Parker-izing. Saying A Lot, With Not Much

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I’ve been camping by a  river for a while. No cell or wifi (heaven!) but did some Robert Parker searches for this post before I prepped and packed 10 days of food for my husband and me and the 2 dogs. (Who wants to leave the river and shop?)

I often think about how to “Parker-ize” my writing: keep my own style and voice for the mystery series but lean it down to its bones …so to speak. Parker-ize it. (My term.) I listen and re-listen to his books on tape as I drive. (Joe Mantegna’s narration delivers a to-die-for Boston/ Spenser incarnation. Here’s a short listen.)

Sometimes, I have to pull over and replay a bit over and over.

When asked about his popularity, Parker said, ““I dunno. I think people just like the way it sounds.”

Oh yes.

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Wildlife. Real. Magical. Maybe …. Both

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In my “Mystery In Maine” series, I had my narrator say this, but I think it might apply to me as well.

“Up close with wildlife of all sizes and attitudes, I liked to create conversations that took me some place I needed to go. Sometimes the effort saved me from trouble. Sometimes it got me into trouble.”  

Recently, I met with a book group who’d read my first novel, “Deadly Trespass.” The opportunity to talk intimately with people who now had relationships with my characters and the book’s contents, was exhilarating. I came home and made a list of what they liked, so I could make sure their enthusiasm got transferred and infused … in detail … with my current writing.

One woman said she very much liked the narrator’s imaginary conversations with animals … the “magical realism” of them.

Wow. Didn’t think I was doing magical realism. I only offer up animal conversations occasionally and they are short and used to reveal character, move the plot, or add to the drama of a situation.

I think most of us have conversations with animals. Often, it’s just us speaking, but sometimes we imaginatively supply their possible replies. I think when this happens, the moment is magically real.

So I thought about some special animal moments I’ve experienced and have decided they were prepping me for my author foray into magical wildlife realism.

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What Spreads Beyond the Place Where It Started?

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Cancer and rampant real estate development. Both are driven by relentless metastasis, a word usually reserved for the spread of cancer.

Here’s the medical definition: metastasis is when the cancer spreads beyond the place where it started to other areas of the body.

There is no metastasis-like definition for rampant real estate development, but it most often behaves like rampant, out-of-control cancer cells.

Maybe author Edward Abbey says it better when he writes about the loss of our wild world: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

This is a hard topic for me. I have also lived with so much loss of the outdoors that sometimes I’m not sure I can write about it . . .

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