Quiet Riot

San Francisco-- Americans were stunned by another act of senseless brutality this week when a San Francisco street performer went on a terrifying spree. Randy Heppelwhite, a San Francisco mime, was arrested by police yesterday after perpetrating what one onlooker called "one of the most hideously ambiguous performances I've ever seen." 

Union Square in the aftermath of the horror

"He jumped right out in front of a group of tourists, and without saying a word, he seemed to pull out a large caliber weapon of some sort," said Lars Chiswick, a manager at Banana Republic. "Some people were saying it was a revolver, some said a bazooka, but from the way he handled it, I'd say it was an automatic weapon, an Uzi or a Glock, maybe, the way he seemed to be spraying the whole square with hot lead. I saw people sitting down everywhere, walking away in panic. Very few people were tipping him, no large bills. One woman even hyperventilated. Then he tried to make his getaway on a unicycle, or it might have been a stegosaurus."

Breaking theme

As you're aware, I’m a novelist. Published. Traditionally. Three Sherlock Holmes adventures. But I’m not here to hawk them (not today). I just wanted to get that out of the way, because this post is about my fourth novel, which I’ve just finished, having finally discovered something crucial—my theme. I discovered it after adding one word to the text:

Pinocchio

(We’ll get back to that.)

You might think I’d have figured out theme before setting down word one. Or you might think the exact opposite, that theme is just a word cooked up by college professors to make reading a chore. Don’t hit me with them theme waves, man.

Don’t hit me with them negative waves.

Arthur Phillips on fiction

 

Arthur Phillips is one of my favorite writers working today. Perhaps his background as a jazz saxophonists or his record as a five-time Jeopardy champion informs his work, since he has six novels under his belt, and no two are alike in genre, style, or subject matter. He's an inspiration to any writer hoping to break out of the single-genre ghetto.

 

"Fiction is able to do one thing better than any other art form: it is able to convey a convincing sense of what is going on in someone else's head. To me, that is the great mystery of life: what is everyone else thinking?" 

Favorite works

The Egyptologist

Prague

Angelica

My Musical Miseducation

 

I missed the boat on music, and it still rankles. Let me say up front that, had things gone differently, I would not have become a musical prodigy, a rock star, or even a lounge singer with a baby blue tuxedo and a coke habit. There’s not a music molecule hiding anywhere in my DNA. But I might have at least been musically literate. Or what’s audio equivalent of literacy?

Grand Theft Voice

 Let’s try an experiment. Read the following quote by Morgan Freeman.

When you read it, did you hear Morgan Freeman’s distinctive baritone? Likely. There are memes all over the internet that ask you that very same question. It’s the natural outcome of having such a well-known voice and style.

But, as you may have guessed, that’s not actually a Morgan Freeman quote. It’s from Malcolm X. (And if you try to say it now in Malcolm X’s voice, you may find yourself actually borrowing Denzel Washington's voice in playing Malcolm X. “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock: Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

So we could say I borrowed Morgan Freeman’s voice for this little thought experiment. Or nearer the mark would be to say I appropriated it. But to be truthful, I stole it. I stole Freeman’s likability, his air of authority, professionalism, and integrity. With Morgan Freeman, such antics are usually in the name of fun, but reassigning attribution of quotes to someone with more authority or a wider audience is endemic on the internet. Figures from Thomas Jefferson to Kurt Vonnegut have been misappropriated in this fashion. There have been a rash of pronouncements supposedly by the new pope that never passed his lips. I’m probably not telling you anything new here.

But now here’s an honest-god-quote from The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma, a recent book by AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman: