WHAT ARE ROGER AND SUZANNE UP TO THESE DAYS?

            There are currently two Roger and Suzanne novels at the Work in Progress stage.   The first book, still untitled (but there’s a strong nominee for the honor), brings our two detectives to Alaska’s Denali National Park, a 6 million acre chunk of unspoiled wilderness capped by the highest mountain in North America.  If they’re going to leave South America, I reasoned, why not take them as far away as possible?  And, on top of that, Elaine and I had taken a vacation to Denali (and elsewhere in Alaska) a year or two ago in preparation for this book.

            The novel begins, as many of the Roger and Suzanne series does, with a brutal murder, this one in the National Park.  The victims, who we had met previously as supporting characters in “The Surreal Killer”, were close friends of one of our series regulars, Vincent Romero, Roger’s partner in his private detective agency in Los Angeles since “The Deadly Dog Show”.  Vincent asks Roger to investigate the death of his friends, and we‘re off for our usual mix of travel, tourism, and murder that are the trademarks of this mystery series.  The novel is complete, currently going through its third round of edits, and may be ready for publication as soon as the end of this month.   If anyone wants to volunteer to write a review for the book page on Amazon, I’ll be happy to send you a pre-publication copy to read as soon as the current round of edits (by Elaine and me) is complete.  Just e-mail me or message me on Facebook with your e-mail address if you’re interested. 

GERMAN SHORTHAIRED POINTERS AND HUNT TESTS-PART III: MASTER HUNTER

The third, and final, entry in my series of posts about hunt tests and our dogs follows. I hope at least some of my readers found this series interesting.  If all goes as planned, the venue of hunt tests will be the centerpiece for the next novel in the series.

Master Hunter is the third, final, and by far the most demanding, title a hunting dog can achieve in hunt tests.  Very few dogs achieve this title compared to the number of dogs who become Junior Hunters.

What are the judges looking for? Junior Hunter is all about the dog’s instincts and motivation to hunt.  Senior Hunter competition adds in the criteria of trainability and having the required skills to hunt with minimal guidance from the handler.  This third and most difficult hunt test degree, the Master Hunter level, adds the requirements of a polished and perfect performance by the dog without guidance in the field.  Now the judges are looking for the trained bird dog in all respects– steady to wing and shot, and able to scrupulously honor its brace mate as soon as it sees the other dog find the bird.  The handler is not allowed to give the dog any instructions in the field; the bird dog’s training has to be complete before the test.

GERMAN SHORTHAIRED POINTERS AND HUNT TESTS-PART II: SENIOR HUNTER

Like the movie Groundhog Day, each new puppy we keep starts off the cycle of conformation shows and hunt tests once again in our household.  At the moment we have four generations of dogs, great grandma Viña, Grandma Jolie, mother Schöne, and son Ries, still a puppy.  All three of the older girls are currently at the Senior Hunter level, with Jolie two qualifying rounds (of the required five) away from Master Hunter status and Viña functioning at the Master Hunter level in the field, even though she resists honoring random brace mates in hunt tests.  Today’s post will again focus on Ries, who has already completed his Junior Hunter certification (at 7 months of age), and what the earning of the title of Senior Hunter will require.

What are the judges looking for?  Senior Hunter competition, like Junior Hunter is still about the dog’s instincts and motivation to hunt.  But now we add in the criteria of trainability and having the required skills to hunt with minimal guidance from the handler.  At Senior Hunter level the animals need enough training to understand what is expected of them, but finding a bird and pointing it should be instinctual in a well-bred pointing dog.  On top of these skills the judges are looking for the fundamental skills of the trained bird dog – steady to wing, and the honor.

GERMAN SHORTHAIRED POINTERS AND HUNT TESTS-PART I

Good news today:  The Deadly Dog Show won today's (7/26/14) Indie Book of the Day Award.  This Roger and Suzanne mystery novel features Juliet, a poorly disguised Jolie, as one of the detectives in a complex murder case.  Romeo, a poorly disguised Ries, is born at the end of the novel.  Sooner or later Roger and Suzanne will have to solve a murder or two at a hunt test.

Like the movie Groundhog Day, each new puppy we keep starts off the cycle of conformation shows and hunt tests once again in our household.  At the moment we have four generations of dogs, great grandma Viña, Grandma Jolie, mother Schöne, and son Ries, still a puppy.  All three of the older girls are currently at the Senior Hunter level, with Jolie two qualifying rounds away from Master Hunter status and Viña functioning at the Master Hunter level in the field, even though she resists honoring random brace mates in hunt tests.  Today’s post will focus on Ries, who has already completed his Junior Hunter certification (at 7 months of age), and what it requires to earn the Junior Hunter title.

What are the judges looking for?  Junior Hunter competition is mostly about the dog’s instincts and motivation to hunt.  The animals need enough training to understand what is expected of them, but finding a bird and pointing it should be instinctual in a well-bred pointing dog.  At this level, the judges want the dog to show they want to go out in the field and search for birds.  The judge is looking for the dog to demonstrate using its nose and searching for birds by their scent.

LIFE WITH ONE OF “JULIET’S” PUPPIES

Well, life with almost one of “Juliet’s” puppies.  Our newest dog pack member, Ries, is the grandson of Jolie, the model for “Juliet” in “The Deadly Dog Show”.  Ries, in turn, is the model for Juliet’s new puppy Romeo, who will be featured in guest shots (or more) in upcoming books in this series.  He’s seven months old (that milestone happened on March 26^th), and most certainly has a personality.  In fact his personality is bigger than he is at the moment.   He shows every sign of potentially becoming our best hunting dog ever---and that’s quite an accolade with three of the women in his life (mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother) having their Senior Hunter certifications and some, if not all, of the necessary successful rounds completed to qualify as a Master Hunter.  Ries is working his way up the hunting dog hunt test ladder, currently completing his final qualifying round at the Junior Hunter level.

Dog psychologists have defined a “fear period” from 8 to 18 weeks when the puppy will fear any bad experience he/she has had for the rest of their lives.   The human analogue of the “fear period” takes place when a child is 8-18 months old.  As responsible breeder/owners, it’s our job to give the puppy as many different experiences as they can possibly handle during this period, and to make the experiences positive ones, to get the best possible temperament and self-confidence in the adult dog to come. 

RECENT REVIEW OF FIVE QUICKIES

            A very nice review of my newest book by a popular blogger just appeared.   Kathryn Svendsen, in her blog “Shelf Full of Books”, reviewed “Five Quickies for Roger and Suzanne”. 
She gave this anthology a rating of 4 stars.

            “This is an anthology of 5 stories of shorter length from novelette length to short story. Each one is about Roger Bowman, a private detective, who once was a patent lawyer and a police detective. The first of the five stories The Empanada Affair takes places in Argentina. Three of the stories take place in Los Angeles and the fifth story “The Haunted Gymnasium” takes place in Fortaleza, Brazil. Most of the stories have some kind of connection to South America

PROGRESS IN THE GALAPAGOS AND OTHER STUFF

            The current Work In Progress reached a milestone.   The first draft of “The Origin of Murder” is complete, I’ve also completed the first round of edits, and a copy is currently being read by my wife with her trusty blue pen.   I like this new book, which started with rediscovering Elaine’s journal describing her impressions of what we saw when we took the cruise through the Galapagos Islands that Roger, Suzanne, and their entourage take in this current novel.   The plot evolved from the original idea (which is still the central theme of “Whydunit”), to a much more complex story as the peripheral characters began clamoring for enhanced identities and backstories.   “Whodunit” evolved with the novel.   Along the way I ended up doing a lot of research (I’d tell you about what, but that would be a spoiler) and learned a lot about [CENSORED] and [CENSORED].

NOT QUITE A FREEBIE ALERT---BARGAIN ALERT

Starts tomorrow!  Special Promotional Price on Amazon KDP ---Nov. 12-17, 2013.  Thousands of readers have enjoyed a series of mystery novels set in South America and California featuring Los Angeles-based private detective Roger Bowman and his wife biochemist Suzanne Foster.   “Five Quickies For Roger And Suzanne”, a novel-length anthology of five stories---three short stories (including “The Dog With No Name” for dog lovers), a novella, and a novelette---features the regular characters from this popular South American mystery series.  Enjoy the quickies, which introduce several of the recurring series characters from this series and are a great place to begin it!  Normal list price is $2.99; Promotional days only, $0.99.  http://www.amazon.com/Quickies-Roger-Suzanne-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00F7VRMKS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379311152&sr=1-1&keywords=b00F7VRMKS

LITTERING, A MISDEMEANOR

It may be a little bit too trivial a crime to need Roger and Suzanne’s talents to solve, but we had an episode of littering on Monday night a few weeks ago.  Schöne was due to have her puppies Thursday, but she likes to do things precociously.   At 2 A.M. she trotted over to our bed to wake us up and deliver her first puppy to Elaine—no muss, no fuss, just a brand new male puppy, gently carried in her soft bird dog mouth, cleaned up and ready to nurse.  Between 2 A.M. and 5 A.M. she seemingly effortlessly popped out puppies at about half-hour interval until we had six newborns, three of each gender.   She seemed to be done (and the radiologist had told us to expect a total of five puppies based on an X-ray the previous week), so I went back to bed, while Elaine hung around, just in case Schöne needed any help.  She didn’t need any help, but she had two more puppies to still deliver into this litter, which ended up at eight, four boys and four girls.  All are healthy and growing quickly with the help of Supermom, Schöne.

Mom just had an episode of mastitis---one of the faucets is inflamed and painful for nursing.  That earned me a trip to the local Safeway store at 11:30 last night to buy a few heads of cabbage to experiment with a non-pharmacological remedy suggested from a breeder website for treating the inflammation.

We have a stream of visitors, adult and child, coming through to play with the puppies and socialize them to humans.  A CD plays in the background, with every conceivable noise from shotgun discharge to railroad locomotive to thunder to airplane hold at a loud enough volume to get the pups accustomed to some of the louder and scarier sounds they’ll hear as they grow up.   The new owners-to-be come through to see the puppies and get a feel for which one will pick them as his or her new family.

Sleep is elusive as puppies clamor for food and Schöne gets to sleep with us as a reward for excellence in motherhood.  The pups should move from the whelping box, the puppy’s first home, to the penthouse suite (two exercise pens for walls and a kitty litter box for potty training) in the great room----an 8-12 expanse of newspaper-covered vinyl with toys and fun things to explore.  They’ll remain there until they go to their new homes at 8 weeks, with frequent trips to the back yard (weather permitting) to experience other surfaces and new environments.

The pups get names today---the theme will be “Pretty in Pink Floyd”, marrying the movie and the band.  Name #1 is Molly---got it, trivia buffs?  Does anyone else have a suggestion?  Feel free to add a comment if you do.

I just published an anthology of short stories with a novella and a novelette included, entitled “Five Quickies For Roger And Suzanne”, on Amazon KDP.   To thank my readers (and to hopefully get some reviews) I had a couple of free KDP days yesterday and today to get the book out there.  Several hundred copies are now on Kindle readers or Kindle apps, ideally being read.  There’s a copy of the cover on the right of this post that will let you click through to Amazon if you want to download a free (or paid, $2.99) copy of this collection of stories. The stories include one in which Roger meets Suzanne, and another that describes, in his own words, Roger’s first case as a P.I.  We also visit Fortaleza, Brazil, to solve a mysterious killing in an allegedly haunted gymnasium.

IF IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR RAYMOND CHANDLER---AN UPDATE

          If it was good enough for Raymond Chandler, it should certainly be good enough for me.  Chandler’s muse apparently ran out of gas when he was writing for the pulp thriller magazines, long before he wrote any of the now classic novels that made him famous and are still popular.  To use his word, he “cannibalized” the short stories to create his novels.   English professors and computers can demonstrate the transfer of entire scenes, characters, and words from his short stories to his books---“The Big Sleep”, “The Lady in the Lake”, “Farewell, My Lovely”, and “The High Window”.   The process Chandler used for cannibalization is described in detail by Philip Durham in the preface to a collection of Chandler’s short stories entitled “The Killer in the Rain” [Ballantine Books, New York, 1964]

IF IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR RAYMOND CHANDLER ……

          If it was good enough for Raymond Chandler, it should certainly be good enough for me.  Chandler’s muse apparently ran out of gas when he was writing for the pulp thriller magazines, long before he wrote any of the now classic novels that made him famous and are still popular.  To use his word, he “cannibalized” the short stories to create his novels.   English professors and computers can demonstrate the transfer of entire scenes, characters, and words from his short stories to his books---“The Big Sleep”, “The Lady in the Lake”, “Farewell, My Lovely”, and “The High Window”.   The process Chandler used for cannibalization is described in detail by Philip Durham in the preface to a collection of Chandler’s short stories entitled “The Killer in the Rain” [Ballantine Books, New York, 1964]

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE DEADLY DOG SHOW

            The newest book in the Roger and Suzanne series, The Deadly Dog Show, is getting excellent reviews (see a couple of previous posts below, July 26th and August 1st) and four of the more recent ones at the end of this entry.  It’s also selling well, apparently both to dog lovers and to mystery fans.  As indicated in the book’s foreword and this blog, the canine heroine of the novel, Juliet, is very much modeled after our middle dog, Jolie.  This post explores the real-life origins of a few specific scenes in the novel and takes you "behind the scenes" to illustrate the integration of reality and fiction in my creative process.

MORE REVIEWS OF THE DEADLY DOG SHOW---AT TEN DAYS OLD

The rest of the reviews for "The Deadly Dog Show", thus far. (N = 11, Mean score = 4.9 Stars out of a possible 5.0)

1. Doggonit.  What a good read...! Well done and captivating. I loved the character development and was truly drawn into the story with all of its' twists and turns.

2. Mystery, dogs and a quick read---3 simple reasons to buy: I rarely read anything other than cookbooks or lately informational books on raising farm animals. However, in the midst of a trying few months in my life, I was given the opportunity to read this mystery by Mr. Last. It was a great way to divert my attention from reality, yet seemed so familiar, as a Northern California resident, a dog owner and a foodie. We currently own a champion German Shorthaired Pointer named 'Bruce' and plan on owning this breed for the rest of my life. It is always nice when you can read something so entertaining and feel like you are almost part of the story. I am always particularly pleased when details about food are included because it allows one to not only visualize the story and the character, but also smell the scene. Like his many other pieces, this too is a pleaser!

Bonus: There's enough time in your busy schedule to read this book and it costs less than an espresso beverage.

THE FIRST BATCH OF REVIEWS FOR THE DEADLY DOG SHOW

As of today, July 26, 2013, “The Deadly Dog Show” has been published for six days and has garnered 9 reviews, with an average ranking of 4.9 out of a possible 5 stars.  Here are a few examples from the eight 5-star reviews (quoted accurately and in their entirety from the book’s Amazon page).

1.  “A must for dog show enthusiasts” by Sharon. 

“I've read several books in this series and found them entertaining, with good characterization and accurate feel for the settings.

This is much my favorite, however, because of my own dog show background. Have to say this is the first mystery with a setting/background in the show dog world that has no errors that I noted. The plot, involving dog show officials, might have been just a bit over the top in some ways but it did hold together.

Entertaining addition to the series and wonderfully accurate background and setting. Will appeal to mystery readers and if you're a dog show person, whether you usually read mysteries or not, this is a must read.”

THE DEADLY DOG SHOW

Did you ever think that you’d like to kill the judge who didn’t give you (your dog, your horse, your child) the victory?  Did you ever get a gift from a secret admirer who might not really admire you?  Have you ever been in a competition that was rigged so you couldn’t win?  The seventh book in the popular Roger and Suzanne mystery series finds Roger and Bruce hired to go undercover impersonating the owner and handler of a Champion German Shorthaired Pointer named Juliet to investigate certain irregularities that might be occurring at dog shows in California.  To complicate this case the bodies of dead judges start popping up and Suzanne picks up a mysterious stalker sending her most unwelcome gifts.  Throw in drug cartels and corrupt cops and it sounds like a typical job for our detective couple.  “The Deadly Dog Show” may be read as a stand-alone novel, but fans of the series should enjoy reconnecting with characters they have met in the previous books.  This whodunit novel should appeal to mystery fans, dog lovers, and anyone who wants to learn more about the world of dog show competition. 

LEFT BRAIN, RIGHT BRAIN

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With a B.S. degree in Chemistry and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biochemistry it’s a pretty good guess that I’m predominantly left brained.  My wife Elaine is excellent at all kinds of crafts and is an accomplished weaver.  It’s a pretty good guess that she’s predominantly right brained.   We can see the ‘he’s from Mars and she’s from Venus’ stuff when she edits my manuscripts.  I tend to plot and write linearly while she craves visual scenes and better realized minor characters.  We had several excellent examples of this dichotomy in the current WIP, “The Deadly Dog Show”.  For example I originally wrote a scene in Chapter 2 with Roger introducing Suzanne to hot pastrami sandwiches in a stereotypical New York City Delicatessen as follows.

SENIOR HUNTERS: A GRANDMOTHER-MOTHER-DAUGHTER THING

A few weeks ago Jolie and her daughter Schoene finished their senior hunter certification about two braces apart during a local AKC hunt test.  Grandma Vinia has had her Senior Hunter certification for several years, so we now have three generations of Senior Hunters to hunt pheasant, quail, and chukar with.  Vinia functions at the Master Hunter level, but refuses to honor any dog she doesn’t respect so only has a few legs on her MH degree and is now a spectator when the younger generations of the family compete in hunt tests.  Interestingly, Vinia has no difficulty honoring any of her family members (including all of the brothers and sisters of her pack mates) while hunting in the field so hunts at the MH level in real life as opposed to hunt tests.  A couple of months ago we were hunting five dogs at once---Vinia, Jolie, Schoene, Sarah (another granddaughter), and Tiger (a Jolie brother)---on a large field.  Somebody (either Jolie or Schoene) found a pheasant and pointed it.  Four other dogs stopped where they were and honored the point.  They’re trained to hold the point (and the honor) until someone human does something about the bird.  That’s a pretty spectacular sight!  It makes finding the bird pretty easy.

Going To The Dogs

At Elaine's (my wife's) urging, I'm trying to bring her hobby of dog breeding, which we've discussed here before in some of my earlier posts, into Roger and Suzanne's fictional world of mysteries and whodunits.  There are two noteworthy efforts to tell you about thus far:

(1) For Roger and Suzanne Trivia buffs we can pose the following questions and the source of the answers.  What was Roger Bowman's first case as a P.I.?  What very unusual fee was he paid?  Who was his most unusual client ever?  The answers are in a new 2,000-word short story, "The Dog with No Name", available free on Erika Szabo's blog at http://www.erikamszabo.com.  Go on over and take a look.  Enjoy the story.  It's a little bit different than my usual style.

(2) Currently under construction is a new book, tentatively entitled "The Deadly Dogshow".  I can promise that no dogs will be killed or injured to advance the plot, but can't make any such promises with regards to the human characters.  In fact I can almost certainly promise that one or more humans will be killed in this story.  Suzanne and Roger have bought a dog (Juliet, a German Shorthaired Pointer, of course).  Bruce, among his many other talents, turns out to be a skilled dog trainer and handler so will be a featured player in all doggie subplots from here on.  Robert is getting old enough to help Bruce train the dog, so will also get more toner than he used to in these stories.  For the old-timers here:  remember when that used to be ink? 

There are also bit and pieces of several other short stories and one or two novels being worked on.  Current plans for the next South American book will take our characters to The Galapagos Islands to mix biology and murder in one of the most special places in the world, located off the coast of Ecuador.  They will also get a chance to visit Alaska to investigate a homicidal bear.

Now, if I can only find the time to write all of these stories........

Time Out For Puppy Making

I've mentioned Jolie's 11 puppies, our present house guests, in several previous blog entries.  The pups are almost 5 weeks old now; the photo was taken a few days ago. See how many you can count here.  I find 9 in the picture.  They are pretty friendly with everybody and have been very, very well socialized to get that way.  The pup in the middle, Lancelot, is a large extrovert who likes all the attention.  Our non-canine visitor in the box, who is the largest puppy sitting there, likes puppies in general and this litter especially.  She also owns their half-brother, Bruce.

A Few Pearls of Doggy Wisdom

     As I sit at my desk about 25 feet away from 11 4-week-old puppies (Thank you, Jolie), it seems natural to reflect on our family's relationship to dogs. My wife Elaine has been breeding German Shorthaired Pointers (GSPs) for a long time, most of her adult life. Her first GSP was the loveable, but not particularly well coordinated, Jake (aka Lufkin’s Jaunty Jake as registered with the American Kennel Club). Jake was influential in getting us together, but that will be the topic of a future blog entry. Jake also sired the 13-generation long lineage that established Elaine as a well known breeder of a long line of successful GSP show dogs here in the western United States.
     For today, we will discuss the possibility that Jake, who might have influenced the purchase of the real Pearl and the development of the fictitious Pearl in the Spenser series of mystery novels written by one of my favorite authors, Robert B. Parker. In a land long ago and far away (I always wanted to use that one in writing, somewhere), Elaine lived in the Boston suburbs. She walked Jake in many places, including the Boston Commons. A few of those times Parker, who lived and taught in Boston, came by The Commons to admire her dog and got to know Jake in all his lovable goofiness. Over his illustrious career as a mystery writer, which started just about that time with The Godwulf Manuscript (published in 1973, the year I moved to Cambridge), Parker owned several generations of GSPs named Pearl, who occupied a lot of his book cover photos with him. In all of the Spenser books that followed the first one, beginning, I believe, with book #2 in the series, "God Save the Child", Spenser had a girlfriend Susan Silverman, initially a school guidance counselor who morphed into a Ph.D. (from Harvard, no less) clinical psychologist in book #10 in the Spenser series, "Valediction". Suzanne eventually acquired a GSP named Pearl in, I think, the 19th book of this series, "Pastime". Her dog, whose name was changed from "Vigilant Virgin" to Pearl on page 4 of Pastime, looked a lot like Parker’s real Pearl, a solid liver-colored GSP. His movie production company, which made films and both cable and network TV shows based upon his books, was named “Pearl Productions”. Did Elaine and Jake influence Parker’s subsequent choices of Pearl #1-3? I’d like to think so.