King Tut and the Bugatti

 And then again, some facts in historical mystery are simply a matter of grinding it out. For instance, when you need a car to get your heroes from Luxor to Cairo as quickly as possible. The train simply won't do. This happens in The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.

First of all, you should realize that without the car, Tutankhamun might never have been discovered. Lord Carnarvon, the sponsor of the dig, was mad for cars early on. The faster the better.

And in 1903, he had the dubious distinction of being in the world's first car crash. 

Lord Carnrvon

A bad crash, with a crushed skull and a broken jaw, and lacerated lungs, which left him prone to severe lung infections. Doctors recommended he spend his winters in a dry climate--say, Egypt? He fell in love with the place, fell in love with Egyptology, and finally decided to get into the tomb-digging business. He hired a fellow named Howard Carter, and the rest as they say, is history.

But back to my problem. Where to get a car? Our heroes came to Luxor aboard a dahabeah (another whole story). Well, it's true, I could make up any car owned by anybody. I wouldn't even have to name the kind of car. But historical fiction is made up of these thousand details which anchor our stories in reality, and create a bond of trust between writer and reader.

So I decided to make the car Lord Carnarvon's car, left garaged in a tomb (which is where they did keep them) when he went to Cairo and died. So what kind of car would Lord Carnarvon have driven?

This was actually easy to uncover, since Carnarvon was so well known for his love of cars (and horses and yachts). Of course, I could have gone with a Ford, since he had provided one for the dig, but I, wanted a fast car. Before the end of his life, Carnarvon was into Bugattis (although he had just purchased a Bentley, which he never got the chance to take home.)

Bugatti. That's just brimming with sexy. (Although to tell you the truth, I know zero about cars and couldn't tell a Bugatti from a VW Bug.) A Bugatti would do.

But now I needed a Bugatti made before 1923, when Carnarvon died,

And I needed a four-seater, which could carry five in a pinch.

And fast. Faster than a train, which I already knew made the trip from Luxor to Cairo in about ten hours.

Which is about how long it took me to find my Bugatti. (And I get down on my knees and praise the internet every day.) I looked at a lot of Bugattis. Most were two-seaters. Some, for racing purposes held only one. I found a few that might be four-seaters, but I couldn't be sure from the pictures. And while the specs told me what horsepower they were and how many cylinders they had, not a single one mentioned the number of seats.

So as the sun was rising, I found it. The 1923 Bugatti Type 23 Torpedo. Lots of pictures, including one of the back seat.

Sold. That is, if I could just find out--yes! Top speed 62mph. And since my driver is a professional racer, I'm going to posit that she can make it to Cairo in under seven hours.

Now I just have to decide whether it gets them all the way there or breaks down in the desert. Which would mean I'd have to get under the hood of the thing. 

Um... I'm thinking they make it.

King's River Life Review + Coal Tar

 

A new review of The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter:

"The mystery is filled with twists and turns, and there is even a bit of an added mystery in
the epilogue. If you are looking for a new Sherlock Holmes story that is a bit different then you are used to, be sure to check out The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter."

For the full review, check HERE.

Plus, a bonus article in which I take on the burning issue of Sherlock Holmes and coal tar derivatives!

"Instead of painting gods and heroes, kings and queens, they could paint street scenes, picnics by the river, water lilies, dancers, the whole joyous repertoire of everyday life for which we have come to love the Impressionists and with a whole new palette of bright synthetic colors to mix from."

Read it all in King's River Life Magazine.

Vonnegut on swoopers and bashers

“Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.”

 

On entering Arles

 "I tripped over the threshold into the cafe, cutting a slice out of the early-morning silence. An old billiard table commandeered the center of the room, the baize worn down to the slate. It was flanked by a dozen granite-top tables. One of last night’s patrons was passed out face-down at a table near the door, with the reek of vomit rising from him. A small bar stood at the far end of the room beneath an old station-clock; its drip-drop tick-tock was the only answer to my call of good morning."

The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter

Review: Flint and Mirror

 

True fantasy is hopeless. As the hero nears faery, faery recedes. Magic is always a double-edged sword, and the price of using it is often to give it up. No one knows these tragic lineaments better than John Crowley, who has spent the greater part of his career on the border of faery, always showing us glimpses, never surrendering the key.

     So it is with Flint and Mirror, Crowley’s latest, a palimpsest of ancient magic on historical fact. It’s familiar territory for Crowley, Elizabethan England, the England of Elizabeth’s magician, John Dee, the age of magic diminishing and disappearing. 

But this tale is set mainly in Ireland, where they’ve always been closest to faery, and always closest to tragedy, and never more so than in the tale of Hugh, the earl of Tyrone, torn between his Irish heritage and English upbringing, and Red Hugh of Donegal, the prince who could unite the warring Irish under him—but never has the chance.

     And here’s the fact of tragedy—we always know the outcome from the very beginning. We know (everyone knows this truth of Ireland—it has never been united to this day) that it ends in disappointment and death. This is what lifts the story of the earl of Tyrone, as indecisive as Hamlet, to catharsis. England loses as surely as Ireland does. England loses Elizabeth, and Ireland loses the magic that inhabits the hollow hills. 

     This is a special tale—in its simplicity, in its solidity, and in its intangibility. If you’ve never read any John Crowley, this is a good place to start. Highly recommended.

Flint and Mirror can be found here on Amazon.

At War with the Ants

 Here's a blast from the past. 

A screenplay which I wrote in 2010 was subsequently filmed by our local community college, BPCC. And now, barely 12 years later, there's a trailer up on Youtube. If you're curious, it's called At War with the Ants. 

Check it out.

And I guess, just in case you're so wowed by the trailer, that you'd like to see the whole movie, Go Here to buy.