THE STORY SO FAR: PART 62

THE BLUE MUSKETEERS, AND JAMES M. FOX—HEAD OF THE FBI’S NEW YORK OFFICE

I wrote yesterday about ‘The Blue Musketeers’—Dennis Martin, John Pritchard, and Jimmy Miley—but neglected to talk about Jim Fox.

Jim Fox, a fluent Mandarin speaker, by the way, was head of the FBI’s New York office in the early early nineties and was about as charismatic a character as you are likely to meet. Though extremely intelligent, and with a truly astonishing track record in counter-espionage and against organized crime, he had a self deprecating wit—and was truly marvelous company. Simply put, the man was extraordinarily charming, entertaining, and interesting.

I was introduced to him by John Pritchard—a highly regarded FBI agent in his own right—and I guess we like each other instantly. Thereafter, we met up regularly; and we talked at length—primarily about terrorism—just before he died in 1997. He was only 59 at the time and when I heard the news, I was devastated. I also wondered about the cause of Jim’s death. A vital and energetic man, the New York Times reported it as “Complications resulting from sepsis.” Could be—but it never rang true to me.

Jim headed up the investigation that brought down John Gotti and subsequently oversaw the successful hunt for the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. When I first met him, he picked up a machete from his desk and waved it around. It had come from a major prison riot that had taken place recently and that the Feds has helped to suppress. Jim was not your average FBI man.

I flew over from Ireland to attend his retirement party in 1994 and had the distinction of having my camera stolen as I sat between the NYPD Chief of Detectives and John Pritchard, First Deputy of the NYPD. Both Governor Cuomo and Mayor Giuliani spoke; and, all in all, it was a hell of an evening.

My favorite Jim Fox story concerns an event that occurred shortly after he had met me. The occasion was a major law enforcement lunch—and if you think that such people network a lot, you are entirely right—where Jim spotted Jimmy Miley in the audience, and thinking he was me, went on to sing my praises (though I wasn’t actually there at all).

Afterwards, Jimmy Miley went up to Fox and said: “My god, Jim; if you can confuse me with Victor O’Reilly after having lunch with him only a few days ago, no wonder you FBI guys are in such trouble.”

Fox had a hard time living that one down.

I’ll write more about Jim Fox some other time. He was a truly exceptional individual; and I miss the man.

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 61

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED AS WE WERE FLYING THE MAYOR: WE DROPPED HIM…FROM ABOUT A THOUSAND FEET.

SORRY ABOUT THAT

Writing about Jim Fox, FBI, brings tears to my eyes—but mostly of laughter. When we were together, one war story tended to follow another'; and the funny thing is that the most outrageous ones tended to be true. But, they tended to be disguised amidst throw-away humor. It just wasn’t the thing to talk up your own achievements, no matter how valid there were.

The Blue Musketeers—my name for our group—were no different. All had been in harms way, sometimes frequently—and all made light of that fact.

One of my favorite stories, as told by my friend, former NYPD detective and bodyguard Dennis Martin (much better than I can, by the way) concerns the ever vocal Mayor Koch. Apparently, on one of their many helicopter trips, not only was the door next to Koch not properly secured, but he had forgotten to fasten his safety belt.

A thousand feet up, as the helicopter banked, gravity being gravity, Mayor Koch started to slide out of the aircraft. Grab him by the hair? The man had no hair!

Reportedly, Dennis grabbed him somewhere more practical at the last micro-second; and thus prevented a rather embarrassing incident.

I don’t know why that story appeals to me so much, but it does; and I write that as someone who rather likes Koch. Still, the whole idea of accidentally losing a mayor—“A trifle careless, wouldn’t you say?”—has immense appeal appeal as far as I am concerned.

It is so wonderfully, elegantly, ridiculous. And I have great respect for the ridiculous.

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 60

GOOD FRIENDS, A SUPERSTORM, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF BREEZY POINT

For most of the time when I was working on my first book, GAMES OF THE HANGMAN, I lived in a traditional Irish thatched cottage—the kind of dwelling which was made entirely of local materials, and which was about as different from modern housing as could be. A local craftsman—Jimmy Crowley (Jimmy the Eel) once opined that the place had probably cost no more than fifty pounds to build (much less that $100) though that would have been in the 1840s, the time of the Famine. The location, by the way, was in that little known, but very beautiful spot—West Waterford, Ireland. In fact, as far as I know, it still is. Such cottages, with their three foot thick walls at the base—they taper—are not particularly portable. In fact, it is their very mass which keeps them in place because they don’t have any foundations in the traditional sense. They were merely plonked on the ground and built up, one rock from the field on top of another. Local materials, in those days, did not mean going to your local hardware store. Such facilities did not exist. It meant working with what you could drag out of Ireland’s stony fields and hedgerows. Such structures were basic in the most elemental sense. But so was life in those days.

Unless my marvelous, beautiful, truly awesome Jotul wood-burning stove was kept charged, the cottage was cold—because there was neither insulation or damp-proofing—and it was vulnerable to Northern winds because a rat had eaten a hole in the thatch—and spiders, and other things that crept and crawled, proliferated in the thatch which was exposed internally. In other words, if I looked up at the ceiling in my tiny sitting-room, I didn’t see white painted plaster. I saw the inside of the thatch, together with all its attendant wild life. And when the winds were high, which was quite often, little pieces of thatch would flutter down and remind me that that I was living in much the same way as Irish peasants had around the time of the Great Famine—the mid nineteenth century—when the cottage had originally been built. That said, I had electric light and a TV which received all of two channels; and I had running water from my very own well. All in all, what more could a struggling writer want – apart from vast quantities of books and the (not too) occasional comfort of a sexually willing woman?

In truth, it was a pretty wonderful time—if I choose to forget the stress of chronic financial insecurity combined with the thought that, like so many would-be writers, I might never sell anything. Mostly I did just that. I pushed my worries to the back of my mind and lived for the day. I walked, I read, I struggled to write, I fell in love. I made love. And I reveled in what was, on the face of it, an extremely simple simple life; though life is never simple.

After my first book, GAMES OF THE HANGMAN, was sold, I decided to spend some time in New York getting to know publishing—and the transition defined culture shock. Suddenly, I was staying in Brooklyn with friends, and commuting into Manahttan via the D train, and hanging around my publishers, Grove, trying to work out how the game was played; and not much liking what I found.

I started off knowing no one, apart from my friends in Brooklyn, but soon my editor, Rose Maria Morse—a most attractive woman—introduced me to a friend’s boyfriend, Dennis Martin, a former NYPD detective of some distinction, who had been the bodyguard for Mayor Koch for some time, and was friends with such gorgeous creatures as Maureen O’Hara and Brook Shields; and he had also worked for Michael Jackson.

In turn, Dennis introduced me to his friends, John Pritchard, the Inspector General of the MTA (who went on to become First Deputy of the NYPD), and Jimmy Miley, another retired NYPD detective, now also working for the MTA, who bore more than a passing resemblance to myself (a story for another day).

Subsequently, I spent many an enjoyable evening carousing with the three—don’t ask—and eventually Dennis asked me would I be willing to meet his parents. They were retired, but they had heard about this Irish author and were curious. It is also fair to say that I enjoyed (minor) celebrity status at the time.

I agreed, of course, and Dennis drove me out to meet his incredible mother, Anne, and his retired cop father, Al. They were stimulating company and Anne, in particular, had a wicked sense of humor. I was captivated; and we became good friends. They lived in a rather strange and wonderful community which reminded me in a way of BRIGADOON—and if you don’t know what Brigadoon is, check out the movie. The real name of the community they lived in was Breezy Point.

Subsequently, after good, long lives, Al Martin died; and then Anne. I was much saddened, but felt privileged to have known them. In fact every time I see BLUE BLOODS—which is a weekly TV series about a family of Irish cops—I think of the Martin clan with affection. Blue Bloods, by the way, stars Tom Selleck whom Dennis Martin positively does not resemble (though, as it happens, he, Dennis, is an extremely good-looking man). I am probably mildly jealous. We author types, careless of our appearance, and focused on our craft, tend towards the rumpled.

Last week, Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on Breezy Point so I was prompted to phone Dennis in his Manhattan apartment—who was as droll as ever. The man has a marvelously dry sense of humor which sort of sneaks up on you; and mugs you. And he, and his wife Monica (she of the great laugh) even had electricity. Good grief! Some people just have the touch.

Though the Martin family sold their house there some time ago, I still feel quite distressed about Breezy Point. Still, I’m sure the community will re-build. As for Dennis Martin and clan—I haven’t mentioned his brother, retired NYPD Captain Bobby Martin so far—I am just delighted to be back in touch again. Good friends. Good memories. Great people.

I shall now go and hone my wit; strop my razor; embrace the blade. Dennis is dangerous in that regard. You joust verbally with Dennis at your peril. You have been warned. He is smarter than your average bear. And bears, I will have you know, are smart.

 

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 59

WHEN YOU LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND SEE A CRITIC, YOU WILL KNOW YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO BECOMING A WRITER

I was going to write about writer’s angst today, but when I Googled that subject, I ran across such a marvelous blog by author Lynda Beck Fenwick, headed “Writer’s Angst,” that I felt compelled to address the issue of re-writing (which is as good a way of introducing angst as any).

Her angst, in fact, does seem to have been brought on by the need to re-write—and she includes some telling quotes on the subject. In fact, all the quotes on writing in this piece were selected by her. She is a talented woman.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. 

Henry David Thoreau.

The simple truth is that although some people have the facility to write a totally acceptable draft the first time around, most of us do not – and here I include myself. Enter re-writing, something I used to hate, but have now learned to enjoy. Quite how one can enjoy eviscerating one’s own work is a good question, but it appears that masochism needs to be part of a writer’s make-up. In fact, some would argue that writers—by definition—are a pretty screwed up lot, but I prefer adjectives like “creative,” and “complex.” They mean much the same thing, but they are more socially acceptable. “Moody”—needless to say—goes without question. Living with angst would make anyone moody.

Some say that living with a writer—and his or her moods—tends to make one equally prone to angst; but (let me cross my fingers here) I tend towards the view that our talent and charm compensates…

To re-write successfully, you have to be able to criticize your own work (a somewhat unnatural act initially). Of course the logical compensation  should be that you can praise your own work as well—with a clear conscience—but personally I have never been able to take matters that far. Clearly my ego needs further cultivating (though others might disagree).  I shall get to work on that task quam celerime. The latter is one of the few phrases I recall from my school Latin, and it was beloved of Julius Caesar. Indeed, it reflected his military style. It means: “As quickly as possible.” The man was a veritable dynamo.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear.  One must listen to the sound of one's own prose. 

Barbara Tuchman 

This is exceptionally good advice—though I don’t actually read my own work out loud. But I read it in my mind as if I was doing just that—sometimes again and again—and find the process vastly helpful. Good writing should have a rhythm, and if it has not, something is not kosher. If the latter is the case, here is what Colette says:

...an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. 

Colette

The woman sounds like someone you would not want to meet in a dark alley, but perhaps she was exaggerating to make a point. Frankly, I think “destroy most of it” is a little extreme, but the important thing is to do whatever is necessary so that your writing reaches the point where it works.

“It works,” by the way, is high praise in this business; and, if uttered by an editor, is normally accompanied by a pained face and said in a strangulated manner. Editors hate saying nice things to writers. It offends the Editors Code and erodes their sense of power. Editors all have Napoleonic complexes.

Books aren't written, they're rewritten.  Including your own.  It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it... 

Michael Crichton

Here endeth the lesson.

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 58

IT HAS BEEN A TOUGH WEEK, THAT HAS ENDED RATHER WELL; THANKS—BELIEVE IT OR NOT—TO A BANK. I’M IN SHOCK!

I used to be very bad at rolling with the punches—a serious disadvantage because setbacks are an innate part of life, and business in particular. In short, it is in the natural order of things that matters will go wrong every now and then; but that the important thing is how you conduct yourself when they do. And here I should add that not only are we writers in business –whether  we like to admit it or not—but we live in a world where rejections, and corporate nastiness, are the norm. We stay with it, not because we have any sense—by commercial standards—but because we are committed to the point of obsession, and we love what we do. Family apart, our work validates our lives, and little else matters.

Yes, I know that makes no sense—in corporate terms—but life is not yet entirely controlled by the values (or lack of them) of Big Business. Creativity has its own standards, and though they overlap with business, they are greatly concerned with such intangibles as the pushing the envelope, the integrity of the work, and the drive to excel creatively. In the creative world, the vision is the thing and the profit motive is secondary; if, indeed, it exists at all.

If you doubt the value of that, consider what life would be like without the movies, TV, radio, music, dance, sculpture, poetry, design and architecture—indeed the arts in general. It would be, at best, intolerable. Creativity, in all its myriad forms, not only advances civilization, but is the ingredient that helps us function.   

Typically, I would over-react to a rejection or setback. Why so? It is difficult to speculate about one’s own emotional makeup, but I’m fairly sure that part of it stemmed from the fact that my decidedly dominant mother was over-emotional and prone to histrionics—to put it mildly—so that flying off the handle was more the norm than anything else. In short, high drama, and extreme behavior, constituted the domestic norm. It was how I was taught to react.

The decades have passed and I am now ashamed of my earlier behavior. True, I don’t think I did anything too terrible—and there is some evidence I did some good things; but I still regret losing my cool. As I have written before: Cool is king; and it really is. And cool is also Zen. Damned if I can define Zen, but it stands for a very positive state of mind.

This week I had a friend—whom I trusted implicitly—let me down. It couldn’t have happened at a worst time. But here is the funny thing. Just when my morale was really low, a visit to my local Bank of America restored my faith that there are some thoroughly decent people out there—and that small kindnesses can make all the difference. No, I didn’t get a loan or anything similar; nor was I after one. I’m writing here about simple human decency.

The Bank of America has long received a terrible press and its senior executives have been chastised accordingly—though whether sufficiently is a good question. I’m in no position to comment further on that at this time (tempted though I might be). What I can say is a number of people at the sharp end—where a bank meets its customer –are doing an exceptional job. Could it be that is the way it should be—and may be? I would seriously like to think so.

We writers are notoriously skeptical of the human condition—with good reason if history is any guide—but every now and then I feel decidedly optimistic about the human race. Such feelings may be fleeting, but they are heart-warming while they last.

Thank you, Vickie and Billy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 57

EXPLAIN THE BEAR, SIR!

Frankly, I am not sure that I can, but I’ll try. You may think I’m harking back to my early childhood and the statutory teddy-bear, but actually my favorite toy in those days was a home-made hand-knitted penguin which I used to drag around by its head because it was too big for me to carry comfortably.

The net result of this was that the penguin’s head used to come off—knitting has a tendency to unravel—and though various aunts slaved away in the manner of aunts to remedy this decapitation, eventually Penguin grew so unsightly (and disturbing to grown-ups in his frequently headless stuffing-leaking state) that he was hidden away—or otherwise disposed of. In effect, Penguin was murdered. Sensibly, I don’t think I have ever trusted adults since; though I remain decidedly fond of penguins.

Of course, I had a teddy-bear—one couldn’t go anywhere in polite society without one—but I never confused him with Pooh Bear whom I adored. But Pooh Bear existed primarily in my mind as a result of my grandmother reading me the Winnie The Pooh stories, and seemed much more interesting than my personal stuffed bear who didn’t do anything much except lie on my bed. And he didn’t have any friends. No Piglet, Eeore or Kanga. Frankly, I preferred my Siamese cat, Bankok, who liked to sleep on my head—and then go out into the night, and have adventures, and kill things.

A few incidents apart, bears remained largely peripheral to my life until I went to Bern, Switzerland to research GAMES OF THE HANGMAN. There, it was hard to avoid bears, because not only was there a bear pit beside one of my favorite cafes, near a bridge over the River Aare, but the bear is the very symbol of the City of Bern (which was named after a bear) and its image is reproduced everywhere in some form or other. Live bears apart, there are carved bears, embossed bears, stuffed and printed bears in profusion. In fact, I don’t think a more bear-happy city exists anywhere in this wonderful world of ours; and, needless to say, a bear features prominently on Bern’s coat of arms.

You might think I would have found such bear mania somewhat overbearing (Oh dear!) after a time, but actually I grew very attached to Bern and its bears. In fact I even named one of my characters “The Bear” after I had met a Swiss detective who was somewhat shaggy and bear shaped—rather like myself these days.

So much for background. However, my current interest in bears stems from my search for a logo (or brand image)—and it is driven by my implacable friend, Tim Roderick, who coming from a military background (he was a decorated, combat experienced, U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter pilot until not so long ago) believes that a unit badge is a fundamental requirement if one is to survive and prosper, and since I am setting up a publishing unit, a logo is essential. Now the thing to understand about Tim is that he does not give up—which means I have no chance at all of procrastinating to excess over this matter, even if I wanted to. Actually, I don’t. Now my only problem is find a logo that works. And it seems highly likely that it will feature a bear.

Meanwhile—pending the actual designing of the logo—I am experimenting with bear images; and I have to say I rather like having them around. Bears have made no small contribution to my writing life.

A postscript: I have only once encountered bears in the wild, and that was on the lands of a friend of mine who lives in Virginia. We had just left  a field and entered some woods when a mother bear and two cubs seemed to erupt from the ground in front of us. Fortunately, there was a small pond in the way—or we might have been in some danger—but they were a wonderful sight and I was vastly impressed by the speed at which they moved. These apparently clumsy creatures were nothing of the sort when danger threatened.

 

 

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 56

THIS GORGEOUS CREATURE—IRISH SINGER TARA BLAISE—IS JUST ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS OF AN OLD FRIEND OF MINE, NIVES EGAN LANGLEY. I SUSPECT YOU WILL BE HEARING MORE OF TARA.

Anyone who has read my books will find it rather hard to believe that I ever went through a relatively innocent and high minded period in my life. After all, a good friend of mine—or so I thought—Livermore nuclear scientist, Dr. John Hunter went through my first book, GAMES OF THE HANGMAN,  and excised over thirty pages with a razor blade on the grounds that it might corrupt his children. Personally, I think he was dodging having to explain about the birds and the bees. Yes, there is sex in the book—and I have worked hard to research the subject and portray it with some finesse—but it is germane to the story; and I am reliably informed it is a comparatively common and socially acceptable occurrence.

Being American, needless to say, he was not remotely concerned with the violence. I know I am not the first person to say this, but this is a very strange culture.

The fact is that I did go through a (hopefully brief) period of feeling noble and responsible while in my teens. This was so out of character, I am embarrassed to mention it, but truth will out. Unfortunately, it happened to coincide with my mother introducing me to the daughter of a friend and telling me to “look after her.”

With hindsight, I suspect my mother’s motives were more practical than high minded, but for some reason chivalry mastered my teenage hormones, and I treated Nives – Blaise’s mother – as if I was one of King Arthur’s more demented knights (chasing the Holy Grail instead of the fair sex). And Nives was gorgeous! Blaise’s beauty comes from some truly impressive genes.

What can I say! I hang my head in shame. Fortunately, a better man than I swept her off her feet, and she went on to have numerous gorgeous children.

I have one particularly striking memory of Nives and Colette, her equally beautiful sister. A friend of mine and I had taken the pair to the West of Ireland for a few days—an innocent trip unfortunately—and one evening both dressed up in full length dresses and bound their long hair in circlets (as illustrated), and we walked to a nearby lake. The evening was misty and moisture glinted in their hair, and when they stood against the backdrop of the still waters, as the sun settled in the West, I remember thinking that I was looking at the very spirit of Celtic Ireland before the Normans had invaded; and I had never seen anything more beautiful or more romantic.

I cherish that memory to this day.

You can learn more about Tara on Wikipedia and YouTube. My other anecdotes  will have to await my memoirs: CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK-WRITING MAN Hmm! Now I think about it, Confessions Of A Book-Writing Bear has a certain ring to it.