My deviousness…
No, I’m not going Trumpian on you. I just thought I’d mention that I sometimes add things to my stories to see if readers are paying attention. There are my Hitchcockian cameos where I appear as a bookstore owner, and even a cameo for Prince Harry (one astute reader noticed that one). You can have some fun trying to find these! Hint: In the “Esther Brookstone Art Dectective Series,” two novels strong now with Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, Esther, an ex-MI6 and Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division (in the second book, she has just retired), you’ll find the cameo in the first book.
My sci-fi stories have cameos too. Although I’m not an eternal like the main character in Asimov’s End of Eternity, his famous android detective Daneel Olivaw has a cameo in one of my sci-fi novels. And Asimov himself has one in a my new time-travel novel (recently sent to beta-readers).
Some of my deviousness is more subtle. Arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin, who has appeared in several novels, uses many aliases in the stories he appears in, but Raven was a bow to a famous American horror and mystery writer. In that same time-travel novel, I pay homage to a famous hard-boiled crime novelist and two of his characters.
Oh, by the way, the Queen of Hearts is in that time-travel story too. Alice Through the Looking Glass is one of my favorite stories—even in Disney’s silly and classic cartoon version. I like sly cats too, and Tweedle-Dee and –Dum so often describe harmless idiots (or ones not so harmless, like McConnell and Graham). And, while I have no lobr for a cruise ship commercial that brutally edits the song, I consider Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” one of my favorite songs, as an anthem for my creativity.
Here I’ve offered a different use of the word deviousness! These examples from my writing are just me having a wee bit of fun with my art. (Andrew Lloyd Weber did that in Unmasked, a recent musical biopic we saw, where he wrote a song about the song everyone hates, “Music of the Night”).
None of these examples of deviousness is quite as profound as Sandro Botticelli using himself as a model in his own painting (mentioned in Son of Thunder) because some might not consider them an improvement of my art (or Weber’s), but to hell with that opinion! It’s all about fun (probably even Botticelli had fun with his “cameos” in his paintings).
And let this be a question for every author: If you’re not having fun with your storytelling, why do it? You probably will be frustrated if you think you’re going to get rich, you will often get mad at trollish reviewers, and you will consider everything after finishing your MS a complete drag. If you don’t have fun with your writing, there’s not much left where you can have it.
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[Note: Some clues to the references above might be found in the cover images.]
Comments are always welcome.
“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” Ex-USN Master-at-Arms Mary Jo has had a harried life. In Muddlin’ Through, she takes a security job at a NJ firm and is framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder by a secret US agency when Russian agents steal the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). In Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, she not only has US and Russian agents again to contend with in her new CA security job, but also a stalker. And in Goin’ the Extra Mile, China steps in to pursue the MECHs, kidnapping Mary Jo’s husband and children to find out where they are. These three novels of heart-pounding action typify what I mean by “evergreen books”—novels that are as fresh and current as the day they were published, if not more so. Available in .mobi (Kindle) format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Come and meet the MECHs!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
