesting “couple” (I won’t say why they were interesting or why I put “couple” in quotes, because that would spoil things) at the bar one afternoon and I came away from the encounter with a great idea for a short story.

In addition to Dead Wake, which I read to my wife, I finished two novels (Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin and The Crossing by Michael Connelly), one novella (The Grownup by Gillian Flynn) and most of a third novel (Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith, aka JK Rowling). I did no writing at all, even though I’d planned to proof a novella. We were completely off the grid for the seven days we were away. We didn’t even bring our cell phones on board. No phone, texts or emails, no internet, no TV. I turned on our set a couple of times to get to the channel that showed our location and flew past any of the news channels along the way.

Someone insisted on telling us about the terror attacks in Paris on Friday evening, but if we hadn’t happened to sit next to them while waiting for dinner, we wouldn’t have heard about it at all. (My association with the Bataclan comes from the Supertramp album Paris. During a break between songs, John Anthony Helliwell marvels at the size of the crowd at this concert and he remembers back to the group’s first show in the city, which had about eight people in the audience—at the Bataclan concert hall.)

While we were away, my historical context essay about Different Seasons went live: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, as well as Rich’s essay about his recollections of the book then and now.

I was also delighted to learn that my story “Opposite Sides” was one of the finalists in the IV Edition of the Flash Fiction Competition César Egido Serrano, Museum of Words. There were 35,609 stories from 149 countries, so to be one of 18 Americans to make it to the final 250 or so out of that mass of submissions, as selected by 20 creative writing professors, is an honor indeed.